Volkswagen’s 'Dieselgate' scandal shook the German automaker to its core and, even some 2 (and a bit) years later, it still remains fresh for many employees and how it generally conducts business, especially in the United States where much of the blowback was concentrated.
In a new and somewhat ridiculous sounding twist, VW has had to issue a public statement apologising for funding and steering a 2014 study to measure the effects of diesel fumes by exposing them to monkeys. Of course, the hypothesis they were out to prove was that the modern diesel engines do not emit nearly as much harmful exhaust gases compared those of generations prior.
These findings were uncovered by the New York Times, published over the weekend, that described how the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based firm were financed via a lobby group co-helmed by other automakers including Daimler, BMW, and parts supplier Robert Bosch GmbH. Volkswagen, however, reportedly took the lead on this particular study by the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute.
“We apologise for the misconduct and the lack of judgment of individuals,” Wolfsburg, Germany-based VW said in a statement. “We’re convinced the scientific methods chosen then were wrong. It would have been better to do without such a study in the first place.”
According to transcripts seen by the Times that were brought to light as part of a lawsuit brought forward by a collection of Volkswagen owners in America, Lovelace’s overseeing scientist Jake McDonald said he did not know that Volkswagen Beetle used in the 2014 test was equipped with the infamous ‘defeat devices’.
As a refresher, these used software to determine when the car was being tested for emissions levels to deliberately ‘crank up’ controls to inhibit the production of nitrogen oxide at the expense of other parameters such as power and torque. This would allow the car to easily pass emissions tests by producing a fraction of the amount of pollution it would during normal driving.
The Volkswagen Beetle would be rigged to run on special rollers to simulate typical operation, whereupon the exhausts gases would be channeled from the tailpipes, diluted, then fed into chambers with said monkeys, which would have been shown cartoons to keep them distracted.
Lovelace Research never managed to produce enough data for a clear finding and thus failed to deliver a publishable paper in Volkswagen’s interest.
