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VW-Feature

Final month, VW announced that it had reached an understanding with German regulators to resolve its NO2 emission problems and would be able to deploy the prepare as a relatively unproblematic update. Solving its issues on this side of the pond, however, has not been and then simple, and now a source shut to the company has indicated that VW, the EPA, and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) have yet to hold on a method to resolve the US problem, Reuters reports.

There are two possible explanations for why VW is having trouble in the US that it isn't facing in Europe. Ane is that European regulators, despite paying lip service to the idea of NOx pollution control, have once once again failed to crave the company to brand meaningful improvements. This isn't equally far-fetched as it might sound — once nosotros started digging into the VW scandal terminal fall, it became credible that pieces of the evidence had been compiled past various sources over the last few years. Information technology was well known that diesel fuel vehicles in Europe, despite advertising make clean diesel applied science, had more-or-less failed to improve actual emissions.

The graph beneath shows the widening gap between Europe'due south supposed diesel emission standards and the reality of real-globe testing. Required results are on the left, actual results are on the right.

NOx-levels

Given VW's prominence, Germany'south importance within the EU, and ongoing economic uncertainty in the worldwide economy, information technology'south possible that regulators chose to give VW an like shooting fish in a barrel out rather than really holding the company's feet to the fire. Public outcry were this to be discovered, however, would probable be severe — dwarfing fifty-fifty the reaction to the initial scandal, which has smashed VW'southward stock price and sent vehicle sales tumbling.

The second possibility is that VW just can't hit United states of america emission targets without drastically overhauling its fleet, and peradventure adding hardware to existing TDI cars that could compromise their design or long-term reliability. The states standards on NOx emissions are considerably tighter than even the recently-introduced Euro-vi emission requirements, equally shown beneath:

DieselEmissions

Diesel emission standards, United states of america vs. Eu.

Under U.s. law, all VW vehicles sold since 2009 were supposed to emit ~0.05g of NOx per km, while European law allowed for well-nigh 0.2g per km. Particulate standards were slightly tighter under the Eu, but not to a pregnant degree. When news of the scandal first broke, some speculated that VW had already solved its emission problems with 2022 and 2022 vehicles, limiting the scope of the problem. We now know that wasn't the example; VW had cheated, even on 2022 vehicles, and had planned to continue using its defeat devices in 2022. That's why the company suspended plans to sell diesel automobiles in the US until the entire state of affairs was resolved to the EPA / CARB's mutual satisfaction.

If these rumors are accurate, VW could face a much higher toll-per-vehicle to bring The states diesels in line with EPA standards — and that's before nosotros gene the US Section of Justice's lawsuit confronting the company. Reports have claimed that VW could face a fine between $48 billion and $90 billion, just this is a drastic inflation of what might actually be assessed. No guess would honour damages that would bankrupt the car manufacturer, and the amount would never stand on appeal, even if one did. That said, VW is almost certainly facing an extremely expensive recall and several billion dollar fine on peak of that. The regime will almost certainly want to ensure that the punishment is larger than the profits VW reaped from lying to US customers and misrepresenting its products.