Harris County Attorney sues Volkswagen over emissions scandal

“Lax EPA testing let Volkswagen cheat vehicle buyers and pollute our air for years without getting caught”, said Kristen Monsell of the Center.

Yesterday we heard VW saying a diesel fix is in the works for nearly 11 million cars equipped with the Euro 5-compliant EA189 engine and all of them will have to go through a “service procedure”.

While the EPA prohibits the use of defeat devices, their use has sometimes been widespread. The new methods could include the use of the portable devices and other tests that replicate real-world driving or just changing the treadmill script. The EPA will have to prioritize its limited money for testing, Christopher Grundler, the agency’s current Transportation and Air Quality director, said last week. It also calls for EPA testing to determine if technologies created to evade regulations, known as defect devices, are prevalent.

EPA’s National Fuel and Vehicle Emission Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, ran spot checks on VW’s 2009 models that validated the company’s data by running an identical series of laboratory tests. But government reports show that current penalties are too low to be a deterrent and that companies regularly choose to pay the fines rather than comply with the standards.

Nitrogen oxide contributes to ozone formation, which can cause health problems such as chest pain and coughing, and can worsen bronchitis and asthma, Harris County said in its lawsuit.

Approximately 1.45 million Audi-badged vehicles with Euro 5-compliant diesel engines are affected in Western Europe, 577,000 cars in Germany and almost 13,000 in United States. The Guardian forecasts on the same day that the software “dramatically reduces nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions“. “The Volkswagen debacle ought to be a wake-up call”.

The Volkswagen cars at issue emitted about 40 times the EPA’s permissible levels.

The agency didn’t have an immediate comment on the Center for Biological Diversity petition.