But that was not how it turned out. They chose a Volkswagen Jetta as their first test subject, and a VW Passat next. It was clear right away that something was off. At first, German wondered if the cars might be malfunctioning, and he asked if a dashboard light had come on. That didn鈥檛 really make sense, though - the cars had just passed the California regulators鈥?test. His partners thought there might be a problem with their equipment, and they recalibrated it again and again. But the results didn鈥檛 change. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution from the Jetta鈥檚 tailpipe was 15 times the allowed limit, shooting up to 35 times under some conditions; the Passat varied between five and 20 times the limit. German had been around the auto industry all his life, so he had a pretty good idea what was going on. This had to be a 鈥渄efeat device鈥?- a deliberate effort to evade the rules.
鈥淚t was just so outrageous. If they were like three to five times the standards, you could say: 鈥極h, maybe they鈥檙e having much higher NOx emissions because of the high loads,鈥欌€?or some other external factor. 鈥淏ut when it鈥檚 15 to 30 times the standards, there is no other explanation,鈥?he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a malfunction or it鈥檚 a defeat device. German wasn鈥檛 ready to level such a serious accusation against a huge company such as Volkswagen, so he kept quiet while the research moved forward. Much later, his boss was surprised to learn how early he had suspected the truth. 鈥淗e said: 鈥榊ou knew there was a defeat device? Why didn鈥檛 you tell me? 鈥欌€?The answer was simple. German and his colleagues pressed ahead with their work and, when the study was finished, they posted it online. That was May 2014. He was still nervous, so the council didn鈥檛 issue a press release, nor did the report name the manufacturer. As a courtesy, he sent a copy to someone he knew at Volkswagen, noting 鈥渂y the way, Vehicles A and B are yours鈥?
German鈥檚 group also forwarded the findings to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California鈥檚 Air Resources Board (Carb). 鈥淲e were definitely scared. We wanted EPA and Carb to take over.鈥?After the results were posted, he would email the agencies now and then. No one replied, and having spent more than 13 years at the EPA himself, he knew what that meant. The regulators were investigating. And while they struggled to determine what was causing the discrepancy between pollution in the lab and on the road, Volkswagen executives quietly debated their next move. After months of foot-dragging, Volkswagen promised to remedy the problem, which it blamed on a technical glitch. It began recalling cars, updating the software in hundreds of thousands of them. Months later, California ran new tests. Emissions were still far over the limit. Now regulators wanted to see the software controlling the vehicles鈥?pollution systems. And they made an extraordinary threat to get it: if Volkswagen did not turn over the code, it would not get the approvals it needed to sell cars in California and a dozen states that used its standards.
The EPA threatened to withhold certification for the entire US market. Dieselgate, as it became known, exploded into one of the biggest corporate scandals in history. Over almost a decade, Volkswagen acknowledged, it had embedded defeat devices in 11m cars, mostly in Europe, but about 600,000 in the US. The software detected when emissions tests were being run, and pollution controls - components inside the engine that reduce emissions, sometimes at the expense of performance or fuel consumption - worked fine under those circumstances. But outside the lab, the controls were switched off or turned way down, and NOx levels shot up as high as 40 times the legal limit. With mind-boggling gall, Volkswagen had even used the software update it was forced to carry out to improve cars鈥?ability to detect when they were being tested. And, as it turned out, Volkswagen wasn鈥檛 the only one evading the law.
Less flagrantly, but to similar effect, the vast majority of diesel cars were making a mockery of emissions rules. In the wake of the revelations in the US, European governments road-tested other big brands too. In the US, where only around 2% of cars are diesel, the rule-breaking had an impact. But the health consequences have been far more severe in Europe, where drivers had been encouraged for years to buy diesel cars - when the scandal broke, they accounted for more than half of all sales. In 2015 alone, one study found that failure to comply with the rules caused 6,800 early deaths. To put it more plainly, tens of thousands of people had died because carmakers felt so free, for so long, to flout the law. Of course, the painful light cast by the scandal didn鈥檛 just expose corporate wrongdoing. It also made visible a failure that is just as distressing. Across Europe, including in Britain, governments responsible for enforcing the law and protecting their people鈥檚 health had utterly neglected to do so.
