Former Renault CEO Demanded His Team to Copy Volkswagen’s Diesel Engine Fraud, the World’s Largest Automaker, to Bypass Vehicle Emission Results

Not Only Renault and Volkswagen, but Other Auto Giants Like Audi, Opel, BMW, and Mercedes Were Caught Cheating on Diesel Engine Emissions

Carlos Ghosn, then the all-powerful head of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, was summoned to testify last month in French courts in two cases. The first was related to emission fraud. The second was concerning tax evasion. But it wasn’t just the French automaker that circumvented the system: multinational Volkswagen and other giants including Audi, Renault, Opel, BMW, and Mercedes, were also found involved in the diesel emission fraud scandal.

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There were even instances of emission fraud in Brazil. In 1995, Fiat was fined by Cetesb (Environmental Company of the State of São Paulo) for the emissions of the Uno Mille Electronic, as the car exceeded legal limits, despite being approved in homologation tests.

Fiat and Its Grotesque Scheme to Evade Emission Control of Its Vehicles

In a rather grotesque manner, the automaker Fiat cheated on the emission results of its vehicles at the Betim factory by connecting a switch to the hood opening system since tests were conducted with the hood open. It may sound like a joke, but when the hood was lifted, a switch immediately modified the engine settings to reduce emission levels.

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The multinational Volkswagen chose to evade the system in a more sophisticated way: knowing that the simulated emission measurement procedure was standardized, the German automaker installed a program (software) in the electronic control unit that analyzed the engine’s operating sequence.

The tests were conducted as follows: the engine operated (while the car was stationary on a laboratory dynamometer) as if following a predetermined script: an acceleration followed by several seconds in first gear, then several more in second gear. A pause of several seconds simulating a red traffic light, and so forth. In other words, knowing this, the program detected that the car was undergoing tests and adjusted the engine’s tuning parameters. All this trickery to avoid the inevitable reduction in vehicle performance as long as it met the emission limits.

Scandal Involving Renault’s Diesel Engines in 2017

In 2017, it was the turn of French Renault to engage in the scheme to evade emission control for the diesel engines of its vehicles.

As mentioned above, Ghosn was summoned to testify in May, but the former chief is confined in Lebanon (after fleeing prison in Japan), French emissaries were sent to hear him in Beirut. Ghosn’s testimony (emission fraud) was not made public.

However, according to BORIS FELDMAN, a journalist and engineer with 50 years of experience in the automotive press, who hosts the AutoPapo program on radio stations throughout Brazil, reports that by sheer coincidence, he spoke three years ago (2018) with an engineer who worked at Renault and was part of the diesel engine development team in France.

“He told me that the team was called to a board meeting between 2013 and 2014, and a top executive compared the emission test results of Volkswagen’s diesel engines with those of Renault”, Feldman states.

According to the engineer, the numbers left no room for doubt: Volkswagen achieved pollutant gas emission levels many times lower than those of the French. And he demanded explanations. The Renault board questioned the team’s competence, asking if there was a lack of talent or effort. They expressed their concern. After all, the competition among European brands was (and has always been) fierce.

Furthermore, Feldman claims that the Renault engineers retorted that such a low level of emissions could only be achieved with a drastic reduction in fuel efficiency. However, doing so would significantly harm the vehicle’s performance. The “big boss” asked if they were joking and set a deadline for finding a solution.

Renault Engineers Copy Volkswagen’s Fraud to Keep Their Jobs

Feldman noted that the Renault engineers met again with the directors and explained that, based on research conducted and reports from colleagues at other factories and at Volkswagen, they concluded—proving it beyond any doubt—that it was technologically impossible for a diesel engine to deliver such high performance with such low emission levels. They asserted that there was only one explanation: fraud in the tests.

According to Feldman, the former Renault engineer told him that he was “surprised by the directors’ reaction, as they were not alarmed by the revelation: they seemed to give the impression that they already knew about Volkswagen’s fraud”.

And they simply said something like: “We don’t care how VW achieved this result. We want our diesel engines to have identical or very similar emissions, without losing performance.”

In the subtext, the engineers at the French automaker realized that they either lost their jobs or performed the same “magic” as Volkswagen. So they did. And the final outcome did not take long: the scandal came to light in 2017.