German government slams Opel for emissions

General Motors has been slammed for using sneak tactics to pass European Union emissions laws while secretly emitting more than a thousand times the legal limit.

German news magazine Der Spiegal used a computer hacker to scrutinize the engine management software of the Zafira people-mover and alleged it uncovered a range of emissions “exceptions” employed by Opel to switch off emissions-cleaning technology.

Though Opel insists the systems are legal, Der Spiegal, Germany’s Monitor television program and Germany’s Deutsche Umwelthilfe environmental group have pointed out that the techniques were, by most measures, immoral, unethical and ran counter to the spirit of the regulations.

It has also run foul of the German government, whose transport minister yesterday said the department and Opel had significant differences of opinion over the legality of what the company had done.

European Union rules allow car-makers to switch off their emissions-cleaning technology in exceptional circumstances, such as under conditions where using them would put the engine hardware at risk of significant damage.

Der Spiegal found Opel’s array of emissions-cleaning techniques was compromised in real-world testing. It found the Zafira switched off its exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system when the air pressure dipped below 900 pascals, when the engine revved beyond 2400rpm, when the car travelled faster than 145km/h and when the ambient temperature fell outside a defined range between 17 and 33 degrees Celsius. Or a combination of all of them.

Germany’s transport minister Alexander Dobrindt hauled Opel engineers, executives and lawyers in to face a committee (set up to deal with the Dieselgate crisis) the day after the Der Speigal allegations went to print.

“Shut-off devices are fundamentally illegal unless it is truly necessary to safeguard the engine,” Dobrindt told journalists after the meeting.

“The investigating committee has doubts about whether this practice is completely justified by the protection of the engine.”

The committee also grilled Opel on the emissions from the all-new Astra, which goes on sale in Australia in October, but Opel had no detail to provie and will return in 14 days.

Opel did acknowledge that its software shuts off the engine at high speed, but insisted it was within the EU’s laws.

“I reiterate that our engines conform to the law and do not use illegal software,” Opel CEO, Karl-Thomas Neumann said in a statement.

That might not wash with the German government, though. Dobrindt said the Opel meeting began with Opel’s lawyers explaining how it interpreted the rules on emissions-equipment shutdowns.

“We then presented our legal analysis. Differences were apparent,” Dobrindt said.

Opel’s emissions systems were called into question just a month after Volkswagen’s Dieselgate emissions-cheating system went public in September last year, with one laboratory finding a Zafira emitting more than 30 times the legal NOx limit when it ran in all-wheel drive as opposed to front-wheel drive.

It’s not the only GM emissions problem this week, though, with GM being forced by the EPA to retract and modify its mileage claims in the US, which it claimed were misprints.

It has also been revealed that most European car-makers use some kind of thermal switch to turn off the EGR at low or high temperatures, though Opel has taken the “exceptional conditions” loophole and turned it into a ring of Saturn.

With faith in car-makers’ ability and willingness to meet diesel emissions laws at an all time low, it has been revealed that Mercedes-Benz’s EGR system switches off below 10 degrees and above 30 degrees, with Mercedes claiming it has been done to protect the longevity of the system.

Suzuki has revealed figures (after an honourable piece of self-investigation in the wake of Mitsubishi’s 25 years of dodgy economy figures) that it had misrepresented its fuel economy numbers, too.

“Some discrepencies were found in the automobile emission and fuel efficiency testing process between the regulation by MLIT (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in Japan) and the actual method carried out by Suzuki,” it said in a statement.

Nissan, which uncovered systematic fuel-consumption dodges at rival Mitsubishi, then took a controlling interest in it after the latter’s share price plunged, has itself been fingered in using software to switch off its emissions. Nissan denies the allegations leveled at it by the South Korean government.

Dobrindt also said the German investigating committee was also examining Fiat’s 500X 2.0-litre turbo-diesel for unusually high real-world NOx emissions, though Fiat denies it uses any illegal technologies. What makes it more unusual is that Fiat is also seen by environmental campaigners in Europe as amongst the more socially responsible car-makers, whose real-world emissions are consistently amongst the closest to laboratory figures.