Volkswagen Emissions Scandal: The Recap

Volkswagen Emissions Scandal: The Recap

Volkswagen, the car manufacturer most notoriously known for the Beetle (also known as “the Bug”) and the all-time classic hippy van; the Transporter (also known as the Bus) has made headlines this past week. It has come to light that Volkswagen has been involved in a cheating scandal when it comes to their claimed emissions output. For years this German car manufacturer has been claiming emission levels that were far less than what they actually are, specifically concerning their Diesel engines. Many questions arise from this. How could this have happened? How was it discovered? What does it mean for the future of Volkswagen? Hopefully, by the end of this article a lot of the questions you may have, like these, are cleared up.

Volkswagen, translated as “The People’s Car” from German, was established in 1937 to provide the opportunity to own a car for the common folk, and is home to Wolfsburg, Germany. Throughout the years Volkswagen, or commonly known as VW has produced many iconic cars, like the previously mentioned Beetle and Transporter, as well as the Golf for example. Nowadays, it is the founding member of the larger Volkswagen Group which currently is the largest car manufacturer in the world, ahead of giants such as Toyota, Daimler and General Motors.

Retrieved from Business Insider
Retrieved from Business Insider

So, back to what’s actually at stake here; the cheating scandal. As you by now know, Volkswagen has cheated with their claimed emissions on their Diesel engine, yet you’re still wondering how this could happen. Living in the 21st century, with the current technology readily available to us, a lot of appliances around us run on software; as do cars. A software called “the switch” was used to pass the emission tests. It did this by analyzing multiple factors to determine whether or not the car was in normal road use, or being tested. Depending on what the software determined, it either switched to “dyno calibration” or “road calibration” as illustrated on the right. Through this cheating mechanism the values recorded during testing were significantly inaccurate to normal driving conditions. It is speculated that VW pursued this to keep the costs down, because this way they could achieve the required testing limits without installing the AdBlue systems that are frequently present in the cars of other manufacturers. 

The cheating behaviour was discovered by The International Council on Clean Transportation in cooperation with West Virginia University in 2013. For the study they tested a 2012 VW Jetta, a 2013 VW Passat, and a BMW X5. The tests consisted of both road and laboratory conditions, resulting in suspiciously large differences in harmful emissions. The test concluded that the Passat exceeded the emission caps by 5 – 20 times, whereas the Jetta even exceeded the cap by 15 – 35 times; while BMW managed to meet all the standards. Subsequently the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were notified, who then in turn brought the news to Volkswagen. They first dismissed the results and claimed that there were some technical issues to blame for the “flawed” results, but later on September 3rd as the company was confronted with proof of the cheating software, VW had run out of creative cover up stories and thus admitted the scandal, and on September 18th, this was all publicized.

Now that it’s clear what exactly Volkswagen did and how they got caught, let’s pursue do discuss the consequences. Starting with the individual who is ultimately responsible; Martin Winterkorn, whose resignation from the CEO position was announced by Volkswagen’s advisory board. Volkswagen is now governed by Mathias Müller, the former CEO of Volkswagen’s subsidiary Porsche. Additionally Volkswagen’s stocks have plummeted.  In the last five days, the stock price has decreased a significant amount, dropping about 20% two days in a row.

Retrieved from Yahoo Finance
Retrieved from Yahoo Finance

 

This obviously also has a significant effect on the environment, because now it is known that the amount of harmful gasses emitted by VW manufactured cars is drastically higher than previously believed, resulting in worse air conditions than the public was led to believe. With possibly up to 11 million cars on the road that have this issue, the additional pollution accumulates to a frightening amount. Some countries have therefore come out and announced plans to ban the sale of certain VW models. Switzerland for example has disallowed the sale of Volkswagen vehicles placed in the Diesel Euro 5 category of emissions. The Netherlands on the other hand, along with every other member of the European Union (E.U.), is unable to place a ban on the sale of certain vehicles like Switzerland has, because in the E.U. as soon as one member approves a car model, it has been approved for all 28 members. This is an agreement made by the individual institutions of each respective country, and not by Brussels itself. Thus, because the German Kraftfahrt-Bundesambt (KBA) approved the Volkswagen diesel models, the other members can’t ignore that and are therefore unable to block the future sales of the models in question. Despite this unfavorable agreement given the current issues at hand, the Volkswagen importers for the Netherlands and Belgium have decided to voluntarily halt the import of possible contaminated software containing vehicles.

Ultimately, this revelation has given the consumers a couple new points to consider. This – for VW unfortunate event – serves purpose as an eye-opener to the rest of the world. How much trust can consumers really put into these large corporations? How much more cheating software is out there? Are the testing mechanisms out there the correct ones or are they too easily bypassed? These are definitely things to keep in mind. Additionally, it is a pretty fair assumption to think that Volkswagen is definitely not the only bad apple out there; they just ended up getting caught.

The most worrying thing in the eyes of Volkswagen is probably the loss of consumer trust. If it’s not, it most likely should be. In an era where one’s own environmental impact gains increasingly more importance consumers are increasingly aware of emissions data for example; especially when it comes to personal vehicles. Knowing that the claimed emissions might not be trustworthy and accurate claims, will definitely be taken into consideration by a significant amount of potential buyers. I simply cannot imagine anything other than Volkswagen losing a significant, possibly drastic percentage of market share. One thing is for sure; the new CEO Matthias Müller has a massive challenge ahead of him; restoring the image of the “people’s car” and regaining the trust and approval of the world.

 

The following video published by The Verge also gives a nice explanation of how the cheating scheme worked.

 

Sources:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/heres-what-volkswagen-did-and-how-they-got-caught-2015-9

http://uk.businessinsider.com/volkswagen-scandal-bad-for-environment-2015-9?r=US&IR=T

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/72d9fdc6-63a4-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz3mqZmN5yh

http://nos.nl/artikel/2059756-nog-veel-vragen-voor-nederlandse-volkswagenrijder.htm

http://nos.nl/artikel/2060137-volkswagen-stopt-verkoop-verdachte-diesels-in-nederland.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=VOW.DE#{“range”:”5d”,”showPrePost”:false,”didDisablePrePost”:true,”allowChartStacking”:true



1 thought on “Volkswagen Emissions Scandal: The Recap”

  • I am a life-long Volkswagen enthusiast. I am not likely to stop buying VW products but, I find these allegations profoundly disturbing. IF they prove true, the company of my favorite brands needs a big time spankin’ that really hurts … enough to scare other companies.

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