When we learned in the fall of 2015 that Volkswagen had installed cheat devices in its 2.0-liter and 3.0-liter diesel engines to evade emissions standards, there was a public uproar. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. drivers had purchased these diesel vehicles because they cared deeply about the environment and, for a premium, could benefit from “German engineering”—high fuel-efficiency, superior performance and less toxic emissions.
However, due to Volkswagen’s conduct, they had become unwitting accomplices in one of the biggest auto-related scandals in U.S. history, driving vehicles that were emitting as much as 40 times the permitted levels of nitrogen oxides into the earth’s atmosphere.
