By Staff Reporter
29/09/2015
Four days after the Volkswagen emission scandal broke in the US, VW South Africa has assured that its more than 4 000 local jobs were safe and that plans for expansion would go ahead.
The National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS), which ensures vehicles comply with the necessary standards, including emissions, before being sold in the South African market, says on its website that all VW cars had met the requirements.
Volkswagen, the world’s biggest car maker, has admitted using software known as a defeat device to ensure it passed US testing for nitrogen oxides and said 11 million of its cars had been fitted with it.
The NRCS said it could recall cars if VW was found not to have complied with local emissions measures.
“Should we find out that the tests that were provided to us were non-compliant, that’s when the sanctioning process will have to start,” said Temba Kaula, acting general manager of the automotive sector at the NRCS.
In September 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) alleged that German automaker Volkswagen AG was using software designed to circumvent U.S. emissions tests for almost 500,000 of its model year 2009 through 2015 diesel engine Volkswagen and Audi cars.
The software was installed in 11 million of its cars worldwide but only activated in an as yet unknown number. The software detected when cars were being lab tested for emissions, and turned on pollution controls that were normally inactive.
This resulted in car models passing United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests while in real-world driving emitting up to 35 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxides (NOx). The EPA has issued Volkswagen a Notice of Violation, saying that the software functions as a defeat device, as prohibited by the US Clean Air Act. The company has apologized for the action and is facing legal proceedings, regulatory investigations, and class action lawsuits in multiple countries.
Dr. Vicente Franco, a Spanish industrial engineer[14][15] and chief researcher for the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), commissioned a study in 2014 and sought data from three different sources on 15 vehicles. Among the research groups lead by Vicente Franco was a group of five scientists at West Virginia University, who detected a high level of emissions during live road tests on three diesel cars.
ICCT also purchased data from two other sources. They provided their findings to the EPA and the California Air Resources Board, who notified Volkswagen that the EPA believed they committed one or more violations in the design of their diesel engines. The scrutiny focused on Volkswagen AG’s use of engine control unit programming techniques in vehicles equipped with turbocharged direct injection (TDI) diesel engines to skirt vehicle emissions compliance laws in the United States. On 24 September Germany’s Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that Volkswagen has admitted to manipulating emissions tests in Europe as well.
Reuters reported that the South African regulators are investigating Volkswagen’s local business to see if cars sold here are rigged carbon emissions data.
Kaula said they hoped to conclude the investigation within two to three months.
Matt Gennrich, spokesman for VW South Africa, said the firm was in contact with regulators.
“There is obviously a full investigation going on internally, and that includes to see how many cars are involved in each market, including South Africa, and once that investigation is complete we will co-operate with authorities,” he said.
Volkswagen was the second most popular car brand in South Africa after Toyota, selling 8,472 out of 51,055 units in the entire market during August, data from the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa showed.
