The VW Group is coming under scrutiny from the EPA for equipping 482,000 diesel cars from 2009 until 2015 with software that would only have the cars meet emissions regulations when they were being tested.

When the cars were not in a test environment, the EPA says that the device was turned off and the cars are producing 40 times the pollution they were during the tests when being used on the roads. The defeat device is not something that was described by VW to the EPA before the cars went on sale, which is another violation. Apparently, the device had two modes, with one mode that would detect when the car was being tested and restrict the emissions, and another that detected road driving and would have the car producing far more emissions than during emissions testing.

The EPA says VW admitted that the device existed when they were threatened with not being allowed to sell 2016 model year diesels in the US.

Here are the cars impacted:

This could result in an $18 billion fine for the automaker. The EPA is ordering all the cars to be recalled.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io