Nitrous oxide emissions were at the center of Volkswagen’s Dieselgate two years ago, when it was found that the car company rigged its engines to cheat emissions tests around the globe. The company has since apologized for the lie.
And now it says it has fixed the nitrous oxide problem. All its new diesel engines will meet emissions requirements, the company has said.
“The problems that the internal combustion engine had in terms of the environment and pollution were NOx and particulate matter,” VW’s Head of Development Ulrich Eichhorn told German news agency DPA. “This fine dust is only an issue for ‘Otto’ direct injection engines (gasoline engines), a small issue, because that represents only 2.0 percent of the total fine dust load.
With modern diesel, this fine dust is no longer an issue thanks to soot particle filters and in terms of gasoline engines, we will introduce these particle filters over the next two years.”
Putting Dieselgate in the Past
That’s good news for VW, and it’s even better news for the environment. Maybe when people bring in their VWs to have them fixed, our mechanics will have something better to talk about than this scandal, like say the quality and reliability of Volkswagen engines, brakes, and electrical wiring.
