The issue is that VW cheated not necessarily the means by which they cheated. VW have used a defeat device to falsify their figures, other manufacturers are undoubtedly upto similar shinannigans but via different means. I remember something about BMW and where in the system they chose to measure emissions, so selectively choosing where they placed the sensor to get the best possible results.
All the manufactureres are competing with eachother on these figures, and none have ‘magic’ technology that others don’t have so it is highly likely they are all upto some form of fiddling.
In anycase, despite the worse than advertised figures, the technologies incorporated into Diesel engines have been effective and have plateau’d the emissions amids a huge increase in the numbers of diesel cars, rather than reduced them as everyone was promised and expected. The biggest scandal here is how diesel was ever sold as a clean fuel in the first place. It was a perfect storm of oil companies looking to get rid of their stock piles of diesel fuel, car companies wanting to sell more cars, and governments despirately scrabbling around looking for ways to reduce CO2 emissions.
Poeple owning diesel cars will have to pay more for tax as cars are re-banded, the motor industry will have to compensate owners for that somehow, and we’ll all carry on and the next big push will be on petrol engined hybrid cars to replace all our filthy diesels and slighly less filthy petrol engine’d cars. Then the scandal will be about the significant environmental damage the mining of precious metals, manufacture and disposeal of batteries causes.
