The controversy came to public attention last week after Volkswagen acknowledged it had deliberately deceived officials about how much its diesel cars polluted. We won’t be doing that because the awards were given to all the different varieties of Golf engines, including the gas engines which make up the bulk of sales. It’s because the awards aren’t created to tell you which auto is really the best vehicle out there. It appeared to have found a sweet spot between high-performance and fuel-efficiency with a zippy, fun-to-drive vehicle that topped 40 miles per gallon in highway driving. Does it look cool? In fact, this is more of a body blow than a hit. Nope, not that either. The measures dictate that from 2020, the fleet average Carbon dioxide emissions to be achieved by all new cars should be just 95 grams per kilometre. That’s what everyone in the project began to suspect but wouldn’t dare to say out loud. The agency also is going to test diesels from other manufacturers to make sure they don’t have similar devices. Consumer advocates say on a buyback will do.
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Sven Rothluebbers wrote on Volkswagen’s German Facebook page: “VW must be held fully accountable, but please do not forget that Volkswagen has served Germany with great cars, jobs, social commitment and more the past 70 years!”
In retrospect, perhaps someone should have known something was up at VW. The delay between VW’s confession and the US exposure of the scandal occurred as regulators prepared their response to the disclosure. “But this process will take time”, VW said.
First, there’s no reason you can’t make a clean diesel.
Journalists take part in a fuel-mileage record attempt with a VW Passat diesel. The world’s largest automaker, a multibillion-dollar company, lied to them, to the American government, and to regulators around the world.
As automotive writers, we like to think we’re fairly sophisticated about these machines.
This is actually beside the point in Washington, because the state doesn’t require inspections for any vehicle made after 2008. Jackson estimates that Colorado dealers probably have sitting idle 600 new TDI Volkswagen vehicles and another 400 to 600 used ones. By the way, Winterkorn has to be re-elected to the post of Director of the Group this coming Friday. “Do I wish we had uncovered it sooner?” But that would be disingenuous. He said: “In the immediate term, the authorities need to demand that VW take on the task of investigating the cars affected here and bear the responsibility of retrofitting the fixes for emissions compliance”. It petitioned the EPA to get its act together. Emissions standards across Europe are less stringent in general, and they’re not fuel neutral: Diesels are allowed to pollute more than gasoline vehicles.
In 1973, the EPA accused the automaker of installing defeat devices in cars it wanted to sell in the 1974 model year.
To produce that data, they commissioned the U.S.-based nonprofit worldwide Council on Clean Transportation in February 2013, which hired researchers at a West Virginia University lab. And in some cases, the cars spewed out 25 times over emissions limits. In the case of carbon dioxide emissions tests – not nitrogen oxide – the discrepancy was as much as 20 percent.
The third upshot, for me personally, is, well, anger. I was a sucker. These guys got caught at it, and obviously they admitted to it. And I’m not saying its right, ’cause it’s not.
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“We’re looking at the damage to the environment and that can be measured”, he said. Others may follow his exit trajectory, but several important questions still need to be answered.
