Cash Investigation: Diesel, The Industry’s Smokescreen

‘Dieselgate’ made headlines around the world. For deliberately cheating the system, Volkswagen were made to pay a record $20 billion fine. But, as this investigation shows, they were far from the only culprits. We met the researchers who uncovered the cheat devise and investigate the dangers posed by NOx emissions.

We also look at Peugeot-Citroen, now the subject of a judicial enquiry and also Renault, accused by investigators of consciously defrauding the emissions tests. Our source from inside Renault reveals that his job was to ensure that the car’s emissions stayed under the standard while in lab conditions only, with no regard for the real impact of pollution in cities. And there is no doubt that air pollution kills. We meet a team of researchers from MIT who say there have been 4000 premature deaths across Europe due to NOx excessive emissions due to diesel cars marketed as ‘clean’.

Thirty people in France are now taking the state to court for not protecting them. Ministers claim that no-one knew about the problem until recently. But we reveal the truth. We meet the ex-European Commissioner for the Environment who first raised this issue in 2011 long before the VW scandal. And surely now that the scandal has been revealed, things will change for the better? Recently in Europe all 27 member states voted to increase the allowed standard for NOx emissions to more than double. VW and Renault are having a great year with record sales and growth. The only real losers are children living in cities and people with asthma and breathing difficulties.