US EPA steps up emissions enforcement with real world driving tests

VW was found to have installed software on several of its diesel vehicles which would deliberately lower the vehicle’s pollutant output when it detected an emissions test being performed. Being that the European Union has stricter emissions regulations than the USA and companies like BMW are meeting them by selling all of these diesel cars, you’d figure we’d wise up as a nation and get more diesels.

The US Environmental Protection Agency said that Volkswagen could face a penalty of up to $18billion for manipulating emission test results.

The tests will include monitoring vehicles borrowed from individual consumers as well as extensive highway testing with equipment that can track a car’s emissions as it is being driven, the EPA said.

In choosing Porsche chief Matthias Mueller as its new CEO, Volkswagen Group’s board used the occasion Friday to announce a complete management shake up in the wake of its emissions testing rigging scandal. “The testing will be known as “RDE”, or Real Driving Emissions”.

“A defeat device, a function which illegitimately reduces emissions during testing, has never been and will never be used at Daimler”, the company said in response to accusations by Deutsche Umwelthilfe, an environmentalist group. While the EPA has ordered the cars recalled, the timing and details of that recall effort have yet been announced.

Why did successive governments not discourage the proliferation of diesel vehicles which now account for about half of new cars in Britain?

The EPA’s Grundler said Volkswagen embedded a sophisticated algorithm within 100 million lines of software code to defeat current emissions test procedures and that regulators aim to root out any so-called “defeat devices”.

Numerous clients who bought diesel thinking they were doing the environment a favor were actually unwittingly coconspirators to a big pollution and cancer causing scandal. It then turned on pollution controls that reduced the output of nitrogen oxide, an ingredient in harmful ozone, the EPA has said. The EPA has put fine of $18 billion to the VW Company and reported that it will now test 3-liter diesel engines of the automaker. As an owner, “you don’t have to do anything affirmatively to join”, said Richard McCune, partner in the Redlands law firm McCuneWright LLP, which filed a class-action suit against Volkswagen on Monday.

But it seems like that’s not the end of the trouble for Volkswagen.

Some 180,000 vehicles on Swiss roads made by Volkswagen’s Audi, Seat, Skoda and VW brands between 2009 and 2014 could be affected by the scandal, the Federal Roads Office said in a statement.