Answer the each question from case below the questions

1. Why would governments allow car companies(or air craft manufacturers or the food industry, or financial services...)to regulate themselves, their emissions in this case (look into lobbying)?

2. Why were the car companies cheating to begin with? What was the alternative?

3. Other than VW, Peugot, and Renault, were any other car companies involved in unethical behaviour regarding diesel emissions?

4. What is the "Moral of dieselgate"?

5. In the end, whose responsibility was/is it to make sure the "cheating" car companies pay the full price for unethical behaviour? How can this be done?

6. Will or can financial penalties and lawsuits change unethical corporate behaviour?

#DIESELGATE: HOW THE CAR INDUSTRY LIED TO US ALL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qljVjLnLBgM&list=WL&index=1

It's the biggest scandal in German industrial history: For more than ten years, automobile manufacturers and suppliers working for lots of different companies lied to consumers and authorities by deliberately manipulating the exhaust emissions of their vehicles. With catastrophic consequences: Almost 20 million car owners worldwide were cheated. The reputation of Germany's car industry is ruined. And the consequences for human health and the environment are immense. In this investigative documentary, industry insiders reveal that this is the logical consequence of a culture of profit maximization at the expense of morality, decency and legality.

The background of the diesel scandal - how Germany's carmakers and their suppliers deliberately developed illegal defeat devices, exploited legal loopholes and lied to consumers and control authorities for decades - is breath-taking. The main protagonists of our film are whistle-blowers fighting against powerful car bosses. An ex-engineer, an ex-manager, a lawyer - they all break their silence for the first time in front of the camera to reveal the criminal activities in Germany's car industry.

We closely follow our protagonists and accompany them in their often very personal fight against injustice and cover-ups. The film concentrates on their personal accounts and interweaves news reports and official statements, and thus exposes the discrepancy between what we were lead to believe and what really happened.

TheVolkswagen emissions scandal, sometimes known asDieselgate,began in September 2015, when theUnited States Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) issued a notice of violation of theClean Air Actto German automakerVolkswagen Group.^[26]The agency had found that Volkswagen had intentionally programmedturbocharged direct injection(TDI)diesel enginesto activate theiremissionscontrols only during laboratoryemissions testing, which caused the vehicles'NO_xoutput to meet US standards during regulatory testing. However, the vehicles emitted up to 40 times moreNO_xin real-world driving.^[27]Volkswagen deployed this software in about 11 million cars worldwide, including 500,000 in the United States, inmodel years2009 through 2015.

Introduction

In 2013, theInternational Council on Clean Transportation(ICCT) commissioned theWest Virginia UniversityCenter for Alternative Fuels Engines and Emissions (WVU CAFEE) to test on-road emissions of diesel cars sold in the U.S. Researchers at WVU CAFEE, who conducted live road tests in California using a Japanese on-board emission testing system, detected additionalnitrogen oxide(NO_x) emissions from two out of three tested vehicles, both made by Volkswagen. May 2014, ICCT published WVU CAFEE's findings and reported them to theCalifornia Air Resources Board(CARB) and theUnited States Environmental Protection Agency(EPA).

In September 2015, the EPA announced that Volkswagen had violated theClean Air Actby installing illegal software into their diesel vehicles. Regulators in multiple countries began to investigate the automaker,and its stock price fell in value by a third in the days immediately after the news. Volkswagen Group CEOMartin Winterkornresigned, and the head of brand development Heinz-Jakob Neusser,Audiresearch and development head Ulrich Hackenberg, andPorscheresearch and development head Wolfgang Hatz were suspended.Volkswagen announced plans in April 2016 to spend 16.2 billion (US$18.32 billionat April 2016 exchange rates) in relation to the scandal,and agreed in June 2016 to pay up to $14.7 billion to settle civil charges in the United States.In January 2017, Volkswagen pleaded guilty to criminal charges and signed an agreed Statement of Facts, which set out how the company's management asked engineers to develop thedefeat devices, because its diesel models could not pass US emissions tests without them, and deliberately sought to conceal their use.In April 2017, a US federal judge ordered Volkswagen to pay a $2.8 billion criminal fine for "rigging diesel-powered vehicles to cheat on government emissions tests".Winterkorn was charged in the United States with fraud and conspiracy on 3 May 2018.As of 1June2020, the scandal had cost VW $33.3 billion in fines, penalties, financial settlements and buyback costs.Various government and civil actions are currently undergoing in the U.S., as well as the European Union, where most of the affected vehicles are located; while they remain legal to drive there, consumers groups and governments seek to make sure Volkswagen has compensated these owners appropriately as they had to do in the United States.

