After Volkswagen scandal, EPA to change diesel emissions tests in attempt to

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., is frustrated that regulatory agencies such as the EPA are failing to protect the public. And just as VW ground to a halt, reports emerged that Apple is moving ahead with a bid to bring a vehicle of its own to market by 2019.

The admission to regulators came after a year during which VW officials insisted to regulators that tests on its diesel cars showing a spike in pollution levels on the road were in error. “They don’t need to know”, Grundler said. “If they were, they would have caught it. The emissions were sky high”. GM received a fine of $900 million. But the standards had not achieved expected reductions in carbon monoxide pollution. The company lost almost one-fourth of its market value in the first hours after it admitted it programmed some of its cars to “cheat” on emissions tests.

VW’s defeat devices were subtler and more insidious.

The EPA has conducted on-road testing on heavy duty trucks, rather than passenger cars, “because that’s where the emissions are”, he said. A dedicated circuit or a special valve would have been impossible for VW to hide.

In theory, at least, software should also be easy to fix.

Still unclear is whether controlling NOx emissions will reduce the cars’ gas mileage, as well as what motivated Volkswagen to write the software workaround. They are forced to take the vehicle to a mechanic or dealer.

It might not play out that way, though.

It is in the EPA’s interest to keep people from delving in vehicle software codes because they don’t want owners disabling the emissions controls and safety devices.

Volkswagen has taken steps to help out the dealership, Murphy said. They put performance tires on a auto to make it handle better for test drivers. Some conscientious owners will bite the bullet and do it; others will be tempted to keep putting off making that appointment. Essentially, the vehicles’ electronic control module (ECM) was set to “clean” mode for the remainder of the emission’s test procedure.

At the same meeting, representatives of the California Air Resources Board, a state agency that had been pushing VW hard, were also given a verbal notice of the deception, people with knowledge of the events said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans sweeping changes to the way it tests for diesel emissions after getting duped by clandestine software in Volkswagen cars for seven years.

The revelations left dealers sitting on hundreds of diesel cars they could not sell. Google and Uber are both working on self-driving vehicles. The truth is, we can only see a small sliver of the industry, and it’s usually the smoke-and-mirrors side, sometimes with literal smoke machines and mirrored disco balls and thumping DJ music as a vehicle rolls out onto a stage.

If there’s any auto company with the marketing chops to find a clever way to say “We’re sorry”, it is Volkswagen. Imagine VW doing that to disable the defeat device. Nope. Can we tell you if the airbags will accidentally blow up in your face when you hit a curb? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits the “circumvention” of digital rights management software that locks down media. “Everyone else must’ve been scratching their heads trying to figure out how. We’re trying to focus on positive, not negative things because there’s nothing we can do”. One is financial and the other is reputational.

Piech did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The letter detailed some of the timetable of the EPA’s actions. For example, the federal EPA is toughening standards created to curb sulfur emissions from cars.

In hindsight, these sentiments are darkly ironic in the way that great corporate crimes always are. Unless the rest of us are allowed to, who knows what other evil lurks in the hearts of cars?