With so much going on in the world lately, it seems all news is now bad news. To top it all off, from the looks of it one would say it seems Volkswagen (VW) is getting their own share of bad news. As we all know, Volkswagen holds the world’s championship belt as the largest automaker of this year, but could lose a vast majority of their revenue due to fines reaching more than $18 billion!

This terrible news for Volkswagen also comes with a whopping 20% of shares that have dropped. What is the cause of this? Volkswagen conceded that it had prepared over 400k autos in the US with modern programming that secretly turns off pollution controls when the automobile is being operated and turns them back on just when it distinguishes that the auto is experiencing a gas test. That might not make a lot of sense if you’re not mechanically minded. Some might call it brilliant engineering while others would say it was the smartest dumb thing Volkswagen could ever do. Smart tech that does something ridiculous.

To break this down a bit more, this means that while the software is turned off, the automobile can release all kinds of poison gasses into the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxide is among the pollutants being spread in sums as much as 40% more than discharge norms and more than what is allowed.

No one knows why Volkswagen would makes this move, however, looking past the possible fines and claims as well as the countless billions of European euros that somehow walked away or vanished in Volkswagen’s stock market value, the famous German organization confronts a conceivably punch in the face to its good name.