The LSA Alum Who Exposed Volkswagen
Source : http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/ci.thelsaalumwhoexposedvolkswagen_ci.detail
October 5, 2015 | by Elizabeth Wason
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| Image Source : http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/lsa/Home/LSA%20Today/2015/VW_Detail_LEAD.jpg |
Rather than “Das Auto,” Volkswagen might now be better known as "The Fraud." LSA alumnus John German blew the whistle on the automaker. Here, he talks more about what he discovered.
Major automaker Volkswagen got a jolt last month when it received a notice of violation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that outlined deliberate noncompliance with the U.S. Clean Air Act. VW publicly apologized for knowingly installing “defeat devices” on several diesel models of its cars—the software on car computers cheats vehicle emissions tests so that the VWs spew lower levels of pollutants in testing facilities than the cars actually do in the real world. The recent scandal has led to the resignation of VW CEO Martin Winterkorn.
Physics alumnus John German (B.S. ’74) played a major role in uncovering VW’s fraud. German works with the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) as a senior fellow; was Honda America’s manager for environmental energy and analysis; has served as a member of the Ann Arbor Environmental Commission; and was a senior automotive technical advisor for the EPA. He helped conduct the experiments that showed suspicious differences between VW vehicle emissions test results in certified facilities and VW emissions measured under actual driving conditions on the road.
LSA got in touch with German to get his perspective on what went wrong with VW.
What happened?
John German: It all started when we set up an experiment to verify that clean diesel cars actually can be practical to make, sell, and drive. We expected that diesel cars in the United States would be clean, given its stricter emission standards and regulatory agencies with more legal authority and expertise in compliance than anywhere else in the world. We thought it would have a positive impact on car markets in Europe if we could show that the technology could produce low enough emissions here in the United States.
But we ended up finding the opposite. The VW diesels we tested on the road in California were up to 35 times dirtier than we expected, 35 times dirtier than allowed by U.S. law, and 35 times dirtier than VW advertised.
When you buy a passenger vehicle, it’s been certified as meeting emissions standards based on measurements made in laboratory conditions, in emissions testing facilities. Our study, a collaboration between the ICCT and West Virginia University, was part of an ongoing analysis begun in Europe in 2012. It showed that the NOx [nitrogen oxide] emissions from the VW vehicles were higher than expected in the real world, even during routine driving.
It just didn’t make sense. That was the real red flag for us.
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