Government
The Study That Brought Down Volkswagen
A closer look at the West Virginia report at the center of the VW emissions scandal.
Volkswagen’s dirty little secret got out last week: the auto giant rigged its diesel cars with a defeat device that reduced pollution during official emissions testing but relaxed on real roads to improve driving performance. But the details at the heart of the news have been openly available since May 2014. That’s when West Virginia researchers reported the results of tests exposing the high rates of NOx emissions in two VW models.
Reuters spoke with Daniel Carder, a member of the research team, about the $50,000 study that could (and should) end up costing the world’s biggest carmaker billions: