The VW Emissions Scandal Panorama

Britain is hooked on diesel. Half of our new cars guzzle it. The German

motor giant Volkswagen is a market leader. Look watching is doing.

Their cars promised owners they were doing their bit for the planet. I

felt as though we had been duped by one of the largest companies in the

world. VW was fooling everyone, a clever scam to beat the emissions

test. It is difficult for me to explain what is happening and why.

Tonight, panorama reveals for the first time how VW conned the

European pollution testers. I think we have been testing the wrong

things in the wrong way for quite a while. And we ask if they are the

only manufacturer whose diesel fumes are ruining the end we breathe. You

can't gasp for air because the air is what is hurting you.

Europe is the world leader in diesel technology. Modern diesels are

quick, quiet, reliable, and often more economic than petrol cars. Over

the last decade or so, they have become a firm favourite. Diesels

seem like such a success story, until eight weeks ago, when VW was

forced to admit that for years it had been cheating the American

emissions test. It had programmed the cars' computer with a defeat

device, so the car was clean in the laboratory, but on the road, the

pollution levels shot up, as much as 40 times the legal limit. Cheating

was the only way the company could pass this test and have a car that

performed well on the road. How do you like my new car? In July,

Volkswagen became the world's biggest car-maker. It adverts

trumpeted how squeaky clean they were. Diesel in Latin means dirty.

You are going to ruin your scarf! See how clean it is? That is why

Volkswagen is the number-1 selling diesel in America. It was an

illusion, the boss of the American business admitted they had been

lying for years. Our company was dishonest. With the EPA and the

California Air Resources Board and with all of you. In my German

words, we have totally screwed up. They announced 11 million cars from

the group, which includes Audi, Seat and Skoda, where programmed with the

cheating software. That includes 1.2 million cars in the UK. I have come

to Northamptonshire to meet this family. You can see why they needed

a bigger car. As well as Baxter the dog, they have two kids. Mark and

Claire paid ?15,500 for their BlueMotion Volkswagen Passat. They

wanted something reliable, safe and clean. Volkswagen were quite keen to

push the environmental credentials of their vehicle. The BlueMotion

technology was definitely a factor in highlighting this vehicle is one

that we would be interested in, definitely. We looked at other

options, hybrids, because when you have a family, you start thinking a

bit more about the impact that you have on the environment, you look at

the next best option that ticks all the boxes and does what you need it

to do. It was part of it. It was one of many factors that led us to

purchase this vehicle. You have bought your car, you are driving it

around, you have assumptions about it, then you see the VW story, what

did you think? I was shocked. At first, I felt stupid. I felt as

though the wall had been pulled over my eyes, and been told a lie. Once I

got over that and realise that I was not stupid, I felt really angry

about it. With so many angry customers, I wanted to understand

what the defeat device was and where it might be hidden. There has been a

revolution in car technology in the last 20 years. Now, all modern cars

are controlled by computer, so that is where we started. Scott, you can

take this computer out? Yes. Let's go. We have got the ECU. How

important is that in a modern car? Very important. They control

everything in the car. Headlights, wipers, door locks, indicators, ...

This is the brain of the car, it is where scientists believe the cheat

device is lurking. That is the PPF filter. It has a load of sensors on

there, it controls what is going out into the atmosphere. One function of

the computer is that it decides what pollution is going to come out of

the exhaust pipe. Yes, what is going in and out. There we have it. The

biggest brain of the car. That is it, the on-board computer. Somewhere

in here is the software, the defeat device. That has caused this huge

scandal. To understand how VW's device works, we entered the

secretive world of car testing. No British laboratory would help, so we

went to this facility in the Czech Republic. It is governed by the same

EU rules and regulations as the UK. We put a Passat BlueMotion through

its paces to reveal how the car's computer fix its green credentials.

