You know a motor industry story is big when it leaves the confines of the motoring press and makes it to the lead story on mainstream morning news channels. And they don't come much bigger than the apparent revelation that Volkswagen diesel cars sold in the USA have been fitted with what is being described as a 'defeat device' to pass strict American emissions tests carried out by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB).
It's claimed this deliberately alters the car's fuelling and emissions on the controlled test but then reverts to a 'normal' configuration for road use that could in fact be much more polluting than the test results would indicate. The impact on VW's Stateside reputation threatens to be significant too, diesel playing an important part of the group strategy across its brands. "Audi and Volkswagen pioneered TDI clean diesel engines and today, the Volkswagen Group of America is the market leader in clean diesel," claims VW's US customer site. Perfect timing for VW America to be launching a revised version of its US-built Passat then. Oh...
Meanwhile Audi "has been at the forefront of clean diesel" and has "made a dramatic expansion in TDI technology in the United States" thanks to, cough, "innovative solutions that improve efficiency and driving dynamics."
In an oddly worded statement VW boss Martin Winterkorn apologises for 'breaking the trust' of its customers and the public and says "we will do everything necessary in order to reverse the damage this has caused". Notably the statement doesn't actually admit to the charge that it knowingly installed equipment or programming intended to generate favourable results on the
EPA test
, merely that the EPA and CARB "have detected manipulations that violate American environmental standards."
A letter from CARB to VW USA is much more explicit in its accusations. It says in 2014 concerns about 'elevated' NOx emissions were raised with the EPA and CARB in testing by the International Council for Clean Transportation and West Virginia University.
In response VW apparently replicated the tests and proposed a 'recalibration fix' via a voluntary recall of around 500,000 2009-2014 model year diesel cars that - according to CARB - "claimed to have fixed ... the increased real world driving NOx issue." In May of this year CARB commenced testing of vehicles with the fix but found NOx was still "significantly higher than expected" and shared its results with the EPA and VW in July. Finally, according to CARB, in September VW "admitted to CARB and EPA staff that these vehicles were designed and manufactured with a defeat device to bypass, defeat, or render inoperative elements of the vehicles' emission control system."
While this - for now - remains a Stateside issue specific to VW the industry as a whole will no doubt be watching intently as this plays out, speculation on how much this will cost the firm reaching into the billions. Certainly the EPA is clear, stating, "it is incumbent on Volkswagen to initiate the process that will fix the cars' emissions systems" while reassuring owners their cars "remain legal to drive and resell."
Golf R owners can relax for now though; aggressively pursued internet claims of better than expected performance from turbocharged petrol engined Volkswagens have not yet been added to the EPA investigation.
UPDATE 1100h
As you might expect, Volkswagen is now responding to the worldwide reporting of this story with confirmation it "plans to set aside a provision of some 6.5 billion EUR ... in the profit and loss statement in the third quarter of the current financial year. Earnings targets for the Group for 2015 will be adjusted accordingly." Whether this includes fines from the EPA or not is not stated.
VW has gone further in its admissions too, saying, "discrepancies relate to vehicles with Type EA 189 engines, involving some eleven million vehicles worldwide. A noticeable deviation between bench test results and actual road use was established solely for this type of engine. Volkswagen is working intensely to eliminate these deviations through technical measures." Not quite a full mea culpa that this was deliberately engineered into the engine as alleged, but it goes further than Winterkorn's original statement.
UPDATE 1530h
Autocar is now reporting that the VW supervisory board will meet on Wednesday, to discuss current Porsche CEO Matthias Muller replacing Martin Winterkorn as VW Group CEO. This decision is expected to be made official on Friday. The official line from VW is that the rumour is "stupid".
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