FRANKFURT, Germany – Hemanth Kappanna might seem like just another victim of corporate restructuring, a foreign worker whose skills were no longer needed, a middle-age man with dashed American dreams.
But Kappanna, an engineer born in India who was laid off by General Motors in February, changed automotive history.
In 2013, he was part of a small team of engineering students in West Virginia whose research helped expose Volkswagen’s decadelong conspiracy to lie about its diesel cars’ excessive emissions. The German carmaker has paid $23 billion so far to resolve criminal charges and lawsuits in the United States, and $33 billion overall.
Kappanna’s role as a hero in bringing the Volkswagen scandal to light did not protect him when his supervisor called him into a conference room in Milford, Michigan, this past winter.
Kappanna, who had studied and lived in the United States for 17 years, joined GM in December 2014 after finishing his doctorate. His most recent job involved communicating with the Environmental Protection Agency about the carmaker’s emissions technology.