Chinese operations not involved in scandal, says VW

It was beginning to make headway, at last.

Grundler points to 23 portable emissions-measurement devices the EPA uses presently to test heavy-duty diesel trucks, the same technology researchers at West Virginia University used to uncover the VW deception.

“We understand that owners of the cars affected by the emissions compliance issues are upset”, VW said on a consumer website launched Sunday. “This kind of behaviour is totally inconsistent with our qualities”.

Germany’s transport minister said Volkswagen had manipulated tests in Europe too.

VW’s main shareholder said on Saturday it was buying the 1.5 percent of Volkswagen held by Japanese carmaker Suzuki to show its “faith” in the group.

But on older models from 2009 to 2014, the fix may be more hard. “The smart engineers at EPA and (the California Air Resources Board) and Environment Canada have come up with some clever ways to do this”. The company insisted that this was merely a glitch, and made several recalls for an “emissions service action”, without telling customers that it was a bid to ward off further criticism from the regulators. “It didn’t work”, said a spokesperson for CARB.

On September 18, the EPA put out its formal notice of violation of the Clean Air Act.

The federal motor vehicle office (KBA) told VW to set out “binding measures and a timetable” by the deadline showing how it will meet emissions standards without resorting to software that rigs test results, Bild am Sonntag has reported.

She said the European Union was working on stricter emissions tests to focus more on normal road conditions, rather than rely on lab results.

With an estimated five million vehicles affected worldwide, various investigations under way and the possibility of an enormous fine looming in the U.S. alone, “crisis” is looking like an accurate description of the VW Group’s predicament.

The company has set aside $7.3 billion to pay for the scandal.

The emissions trickery and its consequences are also spreading beyond North America.

Previous fines in the U.S. for such transgressions have been much smaller. The agency says the “defeat devices” allowed those models to belch up to 40 times the allowed amounts of harmful fumes in order to improve driving performance.

VW has felt some of this pain already.

The agency is going to “look at all of the other models aggressively and do the testing we need to make sure there aren’t any hidden software devices or other ways they could defeat the emission system”, McCarthy said.

The scandal now threatens to engulf other vehicle manufacturers.

Lawmakers will have a significant influence on whether people choose gasoline or diesel engines because subsidies for diesel have greatly helped its popularity, she said. Now, adding it after the fact will cost even more, he said. Now they’ve been told they’ve done the wrong thing. But that would anger customers and likely would force VW to compensate them for the reduced mileage, just as Hyundai did when it got caught with inflated fuel economy estimates, DeLorenzo said.

Long favored on European roads, diesel vehicles saw double-digit sales growth here compared to single-digit growth for the rest of the US auto market, according to data compiled by hybrid Cars.com and Baum and Associates.