Volkswagen Facing Up To $18B In Fines For Emissions Scandal

BALTIMORE (WJZ) – The Volkswagen emissions rigging scandal is rocking the world's top selling automaker.

Derek Valcourt reports for WJZ.

The 11 million cars with software to cheat the U.S. emission standards are diesel versions of five popular models built between 2009 and 2015.

The company says its moving "full speed" toward finding a fix, and it has set aside more than $7 billion to deal with it.

That amount is about one half of a year's profits, and the company is facing up to $18 billion in fines.

The software senses when a vehicle is undergoing emissions tests and reduces the pollutants being released, but when driven, the EPA would see it run 10 to 40 times above acceptable levels.

The damage to Volkswagen is going to last for years.

"This was so clearly a deliberate act by executives at Volkswagen that there needs to be criminal penalties," said Clarence Diltow, who runs the Center for Auto Safety.

"They wrote a software code that could detect steering wheel movement," said attorney Bob Hilliard. "It the steering wheel wasn't moving, they kicked in their emissions standards meeting control system."

The consumer would get everything he wanted and the EPA would pass it.

They put in what's called a "defeat system" where the car simply cheats the tester.

"If you take 11 million vehicles over the course of eight years and do the math on their exposure to folks around the world," he said, "the health effects are tremendous."

Many of the clients who bought diesel thinking they were doing the environment a favor were actually unwittingly coconspirators to a big pollution and cancer causing scandal.