Volkswagen Dieselgate

The software knew when it was being tested, and ran clean only then. 11 million cars.

The fifth quadrant, where the thing was never real. The tell is that the story is too clean.

Room: Q-F Fraud
Year: 2015
Impact: $33.3B
Sector: Automotive
Region: Europe
Category: Environmental

Why this room

The compliance result was manufactured rather than achieved. The engine-management software detected the conditions of an official emissions test and enabled full NOx after-treatment only under those conditions; in normal driving the controls were reduced and on-road emissions reached up to 40 times the US standard. The certification data on which regulators, buyers and investors relied therefore described an operating mode the vehicle did not run in on the road. The diagnostic tell is the cleanliness of the record: the cars passed consistently, and passed only where they were watched. Nothing failed and was then covered up, because there was nothing there to fail. That is qf.

The record

Volkswagen itself announced (ad-hoc release, 22 September 2015) that around 11 million vehicles worldwide fitted with the type EA 189 diesel engine were affected. This is a company-stated worldwide figure, not an independently audited count.certain
On-road NOx emissions from the affected vehicles were up to 40 times greater than the US standard; the EPA's 18 September 2015 notice of violation covered roughly 499,000 2.0-litre diesel passenger cars sold in the United States.certain
In the June 2016 US settlement VW agreed to spend up to $14.7 billion: up to $10.03 billion in buybacks, lease terminations and consumer compensation for nearly 500,000 model-year 2009-2015 2.0-litre vehicles, plus $4.7 billion for pollution mitigation and green vehicle technology.certain
In January 2017 Volkswagen AG agreed to plead guilty to three criminal felony counts and pay $4.3 billion: a $2.8 billion criminal penalty plus $1.5 billion in civil resolutions, covering approximately 590,000 US diesel vehicles.certain
The cumulative GLOBAL cost of the scandal in fines, penalties, settlements and buyback costs reached approximately $33.3 billion by mid-2020 (press tally, not a single official figure).medium

Sources

The book

This entry is one of 111 in the register. The full story, and what it cost the people who lived it, is in Risky Business by Claudia Zeisberger, David Munro and Joanna Reijgersberg-Siew.

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