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The Volkswagen scandal

The Volkswagen scandal.

“The penalty can be up to 16 billion euros, the company's reputation lies in tatters and CEO Winterkorn therefore resigned last week.”

Volkswagen owes this to their diesel scandal. The American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board discovered that Volkswagen used trickery to get around the strict milieu requirements which are included in the Clean Air Act. Volkswagen produced software which makes it possible to ‘reduce’ the emission during an emission check. This software was installed in the engines of the model EA 189. The software works with the following 3 requirements: the car may not move, the steering wheel is not being used and the gps cannot make contact with the satellite. The car stands on a dyno inside a garage when it is tested. The wheels spin but the car stands on the same place, nobody is using the steering wheel and because the car is tested inside a garage the gps cannot make contact with the satellite. When this happens the software starts to work. The engine activates the lean NOx trap which is a catalyst that can be compared to a sponge, it is porous and intercepts all the nitrogen particles. When it is full the engines heats it up. In this way all the harmful particles are converted to harmless particles. When the car detects that it is on the road the lean NOx trap function is restricted to a certain level. This is because heating up the lean NOx trap consumes fuel. In this way the car is more economical however also more polluting. After further research it happens to be that the cars have a 40 times higher emission than is allowed.

 

The EA 189 engine is a diesel engine. The software was installed in cars with this engine because diesel cars are more polluting with respect to NOx and fine particles. The cars which have the software are: the Jetta, the Golf, the Beetle and the Passat which are produced in the time period from 2009 to 2015. This concerns around 11 million cars. The EPA called back 482.000 of these to prove that Volkswagen broke the Clean Air Act. The fine will be over 33.000 euros a car so in total Volkswagen is looking at a fine of 16 billion euros. That the EPA is not scared to give high fines is proven in 2014, where they fined Hyundai and Kia Motors for using unrealistic fuel consumption figures. These fines were around 350 million dollars. Volkswagen already reserved 6.5 billion euros for the diesel scandal, and ever since news about this came out, shares of Volkswagen also made a significant drop. In a 2 day period their shares dropped around 36 per cent which means that 27 billion euros just turned to dust.

 

After all this bad news for Volkswagen, CEO Maritin Winterkorn resigned. To be honest, I think that Volkswagen isn’t the only one cheating with their emission numbers and engines. After the news that Volkswagen cheated with their emission numbers more names came up like BMW. There is going to be a new law that obligates manufacturers to test their cars on their emission on the road under normal circumstances. This would clarify the large differences between the garage tests and the practice. The German Kraftfahrt-Bundersamt (KBA) also set an ultimatum. Before the 7th of October Volkswagen needs to come with a plan to show the emission in a veracious manner otherwise the approval will be withdrawn.

I bet these days aren’t the nicest days for the Volkswagen employees….

- Brian Dijkhuis


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