The scandal raised awareness over the higher levels of pollution emitted by all diesel-powered vehicles from a wide range of car makers, which under real-world driving conditions exceeded legal emission limits. A study conducted by ICCT andADACshowed the biggest deviations fromVolvo,Renault,Jeep,Hyundai,CitronandFiat,resulting in investigations opening into otherdiesel emissions scandals. A discussion was sparked on the topic of software-controlled machinery being generally prone to cheating, and a way out would be toopen sourcethe software for public scrutiny.

NO_xand Volkswagen Diesel anti-pollution system

In general,diesel engineshave betterfuel efficiencyand lesscarbon dioxide(CO₂) emission thanpetrol engines, but they emit 20 times morenitrogen oxide(NO_x) unless somehow treated, andcatalytic converters, which have been very effective at reducingNO_xin petrol engine exhaust, do not function well for them.AsNO_xare harmfulair pollutants, regulators in the United States and Europe has implemented increasingly stringentNO_xemission standardsfor passenger cars since the early 2000s.

To deal with this problem, in 2005 Volkswagen licensedMercedes' urea-based"selective catalytic reduction (SCR)"system calledBlueTecfor future diesel engine development.While effective at reducingNO_x, an SCR system like Bluetec was expensive, high-maintenance and required more space than other methods, making it unsuitable for Volkswagen's compact cars such asGolforJetta.Some managers at Volkswagen rejected BlueTec, and preferred to develop their own inexpensive "leanNO_xtrap" system.In 2007, Volkswagen canceled the licensing deal for BlueTec and announced that it would use its own pollution control technology.

Volkswagen chose the "leanNO_xtrap" system for its turbo-diesel Golf and Jetta models, but the solution did not work well as it required a fuel-rich exhaust gas in the purification process and fuel economy suffered as a result.Nonetheless, the company promoted the technological miracle of fast, cheap, and green diesel vehicles - but the impression projected to outsiders did not reflect the reality.In reality, the system failed to combine lower fuel consumption with compliantNO_xemissions, and Volkswagen chose around 2006to program theEngine Control Unit(ECU) to switch from lower fuel consumption and highNO_xemissions to low-emission compliant mode when it detected an emissions test, particularly for theEA 189engine.This caused the engine to emitNO_xlevels above limits in daily operation, but comply with USNO_xstandards when being tested, constituting adefeat device.In 2015 the news magazineDer Spiegelreported that at least 30 people at management level in Volkswagen knew about the deceit for years, which Volkswagen denied in 2015.

Starting in the 2009model year, Volkswagen Group began migrating its light-duty passenger vehicle'sturbocharged direct injection (TDI)diesel engines to acommon-rail fuel injectionsystem. This system allows for higher-precision fuel delivery using electronically controlledfuel injectorsand higher injection pressure, theoretically leading to better fuelatomization, betterair/fuel ratiocontrol, and by extension, better control ofemissions.

Volkswagen described the diesel engines as being as clean as or cleaner thanUS and Californian requirements, while providing goodfuel economyand performance.Due to the good fuel economy provided by its diesel fleet, in 2014 Volkswagen was registered with an impressiveCorporate Average Fuel Economy(CAFE) of 34mpg_US(6.9L/100km; 41mpg_imp).The low emissions levels of Volkswagen vehicles tested with the defeat device in operation enabled the company to receivegreen carsubsidies and tax exemptions in the US.