The clues will lie in the cocktail of emissions coming from the

exhaust. It is a 2014 car, we are testing it against the euro five

emission limit, 180 mg of nitrogen oxide per kilometre, the polluting

gases that are the most damaging to human health. The scientist guiding

us is Michal Vojtisek, he spent the last 15 years studying diesel

engines. To referee the whole thing, we brought Ted Foreman, a retired UK

Government vehicle inspector. His job is to make sure we do everything

by the book. 2.4. Yes. OK. What are you looking for? We are going to

make sure the tyres are inflated to the recommendation of the

manufacturer, so the resistance is not giving us any spurious resorts,

and we will make sure they use the right coefficients from the

legislation. The rule book runs to 280 pages. One of the hundreds of

conditions states the car has to stand in doors for at least six

hours to cool to room temperature. This is meant to make the test

tougher, as cold engines often pollute more. Do we have the cell

temperature? Excellent. 24.3, it is right in the middle, it is right.

The procedure is so predictable, the suspicion is that the car's computer

can instantly work out if it is being tested and cut the pollution

coming from the exhaust. When was the last time you got in a car and

drove in a straight line from a cold start for six miles without turning

the steering wheel? It is driving by numbers, so controlled, it is

robotic. The displayed it takes the pace. Street just two kilometres an

hour over or under and the test is potentially void. You have the drive

cycle, the line in green, and the driver is following it. The purple

lines of the upper and lower limit, the violation. They can make the

test in valid. He is following the drive cycle really well. Parts of

the test have not changed for 40 years. It always takes 20 minutes

and 20 seconds, precisely. We played it by the book and the

eco-friendly BlueMotion Passat past the emissions test. We have done one

test with the computer plugged into your systems, the emissions levels

were fine. Yes, now we run another test. The professor now have the car

driven at high speed, well above the normal test range. He was trying to

convince the on-board computer that the car was no longer in the

laboratory. We are looking if the engine will return itself to a test

mode or good emission behaviour. In effect, you are trying to find

little ways of putting it in test mode and outside test mode, just to

see if there is any difference? Yes. We repeated the same emissions

test drive, with one key difference, we started with a hot

engine. The amount of poisonous gases in the exhaust was measured.

Look at the emissions now. They are becoming very high. It is difficult

for me to explain what is happening and why. It failed, spectacularly.

When the on-board computer thinks it is not being tested, it stops

cheating, it runs the engine as if it were on the road, pumping out two

and a half times more poisonous gases. We have shown for the first

time that the on-board computer can cheat the European emissions test as

well as the American one. Volkswagen told us...

Our experiment goes some way to answer a problem that had puzzled

environmental scientists for years. Despite tougher regulations to

reduce emissions, the amount of poisonous nitrogen dioxide remains

stubbornly high. Latest research shows that pollution in London

during the rush hour often peaks at dangerous levels. Many other UK

cities also struggle to meet EU clean air targets. Our measurements

from the London air quality network show that it was not changing, so we

went and looked at the data Neil Rhodes and we found that it was

diesel vehicles which were emitting a lot more pollutants than they

should be. We now have cities which are clogged full of traffic which

are producing a lot of emissions, much more than we thought they were,

and that has led to this ten, 15 years of people breathing into much

air pollution. The air we breathe now is partly down to a decision

made here, 14 years ago. Back then, cutting the greenhouse gas carbon

dioxide was the political priority, and petrol engines made more of it,

so the Government offered tax breaks to encourage drivers to change over

to diesel. In fact, they were swapping one polluting menace for

another. Ben Barratt is a scientist at Kings College, London, an expert

in air pollution. People show is a ground-breaking experiment that

measured the diesel pollution in London and its effects on our

bodies. If you can talk me through what we are going to do? You will

have to take some clothes off! You haven't picked the warmest day!

I will trust you. What are we doing? These will be connected up to an

ECG, which monitors your heart rate. That tells us about how the

different areas of your heart are reacting to the air you are

breathing. The idea was simple. Monitor people first in a quiet

park, and then on one of the country's most polluted roads.

