And, as it turned out, Volkswagen wasn’t the only one evading the law. Less flagrantly, but to similar effect, the vast majority of diesel cars were making a mockery of emissions rules. In the wake of the revelations in the US, European governments road-tested other big brands too. In Germany, testers found all but three of 53 models exceeded NOx limits, the worst by a factor of 18. In London, the testing firm Emissions Analytics found 97% of more than 250 diesel models were in violation; a quarter produced NOx at six times the limit. “As the data kept coming in, our jaws just kept dropping. Because it is just so systematic, and so widespread,” German says. “VW isn’t even in the worst half of the manufacturers.” With a few honourable exceptions, “everybody’s doing it”.
In the US, where only around 2% of cars are diesel, the rule-breaking had an impact. But the health consequences have been far more severe in Europe, where drivers had been encouraged for years to buy diesel cars – when the scandal broke, they accounted for more than half of all sales. In 2015 alone, one study found that failure to comply with the rules caused 6,800 early deaths. To put it more plainly, tens of thousands of people had died because carmakers felt so free, for so long, to flout the law. [...]
While the US is, in so many ways, an environmental laggard compared to Europe, air quality is a glaring exception. The EPA has, over the years, built up tremendous legal and technical expertise. At least until its evisceration in the Trump years, the EPA was known for its diligence in supplementing regulations with circulars and advisories that precisely defined every term, clarifying ambiguities and laying out what was allowed and what was not. The result was a system that, if not watertight, was a lot less leaky than elsewhere. In Europe, while the rules might look similar, no one goes to the trouble of making clear exactly what they mean, so polluters provide their own interpretations. Its atrocious air offers a cautionary tale that those undermining US regulation would do well to heed. [...]
I learned to my astonishment that some in power knew about the consequences all along. I spoke by phone to Martin Schmied, an official at Germany’s federal environment agency. His department, he told me, had been taking cars on the road for 25 years to measure emissions – and publishing the results. Year after year, they found diesels producing NOx above the legal maximum; six times, in one recent test. I asked him to clarify: Germany’s government, and anyone who read its public reports, has known for decades that automakers were flouting the rules? Schmied responded that as long as emissions went down when limits were tightened, his department didn’t mind they were many times higher than allowed. “We publish this data,” he said. “In principle, this is nothing new.”
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