Underlying U.S. and EU emission standards[edit]

The Volkswagen and Audi cars identified as violators had been certified to meet either the US EPA Tier 2 / Bin 5 emissions standard or the California LEV-II ULEV standard.Either standard requires that nitrogen oxide emissions not exceed 0.043 grams per kilometre (0.07g/mi) for engines at full useful life which is defined as either 190,000 kilometres (120,000mi) or 240,000 kilometres (150,000mi) depending on the vehicle and optional certification choices.

This standard for nitrogen oxide emissions is among the most stringent in the world. For comparison, the contemporaryEuropean standardsknown as Euro 5 (2008 "EU5 compliant",2009-2014 models) and Euro 6 (2015 models) only limit nitrogen oxide emissions to 0.18 grams per kilometre (0.29g/mi) and 0.08 grams per kilometre (0.13g/mi) respectively.Defeat devices are forbidden in the EU.The use of a defeat device is subject to a penalty.

Early warnings 1998-[edit]

In 1998, a Swedish researcher criticized theNew European Driving Cyclestandard for allowing large emission differences between test and reality.The Washington Postalso reported that in the late 1990s, EPA engineers at Virginia Testing Laboratory had built a system called ROVER, designed to test a car's emissions on the road. The project was shut down in 2001, despite preliminary tests indicating gaps between emissions from lab tests and real world tests of about 10 to 20 percent.

In 2011, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre published a report which found the average on-roadNO_xemission of all tested diesel vehicles to be 0.93 0.39 g/km, and that of testedEuro 5diesel vehicles to be 0.62 0.19 g/km.Those numbers substantially exceeded the respective Euro 3-5 emission limit.In 2013, the research center then warned:

Sensors and electronic components in modern light-duty vehicles are capable of 'detecting' the start of an emissions test in the laboratory (e.g., based on acceleration sensors or not-driven/not-rotating wheels). Some vehicle functions may only be operational in the laboratory, if a predefined test mode is activated. Detecting emissions tests is problematic from the perspective of emissions legislation, because it may enable the use of defeat devices that activate, modulate, delay, or deactivate emissions control systems with the purpose of either enhancing the effectiveness of these systems during emissions testing or reducing the effectiveness of these systems under normal vehicle operation and use. While the use of defeat devices is generally prohibited, exceptions exist in cases where it is necessary to protect the engine against damage and to ensure safe vehicle operation (EC, 2007). These exceptions leave room for interpretation and provide scope, together with the currently applied test procedure, for tailoring the emissions performance [...].

The European Commission and European governments could not agree upon who was responsible for taking action.In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport received a report from theInternational Council on Clean Transportation(ICCT) in October 2014, which stated there was a "real world nitrogen oxides compliance issue" with diesel passenger cars.The UK's DEFRA research indicated a significant reduction inNO_xand particulate matter from 1983 to 2014. Respirable suspended particles with a diameter of 10 micrometres - also known asPM₁₀(including diesel particulates) - halved since 1996 despite the increased number and size of diesel cars in the UK.

EPA Notice of Violation, 2015[edit]

On 18 September 2015, the US EPA served a Notice of Violation (NOV) of theClean Air Acton Volkswagen Group alleging that Volkswagen and Audi automobiles equipped with 2-litre TDI diesel engines, and sold in the US between 2009 and 2015, had an emissions-compliance "defeat device" installed, and ordered a recall of 482,000 vehicles.A Notice of Violation is a notification to the recipient that the EPA believes it has committed violations and is not a final determination of liability.

Volkswagen's "defeat device" is specially-writtenengine-management-unitfirmwarethat detects "the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's operation, and barometric pressure"when positioned on adynamometerusing theFTP-75test schedule.These criteria very closely match the EPA's required emissions testing protocolwhich allowed the vehicle to comply with emissions regulations by properly activating all emissions control during testing. The EPA's NOV alleged that under normal driving conditions, the software suppressed the emissions controls, allowing better fuel economy, at the expense of emitting up to 40 times morenitrogen oxidesthan allowed by law.