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Michael Taylor6 Oct 2015
NEWS

Dieselgate: Volkswagen forced to cheat

Underperforming new diesel engine family led to German giant's emission deception, claims report

Disappointing results from a billion-dollar new engine family forced the Volkswagen Group to cheat on its emissions tests, the New York Times has claimed.

The newspaper claims Volkswagen engineers understood in 2008 that the all-new EA189 engine family, which took years to develop, could not meet the US Environmental Protection Agency NOx emissions limits.

Instead of taking them offline to re-engineer the 1.6- and 2.0-litre engines to meet the standards, the newspaper claimed Volkswagen managers decided on the “defeat” code software cheat instead.

The result was Dieselgate, which incoming Volkswagen Supervisory Board chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch has called an “existence-threatening crisis for the company”.

He admitted the collapse of the share price could see a downgrade in Volkswagen’s credit rating, making borrowing more expensive. While an insider said cuts were planned to Volkswagen’s scheduled €100 billion in investments, none of its eight car brands were being offered for sale.

The cheat code, which reacted to being driven in a way that overlapped with laboratory conditions, switched on the engine’s full emissions-cleaning tools, but at the cost of some horsepower, torque and added fuel consumption.

Otherwise, as an independent test performed by the University of West Virginia found, it would emit 10 to 35 times the legal amount of oxides of nitrogen when being driven in a real-world test.

Sources said that without the defeat code, the EA189 motors could never have met the US’s 70mg/km limit for oxides of nitrogen, which was a 90 per cent cut on the previous level in an attempt to clean up urban air quality.

Volkswagen still cannot categorically say whether the code was used to defeat the UE5 emissions standard of 180mg/km, but insists it was not used on V6 diesel engines. It was also not relevant to petrol-powered Volkswagens.

While it’s yet to be revealed who made the decision to use the Dieselgate cheat code in its production cars, Volkswagen has had to take them offline after all, with the German government giving it until tomorrow (Wednesday) to present it with a recall schedule and proof that it will reduce the EA189 emissions to legal standards.

Volkswagen’s Supervisory Board has scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday, when it is expected to reveal details of its recall for cars that include the Audi A3, A4, A5, A6, TT, Q3 and Q5, Volkswagen’s Tiguan, Touran, Jetta, Passat, Golf, the Seat Leon and Alhambra and the Skoda Superb and Octavia.

The crisis, which has engulfed 11 million owners worldwide, has seen Volkswagen focus its attention on an internal investigation while leaving customers and legislators around the world waiting for answers.

“We are working intensively to clarify what occurred,” a Volkswagen spokesman said. “Thoroughness comes before speed. We will provide information as soon as we have the facts.”

Volkswagen is expected to release preliminary results of the internal investigation later this week, though it refuses to reveal the reasons why its three most senior engineers were suspended in the first public week of the crisis.

Those suspended included Dr Ulrich Hackenberg, who was head of development for Volkswagen between 2007 and 2013, though he is known more as a chassis architectures, dynamics and quality expert than an engine developer.

The others were Wolfgang Hatz, who was the head of engines and transmissions for the Volkswagen Group (though is known as a petrol engine specialist), and Volkswagen’s current head of development, Heinz-Jakob Neusser.

Documents obtained by German newspapers show Volkswagen was warned by both Robert Bosch, which supplied the EDC 16 engine management computers for the 2.0-litre turbo-diesel EA189s, and Continental, which supplied parts for the 1.6-litre versions, that the defeat code would be illegal under both EU and US law if applied to production cars.

It is believed that any recall on the 2.0-litre engines will require a reflash of the software for the engine management computer, but an earlier code rewrite failed to fix the problem when Volkswagen recalled almost 500,000 cars in the US in December last year.

Sources at Volkswagen insist, however, that 1.6-litre versions of the motor will require both software and additional hardware changes as part of the recall.

“The software we delivered cannot be used to manipulate emissions test results,” said a statement from Continental, which also supplied the EA189’s fuel pumps and fuel injectors.

The Hanover-based supplier went on to insist Volkswagen was responsible for the configuration and installation of the software.

Volkswagen’s share price continues to tumble, losing 40 per cent of its pre-crisis value, trading at €93.52 overnight.

Dieselgate related reading:

VW Australia suspends sales

Huge recall planned, other brands hit

Audis affected top two million

Germany probes Winterkorn

ACCC issues statement on VW emissions saga

Bosch says VW knew

Müller locked in as Volkswagen CEO

Euro governments probe VW

More VW engines implicated

Knives come out at Volkswagen

BMW forced to deny emissions rigging

Euro VWs ‘are affected’

VW exec bloodbath continues

Volkswagen boss quits

Volkswagen boss Winterkorn to go as crisis spreads

Dieselgate worsens, 11m vehicles could be affected

Dieselgate could cost VW CEO his job

US EPA issues Volkswagen with a warning

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Written byMichael Taylor
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