Volkswagen here is how the scandal emission was discovered – The Republic

MILAN – it took over a year to admit in front of the US authorities that his was a deliberate attempt to circumvent the laws on emissions, and not a matter of technical problems. But Volkswagen had nearly escaped. If it were not for a series of coincidental and for the curiosity of many researchers specialize in the four wheels, the German group might never have been caught cheating on levels of particulate pollutants by millions of its diesel engines. And ‘the New York Times to reconstruct the facts.

It all started two years ago. Then the International council on clean transportation (ICCT) – a non-profit organization whose mission is “to improve the environmental performance and energy efficiency” in transport “for the sake of public health and to mitigate climate change” – was leading tests in Europe to understand the real performance of cars with diesel engines “clean”. Not blown away by the results, the experts group (among whose ranks there are many former officials of the agency for the US Environmental Protection or EPA, that last Friday formally accused of having cheated Volkswagen) decided to conduct the same analysis on cars in the United States. Aware that in the US emissions standards were more stringent and almost certain that the outcome of the test would disfigure the European cars, the researchers set to work without imagining that they would instead stumbled into one of the biggest scams in the automotive industry recent history. Looking for help, the ICCT published an ad for the search for a partner with which to test diesel cars. The West Virginia University decided to participate in the call.

“Test diesel light vehicles in real conditions seemed very interesting,” he told the NYT Arvind Thiruvengadam, professor at their university. “We looked and we said ‘let’s try’.” At the end of that university he was selected, never imagining that he would find a car group intent on cheating. For more Volkswagen had not been targeted. For if two of the three diesel vehicles purchased for the test were the German group. But it took little to give rise to doubts among experts. “If you’re stuck in traffic in Los Angeles for three hours, we know that the car is not in the best position to give good results on emissions,” he told the NYT Thiruvengadam. “But if you go to 70 mph, everything should work perfectly. The emissions will drop. But those of Volkswagen went down.” It ‘true that the real driving conditions are determined by their speed, temperature, topography and how the driver presses on the brakes. But the performance of the vehicles of the German group seemed rather strange. To confirm it was then the California Air Resources Board (Carb), the agency responsible for the state of California to fix emission standards.

Upon learning of the ongoing test dell’Icct, the Carb decided to take part. So regulators it tested the same vehicles analyzed by the expert group helped by the West Virginia University. Tests were conducted first in sophisticated laboratories of Carb, and the outcome on the two vehicles Volkswagen was perfect (the merit, with hindsight, was the use of the controversial software called “defeat devices”). But when those two vehicles were put on the streets of the Golden State, the emission of nitrogen dioxide were found to between 30 and 40 times higher than the legal limits. Consequently, the Carb and the EPA began their investigations in Volkswagen in May 2014, as revealed by documents released last Friday. The car group said to have discovered the reason for such high levels of emissions and proposed a software workaround.
This resulted last December in a recall of nearly 500,000 cars in the US. But the Carb continued its investigation, not convinced that the road performance of the car of the group would be improved. He was right. Emission standards continued to be violated, why Carb chose to share the findings with the EPA on July 8. At that point the agency for environmental protection threatened Volkswagen or rectify the matter or the authorities would not have given the green light to the 2016 models of the eponymous brand and Audi (a procedure generally routine). Only then came the admission of the second largest group of cars in the world and with it a huge reputational crisis.

Arguments:

Volkswagen

Starring: