Four VW and Audi-branded models, the VW Beetle, Jetta and Golf and the Audi A3, are subject to a government probe.
As the Obama administration has directed Volkswagen to recall nearly a half million cars from the road, the Ministry of Environment of South Korea launched a probe into the German automaker’s emissions-fixing scandal on September 24. Under the microscope are four VW and Audi-branded models, the VW Beetle, Jetta and Golf and the Audi A3, which were certified for sale in S. Korea on the grounds that they meet the strict Euro 6 emissions standard.
“We randomly picked four different types of vehicles and sealed them after they went through customs procedures at Pyeongtaek Port in order to prevent the carmaker from tampering with the models at issue,” said the Ministry of Environment.
The sealed vehicles will be shipped to the National Institute of Environmental Research in Incheon within this week and they will be driven at least 3,000 kilometers to be tested.
It will take two months, from early next week to November, to test them. Just like any other certification testing, they will undergo exhaust emissions testing in a lab to see whether they exceed allowable emission limitations for nitrogen oxides (NOx) under different driving conditions.
To get to the bottom of Volkswagen’s diesel-emissions cheating scandal, the Ministry has decided to carry out real-road tests, too.
The main goal of such tests is to find out whether the world's largest automaker handed in falsified documents or deliberately doctored its cars' emission testing software.
“To obtain accurate results, we will go for real-road testing to measure tailpipe emissions in a real setting. And we will also check whether the carmaker tweaked the engine control unit (ECU) to turn off the emissions control system during normal operation as it did in the US,” the Ministry said.
If it is true that Volkswagen pulled dirty tricks to have its vehicles certified, vehicle recalls and certification calculation can ensue.
