Volkswagen denies manipulation

Volkswagen denies it breached European legislation by installing defeat devices in its vehicles that deliver lower pollutant emissions on a test stand than in regular traffic, write Claus Hulverscheidt, Klaus Ott and Katja Riedel in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. While the company admitted to having manipulated its cars for the US market and has to pay billions in compensation overseas, it holds that “there is no deactivation mechanism violating European law” in the cars sold in Europe, the authors write. Although it has already started to retrofit 2.4 million cars in Germany to lower emissions, as demanded by federal authorities, VW regards the ordinance as “judicially wrong,” according to the authors.

Read the article in German here.

Read more on the difficulties of German carmakers to switch to lower-emission vehicles in the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and German carmakers.