5:27 pm, September 24, 2015
TRANSPORT Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has announced a thorough investigation into emissions testing in the UK.
It follows the scandal involving Volkswagen in the USA and will see the UK’s vehicle approval authority, the Vehicle Certification Agency, work with car manufacturers here to repeat laboratory tests if they are found to be needed. The results of these will then be compared against ‘real-world’ emissions caused by driving.
The government is also urging the EU to carry out a pan-Europe inquiry to find out if car manufacturers have duped regulators.
In the USA it was discovered that Volkswagen had used ‘defeat devices’ in emissions tests of its diesel vehicles to make them seem up to 40 times cleaner than they actually were. It has recalled 482,000 vehicles there and is facing $18 billion in fines. Globally, 11 million of its vehicles could be affected, it admitted.
Mr McLoughlin, pictured above, was quoted in a BBC News report as saying: ‘The Vehicle Certification Agency, the UK regulator, is working with vehicle manufacturers to ensure that this issue is not industrywide.
‘As part of this work they will rerun laboratory tests where necessary and compare them against real-world driving emissions.
‘We have called on the EU to conduct a Europe-wide investigation into whether there is evidence that cars here have been fitted with defeat devices.
‘My priority is to protect the public as we go through the process of investigating what went wrong and what we can do to stop it happening again in the future.’
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Main picture: Wikipedia
