VOLKSWAGEN IN HOT WATER
Accused of cheating on pollution tests
WASHINGTON Volkswagen AG sold nearly 500,000 diesel cars with software that automatically cheated on air pollution tests, leaving the German automaker vulnerable to billions of dollars of fines and a criminal prosecution.
The company sold Volkswagen and Audi brand cars with a sophisticated algorithm that turns on full pollution controls only when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, the Environmental Protection Agency said. During normal driving, the systems don’t operate and the cars pollute 10 times to 40 times the legal limits, regulators said. EPA called the technology a “defeat device.”
“Using a defeat device in cars to evade clean air standards is illegal and a threat to public health,” said Cynthia Giles, the agency’s assistant administrator for enforcement. “EPA is committed to making sure that all automakers play by the same rules.”
Last year, Ford Motor Co. was forced to lower mileage estimates and compensate more than 200,000 of its customers. The Dearborn, Mich.-based company sent out payments ranging from $200 US to $1,050 US. In 2012, an investigation led to Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. relabelling some of their top-selling U.S. models.
The VW investigation involves model years 2009-15. The potential fine is $37,500 US per vehicle and 482,000 autos are part of the case, yielding a potential fine of more than $18 billion US, Giles said on a phone call with reporters Friday. The violations of the Clean Air Act could be referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, the agency said.
Volkswagen said in a statement it is co-operating with the investigation and unable to comment further.
The affected models include some of VW’s most popular U.S. cars: the Beetle, the Jetta, the Golf and the Passat. The Audi A3 is also part of the investigation. As recently as July, diesel models accounted for 26 per cent of VW brand sales in the U.S., according to a company news release.
EPA said in a letter to VW Friday, the company knew or should have known about the vehicles’ software. In a letter to VW Friday, the EPA said the company admitted it had designed and installed software to evade pollution controls after regulators made clear they weren’t going to certify the automakers’ 2016 models.
Consumers haven’t yet been ordered to return to their dealers for a recall, and it’s safe to keep driving the cars, said Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator of the agency’s Office of Air and Radiation.
It had been surprising that Volkswagen diesel models were able to get impressive horsepower output and fuel economy performance using less costly pollution control technology than employed in some other automaker’s engines, said Bill Visnic, an independent auto analyst in Weirton, W.V.
The software workaround might have been what enabled the performance without the expected pollution controls, he said.
“You can’t have anything like this that’s intended to game the system,” Visnic said.
It would be very difficult for Volkswagen to add new pollution control equipment to the existing engines, so the only way to fix this may be to cut the horsepower and fuel economy performance of the models to lower the pollution output once the software is eliminated, said Visnic.