Basically, this snuck up on us, because we thought we had sorted

this in the 90s. We did. The catalytic converters and other

technology made a big difference, so we were not expecting vehicle

pollution to be as much of an issue as it is today. Mind the Swans! I

can see my heart rate going on the monitor. So, we have had a lovely

walk in the bucolic park. Now it is time for the real world.

Oxford Street is diesel central, with traffic limited to buses and

cards. It has recorded some of the highest levels of an -- NO2 in the

world. A walk of just a few hundred yards, and Ben's kit shows that the

pollution more than doubles and my heart rate climbs. How do you think

this research has changed people's perceptions? It changed something

that was an environmental issue into a health issue. So basically, not

every one cares about the environment, but we care about our

health? We care about ourselves and our family, that is the bottom line.

What were your official long-term findings? With the asthmatics, their

lungs became inflamed and their lung capacity decreased. There is a

evidence that healthy individuals, when walking along Oxford Street,

did not get the health benefits of exercise that they should. So

everybody is affected? Well, you have to remember that this is an

extreme case and some of the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide levels in

Europe are recorded on this street. Pollution attacks all of us, but it

is the young, the old and the sick who are the most vulnerable.

Children like 16-year-old Sophie Hyde are regularly admitted for long

stays at the country's leading lung hospital. They YouTuber, she was

excited to have something new to report. This is a lot different than

normal. I have a camera crew from BBC Panorama. Richard stole my

crisps! Then we have guests. Sophie was born with the lung disease

cystic fibrosis. So you live by a beach, but you have to come into the

city for treatment. What is the difference between those two

environments? Can you feel the difference inside your lungs? With

the pollution, you feel like you are drowning in smoke. You feel like you

are tried to gasp for air, but you can't because the air around you is

what is hurting you. And it is really annoying. You can't breathe

as easily as you can in the countryside, with hardly any cars.

