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EPA Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including In a Porsche (nytimes.com)
schwit1 writes with this news from the Times that Volkswagen's emissions scandal just expanded to include more expensive vehicles with larger diesel engines, including Porsche, and Audi sport-utility vehicles. According to the article: "The Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that it had discovered emissions-cheating software on more Volkswagen and Audi cars than previously disclosed and, for the first time, also found the illegal software in one of the carmaker's high-end Porsche models. The German carmaker disputed the claims, however, saying it had not installed defeat software on the models in question that would 'alter emissions characteristics in a forbidden manner.' The company pledged in a short statement that it would cooperate with the E.P.A. 'to clarify the matter in its entirety.' The latest findings by environmental regulators put significant new pressure on Volkswagen and its new chief executive, Matthias Müller, who was previously the head of Volkswagen's Porsche division. E.P.A. officials indicated the latest violations were found during testing performed by federal regulators and their counterparts in California and Canada. The implication is that Volkswagen did not provide the information."
They horse the same engines into many different Skoda, Seat, VW, Audi, Porsche cars. The only thing is not many Porsche cars have TDI Diesel engines, a diesel Porsche kind of defeats the purpose unless you just like to be seen going around in a piece of pressed metal that has 'Porsche' written on the exterior instead of 'Skoda'
Investigations (PDF) by the ICCT, the organisation that first discovered the VW TDI emission violations, have already shown that the majority of diesel cars on the road today emit many times more NOx when driving in the real world than during the official test regime, often more than the VW engines this scandal is about. So far, only VW has admitted to cheating, but if all those other manufacturers are not cheating I would really like to know what they are doing instead.
The VW touareg and Porsche Cayenne share the same platform, albeit with different a few different parts and tuning (and being built in a different factory). So, why is this a surprise to anyone?