WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that it is changing the way it tests for diesel emissions after being duped for seven years by software in Volkswagen cars.
In a letter to auto manufacturers, the EPA said it will add on-road testing to its regimen, "using driving cycles and conditions that may reasonably be expected to be encountered in normal operation and use, for the purposes of investigating a potential defeat device" similar to the one used by Volkswagen.
The testing would be in addition to the standard emissions test cycles already in place, the EPA said.
VW's software allowed its cars to pass low-emission tests in the lab and then emit more pollution while on the highway. The changes announced Friday are designed to detect software and other methods automakers might use to defeat a test.
"We're actually making sure that this is a one-off," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said Friday.
The agency is going to "look at all of the other models aggressively and do the testing we need to make sure there aren't any hidden software devices or other ways they could defeat the emission system," McCarthy said.
The revelations about VW led to scrutiny for the EPA. Its testing procedures have been criticized for being predictable and outdated, making it relatively easy for VW to cheat.
The EPA did not initially uncover the problem; researchers at West Virginia University did, using on-road testing that the EPA did not.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said he was frustrated that regulatory agencies such as the EPA are failing to protect the public. "Seven years is way too long a time that the EPA has been asleep at the switch," he said.
The VW case has similarities to those involving General Motors ' defective ignition switches and Takata Corp.'s exploding air-bag inflators, where it also took years before those problems were disclosed to consumers, Nelson said.
"When there is this kind of deception, we've got to get these agencies to be able to cut through it and catch it," he said.
Chris Grundler, head of the EPA's office of transportation and air quality, defended the agency's testing procedures. He said passenger vehicles with diesel engines account for far less than 1 percent of overall vehicle emissions of nitrogen oxides and other pollutants.
"It's not a question of equipment or technology or capability. It's a question of where we deploy those resources," Grundler said Friday.
The EPA has conducted on-road testing on heavy-duty trucks, rather than passenger cars, "because that's where the emissions are," he said. The additional testing announced Friday is part of a "continuous evolution of our oversight" of new and used cars and trucks, Grundler said.
VW has admitted to installing so-called defeat devices on Volkswagen and Audi cars with four-cylinder diesel engines. The devices switch on pollution controls when the cars are being tested, but turn off the controls when the software determines that the cars are not being tested. The EPA said about 482,000 U.S. cars including the Jetta, Golf, Beetle, Passat and Audi A3 have the cheating software, and VW says 11 million cars have it worldwide.
Volkswagen on Friday named the top manager of its Porsche subsidiary to head the German automaker.
Matthias Mueller, 62, will replace Martin Winterkorn, 68, who resigned earlier this week.
Since Mueller moved into the top job at Porsche in 2010 after its takeover by Volkswagen, he has won plaudits for increasing sales and profits at the sports-car maker while preserving its cachet among aficionados.
"My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group by leaving no stone unturned and with maximum transparency, as well as drawing the right conclusions from the current situation," Mueller said.
Under his watch, Volkswagen will "develop and implement the most stringent compliance and governance standards in our industry."
VW was able to fool the EPA because the agency only tested the cars on treadmill-like devices called dynamometers and didn't use portable test equipment on real roads. The software in the cars' engine-control computers checked the speed, steering wheel position, air pressure and other factors to determine when dynamometer tests were underway. It then turned on pollution controls that reduced the output of nitrogen oxides that contribute to smog and other pollution, the EPA has said.
VW started the scheme with the 2009 model year and may not have been caught without testing performed at West Virginia University on behalf of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit group that advises governments on regulations. EPA and California regulators confronted VW with those findings in May 2014. The automaker eventually did a recall late last year, without much improvement, the EPA said.
Only when the EPA and the California Air Resources Board refused to approve VW's 2016 diesel models for sale did the company admit earlier this month what it had done.
The EPA said the cars are safe to drive but VW will have to pay to recall and fix them. VW also faces billions of dollars in fines.
The scandal, in which selling cars seemed to take precedence over clean air, has made Volkswagen an inviting target for environmental groups.
As the Volkswagen supervisory board met Friday inside the company's vast complex in Wolfsburg to choose a new leader, members of Greenpeace arrived to protest, along with three black Volkswagen Golfs. The cars were adorned with posters and large cutouts of Pinocchio bearing the message "No More Lies."
In a sign of how Volkswagen's problems could infect the German car industry, Daimler, the maker of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, found it necessary Friday to deny accusations by environmentalists that almost all German carmakers sell vehicles that violate emissions standards.
"A defeat device, a function which illegitimately reduces emissions during testing, has never been and will never be used at Daimler," the company said in response to accusations by Deutsche Umwelthilfe, an environmentalist group. "This holds true for both diesel and petrol engines. Our engines meet and adhere to every legal requirement."
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Daly, Tom Krisher, Lorne Cooks of The Associated Press; by Jerry Hirsch of the Los Angeles Times; and by Jack Ewing and Melissa Eddy of The New York Times.
Business on 09/26/2015