VW Will Need To Fix More Than 11 Million Vehicles With Emissions Cheating Device Though Solutions Remain Unclear
In September of 2015, Volkswagen, the acclaimed automobile manufacturer, was accused of implementing software in their vehicles that turned emission controls on and off to deceive testing agencies. The deception has turned the automotive industry on its head, as the investigation tries to determine who approved the decision and how far the impact will go on the safety and credibility of this once-great name in the industry.
How Volkswagen Got Caught
The events that lead up to the discovery of the software deception were something of a fluke. A small group of scientists at the University of West Virginia, whose focus was on emissions testing won a grant in 2012 to test some diesel vehicles. The International Council on Clean Transportation was seeking independent testing on Volkwagen diesel that had been touted as the most efficient vehicles on the road. Two vehicles, in particular, appeared to have problems with accurate emissions readings, the 2012 VW Jetta and the 2013 VW Passat. Arvind Thiruvengadam, a research assistant professor at WVU, noticed that the Volkswagen vehicles were not getting the low emissions that were expected during highway driving. Although the research team kept double-checking their data, the emissions numbers never added up. They reported their findings to John German at the ICCT, who found that deception lay in the computer code that was written for the vehicles, but also in the validation of the contrived numbers. Their findings were brought to the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the California Air Resources Board.
Determining Responsibility
Questions about who was responsible for the decision to implement the deception began immediately. The CEO of Volkswagen, Martin Winterkorn, claimed ignorance of the problem, but he stepped down from his position to try to contain the damage to the company’s reputation, which could be considerable. Volkswagen’s stock price has already fallen 43 percent since September, following the media stories of the deception and pending recall. Currently, two engineers are being scrutinized for their part in the cheating scandal. The company’s clean-diesel strategy began over ten years ago under CEO Wolfgang Bernhard, but he strongly dismisses any connection to the current emissions scandal.
An Eleven Million Vehicle Recall
The emissions cheating software was installed in vehicles starting in 2008 and affects about 500,000 vehicles in the United States and 2.8 million vehicles in the company’s home country of Germany. In total, about 11 million vehicles are thought to be affected, worldwide.
The Fix
The question of how Volkswagen will remedy this self-inflicted wound is still in question. The company has a number of monumental tasks to accomplish. First, they will have to find a cost-effective way to re-program the vehicle computers to get them in compliance with vehicle emission standards. They will have to cooperate with environmental regulators to satisfy them that the changes will actually fix the problem. Thirdly, they will to re-build trust with consumers, a daunting task in an age of high competition between auto manufacturers.
The fallout from the emissions scandal is still ongoing, but the consequences to Volkswagen will continue for some time to come, and many feel it could even bring the company altogether.
