Dieselgate: new alert on 19 million vehicles in Europe

A sense of deja vu. Nineteen million diesel vehicles driving in Europe would present “suspicious” levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, alerted, Wednesday March 22, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), an environmental NGO. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has recently rendered several judgments deeming illegal software fitted to diesel vehicles. This “defeat device”, revealed during Dieselgate in 2015, systematically improves the performance of the polluting gas control system during homologation procedures.

What are we talking about ?

“These excessive emissions indicate the likely use of an engine calibration strategy which can now be classified as a prohibited defeat device based on recent rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU),” deciphers the NGO. This pollution control device is used to control the purification of exhaust gases from diesel vehicles according to the outside temperature. The NOx emissions filtration system is reduced or deactivated when temperatures are too low and above a certain altitude. Automakers have always maintained that it was necessary to protect the engine.

For their part, environmental organizations see in this software a bypass system intended to make polluting emissions appear lower in test conditions than they are in real road traffic. To compile this report, the ICCT analyzed three sources of NOx emissions data: laboratory and field test data provided by governmental authorities, field test data produced by independent organizations and an extensive database of remote sensing measurements.

How many cars are affected?

“Suspicious levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions were found in at least 77% of tests carried out on diesel cars in Europe,” notes the American NGO. Of the 53 million diesel cars sold in the EU and the UK between 2009 and 2019, 24 million vehicles produced – 19 million are still running, including 3.3 million in France – had “suspicious” emissions compared to CJEU decisions, according to the ICCT. Sixteen million vehicles even display levels of emissions qualified as “extreme” (three or four times the official limit).

These excessive emissions indicate the “probable use” of a prohibited engine calibration strategy. The 19 million suspect vehicles, of 200 models, were sold by many manufacturers under the Euro 5 and Euro 6 standards. On Twitter, the ICCT recalls that NOx is “a dangerous atmospheric pollutant which poses a significant risk to the human health. #Air pollution.” Who are the bad students? In the graphs of the report, we can observe the names of two French manufacturers, Renault and Peugeot, both indicted in the French part of the case. Among the other brands: there is Volkswagen, BMW or Daimler.

What will happen next?

The NGOs ClientEarth, France Nature Environnement (FNE) and Consumption Housing Framework of Life (CLCV) announced on Wednesday that they had seized the authorities in France, Germany and the United Kingdom for builders to contribute to a fund aimed at reducing pollution from to road transport. Several manufacturers such as Fiat-Chrysler and PSA (now Stellantis) and Renault have since been in the sights of justice. The CJEU delivered an important decision on Tuesday on a similar technique, that of “thermal windows”, which makes it possible to control the purification of exhaust gases from diesel vehicles according to the outside temperature. Their owners can, according to her, claim damages from the builders.

What is the legacy of Dieselgate in 2015?

The “Dieselgate” broke out in September 2015 and destabilized the entire automotive sector. In this rigged engine scandal, Volkswagen has admitted to tampering with 11 million cars to display lower than actual emission levels. “Since then, official test programs have shown that hundreds of other vehicle models from almost every major automaker emit extremely high levels of pollution under real-world conditions,” the quote says.ClientEarth NGO.

Despite the series of rulings by Europe’s highest court, “little has been done by the EU and UK governments to address the full extent of the problem highlighted by Dieselgate and, in many cases , automakers have not been sanctioned or held accountable for providing effective solutions,” continues the NGO ClientEarth.