Brussels, 04/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 3 November, the Volkswagen group revealed that in addition to falsification of nitrous oxide (NOX) emissions, it had also cheated on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2).
The fraud may have affected at least 800,000 more vehicles and, for the first time, included petrol-fuelled cars, which represents an additional cost of €2 billion for the German group, in addition to the €7.3 billion already accounted for, mainly used for recalling the vehicles.
In a press release, the group indicated that it would do everything possible to rectify these irregularities and re-establish trust and stated “The Supervisory Board is deeply concerned by the discovery of irregularities found when determining CO2 levels for the type approval of Volkswagen Group vehicles”.
These most recent developments do not come as any surprise. In September, the Transport & Environment (T&E) organisation published a study illustrating that there was an increasingly sharp disparity emerging between the CO2 emissions tests carried out in the laboratory and those in real driving conditions (see EUROPE 11399). Greg Archer from the T&E said that the initial revelations about the fraudulent practices carried out by Volkswagen and updated in September were only the “tip of the iceberg” which had not yet completely emerged. He also pointed out that much suspicion now surrounded Seat, Audi, and Porsche, the top three brands belonging to the emblematic German group as well as Opel. He also believed that this scandal also highlighted the failure of the national inspection authorities, particularly those in Germany, and that they should subsequently create a European authority in charge of inspections, which would head the activities carried out by the national authorities and follow up on the test procedures to ensure that they were doing their job.
Lucia Caudet, the spokesperson for the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Industry, stated “clarifying the facts is what counts. We are calling on Volkswagen to speed up the internal investigations. We have to know exactly what irregularities were found, which cars were affected, where the cars affected can be found and what the group intends to do to change matters”. The question involving what progress has been made in the investigation carried out by the German Federal Office for Certified Motor Vehicles (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt - KBA) will be tackled on Thursday 5 November, during a visit to Berlin by the Commissioner for Industry.
Although the UN Climate Conference in Paris (COP 21) is fast approaching, the spokeswoman argued that the falsification of CO2 emissions would not affect the EU forecasts at all on greenhouse gas emissions up to 2020. She welcomed the fact that they were even “expected to surpass them”. Greg Archer claimed that it was still entirely possible to meet these targets, given that they still had just over four years but that to do this, the car manufacturers would have to introduce new technologies as soon as possible.
These recent revelations have come to light less than a day after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a second infringement recommendation against the German group for also having cheated with its high-end range of cars (see EUROPE 11423). Karima Delli MEP (Greens/EFA, France) said that now was the time to launch a wide-ranging “clean hands” operation and that she was “extremely shocked to discover that while the US authorities are carrying out their work to protect the health of Americans, the national authorities and the European Commission mainly appear interested in covering up the fraudulent action carried out by their own manufacturers”.
There is nothing new about the CO2 emissions irregularities. Even as early as last year, the Korean car manufacturers Hyundai and Kia were fined $300 million for having tampered with the consumption levels of around 1.2 million vehicles. This also followed an investigation carried out by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to the New York Times. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)