VW, BMW and Daimler "Monkeygate" scandal
[video=youtube;CkatIgyBqw0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkatIgyBqw0[/video]
https://www.ft.com/content/775bc836-0387-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
German carmakers were so bent on proving the cleanliness of diesel technology that in 2014 they financed a study involving caged monkeys watching television cartoons as they inhaled fumes from a Volkswagen Beetle.
The hope was that the study would provide scientific backing to carmakers’ claims that a new generation of diesel engines were far cleaner than in the past. Unknown to the researchers, the study was a fraud: the Beetle was equipped with software to reduce emissions in the lab: in the real world it spewed 40 times the permitted limit.
Volkswagen pleaded guilty last year to rigging cars in the US with software that enabled them to cheat emissions tests for nearly a decade, costing it around $25bn in fines, damages and car buybacks. The monkey experiment underscores just how far the German carmaker was willing to go to cover up its fraud and increase car sales.
A detailed description and re-enactment of the experiment appears in the first episode of Dirty Money, a new Netflix documentary on corporate malfeasance that became available for streaming on Friday.
The laboratory study involved a 2013 VW Beetle and an older Ford F-150 pick-up truck running on a dynamometer — a sort of treadmill for cars used in emission tests — with its exhaust fumes directed through a series of tubes into exhaust gas chambers. Ten monkeys were in the chambers, watching television as a distraction.
The study was conducted in 2014 by the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but it was never concluded or published, according to VW.
It was commissioned by a group — funded by Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler — called the European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector, or EUGT. The research group was established in 2007 and disbanded in June last year. All three carmakers say they “distance” themselves from the study.
James Liang, a veteran VW engineer who was sentenced to 40 months in prison last August for his role in the emmisions scandal, drove the Beetle to the lab for the test, and then requested real-time access to the data, according to Michael J Melkersen, a Virginia-based lawyer who uncovered the experiment and is quoted extensively in the documentary.
Mr Melkersen said in an email that has he more than 300 cases pending against Volkswagen, with the first trial set to begin February 26.
[video=youtube;CkatIgyBqw0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkatIgyBqw0[/video]
https://www.ft.com/content/775bc836-0387-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
German carmakers were so bent on proving the cleanliness of diesel technology that in 2014 they financed a study involving caged monkeys watching television cartoons as they inhaled fumes from a Volkswagen Beetle.
The hope was that the study would provide scientific backing to carmakers’ claims that a new generation of diesel engines were far cleaner than in the past. Unknown to the researchers, the study was a fraud: the Beetle was equipped with software to reduce emissions in the lab: in the real world it spewed 40 times the permitted limit.
Volkswagen pleaded guilty last year to rigging cars in the US with software that enabled them to cheat emissions tests for nearly a decade, costing it around $25bn in fines, damages and car buybacks. The monkey experiment underscores just how far the German carmaker was willing to go to cover up its fraud and increase car sales.
A detailed description and re-enactment of the experiment appears in the first episode of Dirty Money, a new Netflix documentary on corporate malfeasance that became available for streaming on Friday.
The laboratory study involved a 2013 VW Beetle and an older Ford F-150 pick-up truck running on a dynamometer — a sort of treadmill for cars used in emission tests — with its exhaust fumes directed through a series of tubes into exhaust gas chambers. Ten monkeys were in the chambers, watching television as a distraction.
The study was conducted in 2014 by the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but it was never concluded or published, according to VW.
It was commissioned by a group — funded by Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler — called the European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector, or EUGT. The research group was established in 2007 and disbanded in June last year. All three carmakers say they “distance” themselves from the study.
James Liang, a veteran VW engineer who was sentenced to 40 months in prison last August for his role in the emmisions scandal, drove the Beetle to the lab for the test, and then requested real-time access to the data, according to Michael J Melkersen, a Virginia-based lawyer who uncovered the experiment and is quoted extensively in the documentary.
Mr Melkersen said in an email that has he more than 300 cases pending against Volkswagen, with the first trial set to begin February 26.
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you didn't read it either or just left out the most important bits in your description because...?