The Volkswagen emissions scandal could be more widespread than just the German manufacturer, according to an Australian academic.
Professor Damon Honnery from Monash University specialises in engines and pollutant formation and says the issue at the heart of the scandal is the perception of the performance of diesel cars compared to petrol cars, particularly in the United States where diesel cars are less common.
“If a person is used to the performance standard of a petrol car then the diesel car that meets the emission standards doesn’t match that performance expectation,” Honnery said.
He says that is the only reason a company like VW would have gone to the lengths that it had, and it begged the question whether other manufacturers might have considered similar fixes
The scandal dates back to May 2014 when West Virginia University published results of tests commissioned by the International Council on Clean Transportation which found significantly higher in-use emissions on two vehicles, a 2012 VW Jetta and a 2013 VW Passat.
When the EPA questioned Volkswagen over the results, the company insisted the results were due to “various technical issues and unexpected in-use conditions”. Further testing debunked VW’s claims and the company eventually admitted it had installed a “defeat device” which turned emissions controls on during testing and off again during normal road use.
The device reportedly sensed a range of inputs including the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, duration of the engine’s operation, and barometric pressure to identify if it was being tested. When not being tested, it reduced the effectiveness of the selective catalytic reduction or the lean NOx trap. As a result emissions were 10 to 40 times higher on-road compared to under test.
Volkswagen says the device was installed on around 11 million vehicles worldwide from a range of models using the EA189 engine. The models involved included the VW Beetle, Golf, Jetta, Passat and the Audi A3 and includes models from as early as 2009. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned last week after the scandal was made public.
“I am shocked by the events of the past few days,” said Winterkorn. “Above all, I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group.”
Professor Honnery says he can see how it would take so long to uncover the scandal because it is already well established that automotive test results are difficult to replicate in real world conditions. He uses fuel consumption figures as an example.
“I know about cars and I reckon I know how to drive very conservatively because I know what affects fuel consumption. I can’t even get close to the published results when I drive like that,” he said.
With that mindset in place, he says it is easy for both the public and regulators to explain away differences between test results and not pursue it, particularly when testing is so expensive.
“They’d established the concept in the mind of both the authorities and the public that there are these differences and therefore they are to be expected. But not a factor of 40, or whatever they’ve found,” Honnery said.
“I guess the way to make sure this doesn’t happen again is to say, if it happens again, the fines will be ten times what they are now. If this can happen to VW, it can happen to anybody. I’m bewildered that a person or group of people in a company like that thought that this was a good idea.”
Photo:FreeImages.com/Daria Schulte