Volkswagen’s bloody Monday continues, for after seeing its stock value plummet, issuing a stop-sale on all 2015 model-year 2.0-liter TDI diesel models, and facing down the possibility of up to $18 billion in fines, more troubles relating to its circumvention of EPA emissions laws are coming. Namely, according to Bloomberg via Automotive News, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Volkswagen’s conduct.
Details of the investigation are, at this point, unknown, and it isn’t presently clear whether the Department of Justice is seeking criminal charges for individuals at Volkswagen who knowingly skirted laws regulating diesel-engine emissions, or for the company overall. At the core of the Department’s pending case is an EPA regulation that specifically bars “defeat devices” for emissions equipment; some of VW’s diesel models came with a software algorithm that would detect if the car was being emissions tested and activate necessary emissions equipment—the rest of the time, the engine ran without the countermeasures, generating between 10 and 40 times the legal amount of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.
So far, diesel versions of the Volkswagen Beetle, Golf, Jetta, and the Passat—as well as the Audi A3—going back several model years have been found to have come with the tricky software. The Clean Air Act gives the EPA the power to fine VW up to $37,500 per vehicle found to be in violation, but the Department of Justice’s criminal inquiry is just as serious—just ask General Motors, which was just slapped with a $900 million settlement with the U.S. Attorney for its ignition-switch recall debacle.
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