In a Nutshell… The Volkswagen Emissions Scandal
“Only when it became clear that the California Air Resources Board and the E.P.A. would not approve Volkswagen’s 2016 model year vehicles for sale in the U.S. did Volkswagen admit to the installation of “defeat devices” in almost 11 million vehicles sold worldwide between 2008 and 2015"
The United States adopted a stringent set of vehicle emissions standards in 1999, with full implementation due for all 2007 model year vehicles, giving automakers 7-years to adapt.
One such standard required automakers to drastically reduce nitrogen oxides (or NOx) emissions — a gas created at high temperatures during combustion and responsible for the creation of ozone (itself a trigger of various health problems including chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion).
For reference, when compared with petrol-powered engines, diesels produce a significantly higher amount of NOx emissions due to their higher operating temperatures, among other factors. But this pollutant can be reduced with a combination of advanced engine technology and exhaust-based equipment and additives.
With fuel prices continuing to rise in the early 2000’s consumers became conscious of their vehicles fuel economy figures. Toyota, for example, pursued a petrol-hybrid strategy for the U.S. market with the Prius. Volkswagen on the other hand made the strategic decision to launch a large-scale promotion of diesel-powered vehicles in the United States and later adapted the slogan “Clean Diesel”.
In early 2005, in preparation for the full implementation of the 2007 model year emissions standards, Volkswagen began work on a new diesel engine that was engineered to be both cost-efficient to produce and provide a high level of driving performance — they called it the EA 189. The downside, however, to reducing NOx emissions was that the required technology reduced engine reliability, increased fuel consumption, and reduced performance.The original intention was to partner with Mercedes to use their emissions reduction technology, but this partnership ended before vehicle production began.
In early 2007, Volkswagen’s then head of production stated; “the ‘Clean TDI’ that will be launched in the US market in 2008 in the guise of the Jetta even meets the strict Californian emission standards and will significantly increase our market share in the United States.” It was reported, however, in late 2007, that Volkswagen would have to delay the April 2008 launch of the diesel-powered Jetta for several months due to a problem with the vehicles emissions system.
As it later emerged, Volkswagen engineers had decided to modify the engines management system in order to switch off the vehicles emission control devices during normal driving conditions.
In May 2014, the International Council on Clean Transportation released a report which found that the real-world operating emissions of two 2 litre Volkswagen models exceeded permitted NOx limits, despite passing laboratory-based tests. This led the E.P.A. to question Volkswagen over the discrepancies.
Volkswagen originally insisted that the issue was a technical one and could be resolved with a software update, which it began to rollout in April 2015.
The E.P.A. soon began testing the updated vehicles and concluded that the issue was not resolved. Only when it became clear that the California Air Resources Board and the E.P.A. would not approve Volkswagen’s 2016 model year vehicles for sale in the U.S. did Volkswagen admit to the installation of “defeat devices” in almost 11 million vehicles sold worldwide between 2008 and 2015.
VW has since agreed to pay up to $22 billion in the U.S. to address owner and dealer-related claims and government fines — representing almost 10% of the Group’s 2015 revenues.
In the European Union, Volkswagen began implementing fixes in early 2016 — made possible by the fact that EU-wide NOx emission limits were 6 to 8 times more lenient than U.S. equivalents.
Today EU limits have tightened to less than 3 times U.S. equivalents.
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