VW suspect emissions revealed 18 MONTHS ago - BMW was 'Clean' in the same tests

The BMW X5’s emissions were accurate in the test that exposed the VW emissions scam

The big gap between emissions on VW’s diesel cars in official test and in the real world was first revealed 18 months ago by West Virginia University researchers.

The Volkswagen defeat device emissions scandal has been hitting all the car news headlines in the last week, ever since the EPA revealed that VW was using software to scam it NOx emissions in testing – and VW admitted guilt.

But it turns out that the evidence that VW were acting illegally was actually published 18 months ago by researchers at the West Virginia University, which has conducted real world emissions testing on three cars – a VW Jetta, VW Passat and BMW X5 – paid for by the International Council on Clean Transportation.

The team of five – led by Daniel Carder – conducted real world emissions test on the three cars in and around Los Angeles and up the coast to Seattle, and were so surprised by their findings – one car was emitting 15 to 35 times the expected emissions levels and another 10 to 20 times – that they suspected their findings were faulty.

But they weren’t, and the £30k study managed to do what legislators should have been doing – checking the real world emissions – and in the process bring VW almost to its knees, and shine a very unpleasant light on the motor industry.

But as we all start to wonder how many other car makers are scamming the emissions tests like VW, a note from Calder on BMW might ease those concerns a little.

His team found that although the VW cars were emitting massively more NOx than they should have been, the third car on the test – a BMW X5 – performed really well, with emissions in the real world at, or below, its certification levels.

Which might start to ease concerns that the VW scam is actually endemic in the motor industry.