The Volkswagen emissions scandal was uncovered only by accident – US university researchers could not afford to rent more expensive cars to conduct their emissions tests.
So, according to today's The Mail on Sunday, the American engineers rented a VW Passat and a
VW Jetta saloon instead without knowing the cars were fitted with a device that would
help them pass emissions standards.
The engineers who discovered Volkswagen’s use
of a ‘cheat device’ to pass EPA emissions tests, said that ideally they wanted
to test vehicles made by BMW and Mercedes-Benz, but their cars were “too pricey
to rent”.
The results obtained from the Passat and Jetta
showed the two VW models “would pump out as much as 40 times the allowed levels
of nitrogen oxide”, according to the UK newspaper.
The testers spent a month driving the three
cars – they also used a BMW X5 sports utility vehicle – around California using
specialist monitoring equipment.
The results showed the two VW models could
produce as much as 40 times the allowed levels of nitrogen oxide, a figure
later corroborated by the US Environmental Protection Agency and California Air
Resources Board.
The newspaper claimed the report “sent the
German car firm into near meltdown”.
Daniel Carder, who led the testing team from
the Centre for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions (CAFEE) at West
Virginia University, said: ‘We didn’t set out to trap Volkswagen – it was just
that we could spend less money on using their cars.’
More than 11 million cars are being recalled
worldwide, with 1.2 million of those in the UK.
According to The Mail on Sunday, VW said yesterday (Saturday) said it had been
forced to drop the Royal Warrant from its communications in the wake of the
scandal.
The company is reported to have set aside £4.7
billion to deal with the fallout from the scandal, but analysts at Credit
Suisse say it could cost it closer to £56 billion.
Meanwhile, a survey found that public trust in
the car industry has been “badly damaged”, with nearly eight in 10 people now
saying they expect more manufacturers to be drawn in to the scandal.
1 comment:
Having discovered the cheap-to-rent diesel Passat and Jetta were contravening EPA emission rules, with multi-billion dollar implications for VW, the West Virginia University team could surely then have raised the relatively small amount of further funding to hire more expensive Mercedes and BMW diesels in order to check out their real-life NOx levels.
Post a Comment