EPA chief says other auto models will be ‘aggressively’ tested following VW

Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it would begin on-road emissions testing of new and used vehicles.

The company has admitted 11 million vehicles, including Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda and Seat brands, were equipped to fool emissions tests but pump out harmful pollutants when driven. “Based on our current knowledge they are vehicles with 2.0 liter and 1.6 liter diesel engines”, he told Germany’s Bundestag lower house of parliament. Cars sold and already on the road will not be subject to the ban. The studies showed that NOx emissions have not declined since 2006 despite increasingly stringent requirements from the European Union. The devices switch on pollution controls when they are being tested, but are turned off when the software determines that the cars are back on real roads. But the standards had not achieved expected reductions in carbon monoxide pollution. He added: “It has been known for some time and Defra are certainly aware that concentrations [of NOx] have not decreased”.

The Deutsche Umwelthilfe group said Friday that it had information that nearly all German manufacturers of diesel cars – including Daimler – exceed emissions limits by such a level that it has to assume illegal devices to reduce nitrogen oxide readings are in play. It is estimated that 9,500 people a year die from the effects of NO2 pollution in the United Kingdom alone. Badin said she decided to spend thousands extra for a diesel rather than a gasoline engine because it was more fuel efficient and also promised to be “clean“.

A 2014 Jeep Diesel is tested at the Center for Alternative Fuel…

Successive governments have deliberately made diesel cars more attractive and further subsidies, announced in this year’s budget, will be introduced next year although George Osborne, the Chancellor, will be under pressure to scrap them after the VW scandal.

The EPA said the cars are safe to drive but VW will have to pay to recall and fix them. “But the events of the last two weeks have been an almighty wake-up call”.

“Put simply”, the complaint alleges, “[Volkswagen’s] defeat device results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory or testing station, but during everyday operation the device is programmed in such a manner that [a car] emits nitrogen oxides at up to 40 times the standard permitted by US health regulations”. “I would expect that sometime in the next three to five days they will have a plan on how to correct these cars and how they will compensate the customers about the deception”. The VW brand had just over 2 percent of USA auto sales – a fraction of what Nissan and Toyota have, let alone Ford or GM. In the latest vehicles, the tester may simply plug in a computer chip. “Without an independent regulator in Europe cheating companies won’t be caught”.

So how much DID transport ministers know?

“Angela Merkel rang the Prime Minister and asked him effectively to defer the arrangements that had been carefully negotiated. And Canada needs to do something similar”, Oliver said.

A VW spokesman said that the company still had no idea how many cars in Britain were affected by the scandal.

The trick, of course, is to find that one auto out of a hundred.

Only when the EPA and CARB refused to approve VW’s 2016 diesel models for sale did the company admit what it had done.

The environmental agency announced last week that software in Volkswagen diesel cars – perhaps 11 million vehicles worldwide – was created to turn off exhaust cleaning controls in engines except when the vehicle underwent emissions tests.