DAS AUTO - THE CAR THAT CHEATS!
By Ruma Dubey
Das Auto!
Surely THE CAR in news is Volkswagen. India hoodwinking norms, be it pollution or construction or any quality; nah, that is no new news at all! But a German auto maker, that too with a reputation as high as Volkswagen (VW) actually lying and cheating, that too in USA is simply too shocking. It just goes on to show that no one, simply no one is above greed!
So how has VW been cheating? Since 2009, VW installed an elaborate software in each and every clean diesel car that it sold. How this worked was that when the car was plugged in for testing pollution control, only then, the cars pollution control actually worked and the rest of the time, it continued spewing harmful gases into the air. Thus each and every lab testing result, VW came out smelling of roses but in the real-world, it was like a dragon emitting hazardous , smog-forming nitrogen oxides. Since 2009, Volkswagen has sold more than 482,000 clean diesel cars containing a four-cylinder turbocharged direct injection engine, which included versions of the Passat, Jetta, Golf, Beetle, and Audi's A3 – all entry level cars. They were sold as clean diesel vehicles giving great performance when actually they were all harmful.
VW today faces criminal charges in the USA and if penalized, it might have to cough up almost $18 billion only in fines, not to mention what it might to pay up on recalls and to the dealers. VW had closed 2014 with a net profit of US$4 billion and that brings into perspective the magnanimity of VWs problems.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not unearth this scam. It was actually an independent agency which found out how VW was cheating. This agency - International Council on Clean Transportation, wanted to find out why these models of VW had such a wide discrepancy between lab tested and real-road performances in Europe. They worked with researchers in USA and what they found was, needless to say, jaw dropping. Most of these models were spewing 5-30 times more nitrogen oxide on the road than what was permissible while in the labs, they were within the norms. EPA ordered VW to investigate and fix the problem and VW said that it had fixed it. But the same discrepancy continued. And it is then that the EPA felt that there could be something much darker lurking inside than what was shown. They started grilling the VW engineers and after a lot of pressure, they cracked and admitted to the tampering of software.
So why did a company like VW feel the need to cheat? These models, when fitted to adhere to the US specific norms for nitrogen oxides (this gas causes smog) gave much lesser mileage, shortened the life of the engine and overall put up a poor performance for the cars.
For us in India, those who don’t own a VW, it may come as a cynical relied to know that even the Germans cheat when it comes to quality. And the VW car owners have really got nothing to worry as in India, we do not have any authority like EPA which controls emission norms. We have Central Pollution Control Board, which is supposedly the watchdog but really, it does not do much. So when cars are made, they have to conform to the BS standard but there is neither any strict inspection nor any maintenance programme to test and reduce air pollution once they get onto the roads. Simply put, there is no in-use conformity testing programme, meaning we never know whether they are adhering to the original emission standards.
Yes, we have adopted the Bharat Stage norms, based on the European emission norms but its just that – no authority checks if these norms are indeed being met. It is only by 2017 that the entire country will adopt the BS – IV norm while entire of China already has BS-V.
Thus for us Indians this is not a story to worry at all about if ethical and morality traits of a company do not matter. And its not even listed, so couldn’t care less!