My friends catch the train and go into town and they can rush about

the shops. If I come, I feel like I am slowing them down. I feel a bit

of a burden to them, because I can't breathe as easily as I can where I

normally live. So it puts you off going into towns? Yeah, because I

get scared that I will have an episode and I have to take my and

everything. It is sort of embarrassing. -- I will have to take

my inhalers. Having watched Sophie struggle to breathe, I went to see

Professor Andrew Bush, head of the department that looks after her. I

was shocked to find that heavy traffic pollution even targets

children yet to be born. If your mother is exposed to environmental

pollution in pregnancy, this will affect the child's lung function at

age four to five years. We also have known for many years that

environmental pollution is associated with poor lung growth in

childhood. Big groups of children living in a heavily polluted area

will have less good lung function than a big room of children living

in a non-polluted area. Professor Bush says pollution could be harming

one in ten children living in big cities, and the damage lasts a

lifetime. One emissions testing company told us that of the 16

newest cars they have examined, just four were as keen on real roads as

they were in the lab. It begs the question, how many dirty engines are

out there? We decided to test a different make of car at our

independent lab in Prague. A people carrier this time, a 1.6 diesel

Zafira, the eco-model. The badge says Opel, but it's the same as a

Vauxhall. Why this car? Other tests by a German environmental group

suggested that it behaved oddly in the lab, all strenuously denied by

the manufacturer. After leaving the car to cool overnight, we put it to

the test. It is 2015 registered, so faces a tough Euro 6 emissions

standard, with a limit of just 80 mg of NOx gases per kilometre. Again,

Ted is on hand to make sure we follow the letter of the law. The

legislation says you should be able to take any car in reasonable

condition, taken to the lab, put it through the taxed and it should

pass. This Zafira has just failed. At twice the Euro 6 knocks limit, it

wasn't even close. Once again, we tried something that isn't in the

test, a cruise at motorway speeds. Look at the Spike. Ted, you are the

testing expert. What do you make of the results we have seen? It is

surprising to me, because I have only ever done the type of approval

test where things comply. It is new to me to see it taken outside its

comfort zone, for want of a better expression. When we went even

faster, as if overtaking on a motorway, the emissions went off the

scale, literally. At approximately 135 kilometres per hour, we have

seen the NOx emissions increase. They are above the measuring range

of the instrument. But that just be because the car is going faster and

therefore emits more? When the car is running faster, the engine is

working harder and you get higher fuel consumption, so you get higher

emissions. But there is no reason for the emissions to be up to ten

times higher. Then we ran a second standard emissions test, again, with

just one difference. The engine was hot. In theory, that should make it

less polluting. The result was even worse than a cold engine. It was 3.5

times the Euro 6 limit. What we have seen here is a twofold to threefold

difference arm and for that, I do not have a good explanation. It goes

beyond what could easily be explained by engineering reasons.

So, an eco-car, good as new, failing the lab test. How many others out

there would do the same? For Ted, who spent a career in forcing a test

that he thought was protecting our health, the implications are hard to

swallow. How do you feel? A bit disillusioned, really. My conclusion

going away from here is that we have been testing the wrong things in the

wrong way for quite a while. Vauxhall cult panorama that the

Zafira has no defeat device and said:

As to the high-speed cruising simulation, the company said:

Diesel engines are the new environmental villains, and the

impact of the smallest particles they produce is not yet fully

understood. These tiny, ultrafine particles are produced in their

billions with every acceleration of a diesel vehicle. These particles

have never been on the planet before. They are a new type of

challenge to our bodies. Modelling by Birmingham University shows that

a cocktail of nitrogen dioxide and tiny particles is trapped between

the buildings. The pollution is worst where people are walking.

Scientists have only just started to focus on the health effects of these

ultrafine specks. What do we know about these very small particles? In

terms of health effects, they are easily inhaled. They will deposit in

the deepest lung, and there is evidence that they can penetrate

through biological membranes and even into cells within the body.

Then they can affect the bloodstream, and that is where we

believe they can cause clotting in the blood, leading to heart attacks

and other effects on health. So as I am walking along, there are billions

of particles going into my lungs? 30 billion in an hour. 30 billion

particles in an hour going into my lungs as I walk along a busy road.

VW promises to fix all its cars by the end of 2016. But they are

struggling to rebuild trust, and now customers like Mark and Claire want

compensation. Volkswagens are now before holding their value well, and

that was a factor in making us choose this car. If this car

suddenly loses 20% of its value overnight because people cannot

trust how it performs... It puts people off. Then I want that money

back! I'm sorry, I do. Volkswagen used its green credentials to sell

10 million cars a year under eight different brand names, but now

global sales are falling. The company has offered an amnesty to

any whistle-blower with information on the development of the defeat

device. And the compensation lawyers are circling. We have four types of

actions which could be brought - consumer fraud actions, people who

have bought diesel cars with the defeat device, disgruntled

Volkswagen shareholders who have purchased shares, actions brought by

people who have been affected by excessive nitrogen oxide emissions,

and potentially even actions brought by car manufacturers who have lost

sales as a result of an aggressive marketing campaign by Volkswagen in

relation to their diesel cars. Is impossible to pin down exactly what

this might cost the company in the end? We have 11 million Volkswagen

diesel cars worldwide with the defeat device. The cost of repairing

those, putting in the fix and making sure they reach the promises which

were made even if that is $1000 per car, that is immediately $11

billion. On top of that, you have an action, for instance, brought by or

intended to be brought forward by Volkswagen shareholders. They are

claiming 40 billion euros by way of damages. VW's reputation has been

wrecked. It remains to be seen what they can save from the pieces. The

laws and tests designed to keep diesel cars clean are clearly

failing, and the result is a health time bomb. We need to have

legislation. The car manufacturers will not do it unless they are made

to do it. We need legislation to protect our children's lungs. That

is my view. I am at the beach at the moment and it is really nice and the

waves are hitting. The air is so fresh, and I can finally breathe

again compared to London. It's really nice. So yeah, bye!