Customers, dealers left in the dark on VW scandal

It hired the university to do a standard emissions tests on diesel cars in the U.S. Volkswagen has been hyping diesel cars that are environmentally friendly and fuel efficient.

USA officials exposed the deception on September 18, triggering Volkswagen’s admission that it had installed software in its cars to detect when they were being tested and alter settings to hide the true emissions of 11 million cars sold worldwide.

While VW is already facing class-action lawsuits in the US and its legal situation is getting more complicated, and potentially expensive, by the day, the situation in Europe remains equally murky and potentially costly.

It is unclear where those cars were sold and whether they are also emitting pollutants above legal limits.

Meanwhile, angry customers are demanding local dealers buy their cars back or offer compensation.

The results of that study, which was paid for by the nonprofit global Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) in late 2012 and completed in May 2013, were later corroborated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board (CARB). VW’s leadership is in turmoil after chairman Martin Winterkorn was forced to resign and sources said other executives including the head of U.S operations were soon to follow. The scandal has wiped out billions in the company’s market value and could bring billions more in fines and criminal investigations.

“Due to the existence of the defeat devices in these vehicles, the affected Volkswagen vehicles do not conform in all material respects to the vehicle specifications described in the applications for the certificates of conformity that purportedly cover them”, said the EPA. “It was a range of issues”. Then Volkswagen agreed to recall vehicles to fix their engine-control software.

Carder belonged to a 15-member West Virginia University team that pioneered portable emissions testing as part of a 1998 settlement between the U.S. Justice Department and several heavy duty diesel engine makers including Caterpillar Inc and Cummins Engine Co.

So how exactly do you fix a vehicle that isn’t broken?

“We discovered some very odd anomalies”, Young said. This was not the case. Very early on it was pretty clear to the scientists that something was wrong. “Over time we assembled enough proof and questions that they could no longer provide any reasonable explanation for what was going on”.

VW is not alone in pondering its fate.

“Our happiness was, ‘Wow, we are going to be the first guys to test diesel cars on the road, ‘ ” he says. Schmidt declined to speak to Reuters. “Why someone would think they could cheat in this way and get away with it is beyond me”.