A slap on the wrist and business as usual I would have thought. Can't be seen to be punishing the 'wealth creators'.

I bet whoever did it they thought they were doing nothing particularly wrong.



These engine management systems are constantly monitoring they way the car is being driven and altering the way the engine works including things like how much fuel is injected. They will have the engine behaving differently when it is idling then when tanking down the motorway and they always aim to have the engine be at its most efficient for how the car is bing driven.



Altering the behaviour when sat on a rolling road will just have been another mode of operation to some software engineer to program.



What is interesting is who specified the software to do this and why none for the people involved questioned if this was an acceptable mode of operation. It will have been specified, the spec reviewed, coded ,code reviewed, QA people involved the works as it was developed.

Ah but German wealth creators, not American ones. So expect the full reach of the U.S. state agencies to flex their muscles.



And, of course, VW doesn't contribute anywhere near as much to politicians campaigns and parties in the U.S. as others do and have a far bigger union presence. So the crackdown on this cheating, lying socialist organisation will be swift and harsh.

I'm only surprised that people are surprised this has happened. Time will tell but when spot checks are done on other manufacturers' vehicles, we'll probably find that all, to varying degrees, have similar defeat software in their ECUs.



Some USVW execs will probably face jail time because unlike our fawning corporate laws, criminality does not have to come from board level down to be liable. The US EPA is also a very powerful organisation and takes breaches like this very seriously.



Around 15 years ago, I was involved in the vehicle emissions industry and assisted one major truck manufacturer in obtaining a Reduced Pollution Certificate to gain a reduction in VED. The RPC was introduced to encourage early adoption of the next stage of Euro particulate emissions legislation or the fitting of exhaust particulate traps. Particulate was measured by mass and by fitting a simple flow-through catalyst, I could reduce the particulate mass by over 10%, enough to gain RPC. The catalyst did not reduce any soot, all it did was reform the hydrocarbons that agglomerated to the carbon to water and CO2. Definitely not within the spirit of the law but way within the letter of the law

I suppose we can all look forward to a whole new set of marketing calls -have you been missold TDI ?

As it seems that EU and UK politicians (among others) were (allegedly) aware of all this it shows the hypocrisy at both political and business level in exploiting "green" concerns. I always take the attitude that most businesses who promote their green credentials are shysters and this scandal supports my prejudice. IMO he Germans promote a green political agenda via their EU power to benefit German manufactures - eg wind turbine makers and I guess via this scandal? So lets have a few politicians as well as VW employees facing the music (it ain't going to happen).

Whereas we have a government that pre-2010 were promoting themselves as the greenest ever. While in partnership with the LimpDems, they were restrained from ditching their superficial environmental credentials entirely.



Since May, they have had no such restrictions and have gone balls-out to show just what they really think of the environment. This is epitomised by that economic illiterate Osborne's decision in July to tax cleaan power stations at the same rate as dirty ones. That decision led to DRAX losing 1/3 of its value and the cvompany announcing that it was withdrawing from developing Carbon Capture & Sequestration technologies.



Green tories my 'arris

Meanwhile back in the good ol' US of States, GM have announced the specs for the 2016 Chevrolet Silverado, the country's second best selling pick up truck. You can either have it with a modest 6 litre Vortec V8 or a slightly bigger 6.6 litre Duramax V8 turbo diesel.

They are ALL cheating the regulations. As is usual with high-profile cases involving the state vs a major international corporation - the alleged infringement is insignificant next to the politics surrounding it.



No different to the EU's incessant targeting of IT companies such as Microsoft and Google.



No one seriously believes the EU is motivated primarily by the customer's interests. It's all politics.

Pick up trucks rule in the USA. They could run on uranium and spew weapons grade plutonium from the exhaust and it would be legal.

The latest ford focus runs with 5 times the maximum NOx, compare that with the shady VW golf (2013 flavour) which was only 4 times more, the golf also achieved much closer to its stated mpg www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34425306 As above, they're all at it, just that one got caught and will of course be made to pay big time whilst the others will get off relatively Scot-free if punished at all. It's all massive red herring with regard to pollution anyway, getting people out of cars and walking/cycling more with less use of motorvehicles should be the goal.

The latest ford focus runs with 5 times the maximum NOx, compare that with the shady VW golf (2013 flavour) which was only 4 times more, the golf also achieved much closer to its stated mpg www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34425306 As above, they're all at it, just that one got caught and will of course be made to pay big time whilst the others will get off relatively Scot-free if punished at all. It's all massive red herring with regard to pollution anyway, getting people out of cars and walking/cycling more with less use of motorvehicles should be the goal.

Quote knockersbumpMKII="knockersbumpMKII" It's all massive red herring with regard to pollution anyway, getting people out of cars and walking/cycling more with less use of motorvehicles should be the goal.'" Vehicle usage is largely irrelevant compared to veganism vs meat eating freakonomics.com/2011/11/16/agno ... -not-cows/ and that's without factoring in extra calories to be consumed if replacing motorised transport with physical effort.

Quote knockersbumpMKII="knockersbumpMKII" It's all massive red herring with regard to pollution anyway, getting people out of cars and walking/cycling more with less use of motorvehicles should be the goal.'" Vehicle usage is largely irrelevant compared to veganism vs meat eating freakonomics.com/2011/11/16/agno ... -not-cows/ and that's without factoring in extra calories to be consumed if replacing motorised transport with physical effort.