Non-fiction · 2005–2025

Volkswagen Dieselgate

What the cars did on the road, what VW told regulators, and when the world found out

From about 2006, Volkswagen engineers built software that let its U.S. diesel cars recognise emissions tests and run clean only then; on the road they emitted up to 40 times the permitted nitrogen oxides. Some 590,000 'clean diesel' cars were sold in the U.S. A 2014 road study by West Virginia University for the ICCT exposed the gap, and for about 18 months VW gave regulators technical explanations and a recall presented as a fix. It admitted the defeat device to EPA and CARB on September 3, 2015; the public learned on September 18. VW pleaded guilty in the U.S. in 2017, two employees were imprisoned, and cases against executives in the U.S. and Germany followed.