Holy Fahrvergnugen !

From Steven Hayward at the Powerline Blog:

News is breaking this morning that Volkswagen’s tampering of emission control software is much larger than the 500,000 or so diesel models reported over the weekend: the true number may be as high as 11 million VWs. Yesterday a spokesperson for the EPA said that VW could be liable for fines as much as $37,000 per vehicle, or $18 billion for the 500,000 or so models then reported to be offending vehicles. If that same scale were used for 11 million scofflaw VWs, the fine could be over $400 billion, which is likely higher than the total market cap of VW, though who can tell as VW stock fell 17 percent yesterday, and is down another 20 percent today on the European bourses. (I wonder: how you say “Government Motors” in German?)
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There are some questions that the media, typically, is not reporting. First, even if the cars run at 40 percent higher emissions than during the phony test phase, are they emitting above the tailpipe standard? No one has reported data that I can see. One news story said that the disparity between on-road performance and the test results meant that southern California—the premier smog basin the nation—would have experienced about 3,000 pounds of additional nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions. That’s not very much. It is possible that “40 times higher emissions” than the bogus test conditions is still a very low rate of emissions, and would otherwise be considered compliant cars. NOx emissions and smog generally continue to fall in Los Angeles and everywhere else in the country. I’ll want to see some real data before making final judgment about the actual air pollution effects of VW’s perfidy.

So why phony-up the test software if an unadulterated model was likely compliant with regulatory standards? Perhaps to collect special subsidies for “super-clean” cars, and be able to market them as “eco” models?

That is the question that has been bothering me about the motivation for VW to try and game the system.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The federal government paid out as much as $51 million in green car subsidies for Volkswagen diesel vehicles based on falsified pollution test results, according to a Times analysis of the federal incentives. . .

The Times analysis matched Internal Revenue Service data with Volkswagen sales figures to determine the value of subsidies VW diesel buyers were eligible to collect in 2009, the first and only year the vehicles qualified. The $1,300 tax credit would have been available to buyers of about 39,500 Jetta and Jetta Sportwagen models that sold that year, according to Motor Intelligence, an industry research firm.

Bingo!

The Feds gave VW an incentive to get low emissions. So, ill conceived government regulations incentivized cheating. The Irony! Especially considering what the EPA is doing regarding human testing of diesel exhaust.