Meet the Engineer Who Exposed Volkswagen's Emission Fraud

BANGALORE: An unassuming West Virginia engineer, Daniel Carder, exposed the Volkswagen emission scandal.  Volkswagen got caught cheating carrying out an environmental fraud on U.S. vehicle emissions tests. The incident would mark one of the worst fraud cases in the corporate history, reports ET.

The biggest corporate cyber crime committed by the world’s one o the largest automakers was exposed by Daniel Carder who worked along his research team at West Virginia University produced a $50,000 study that proved the allegations against Volkswagen .
"The testing we did kind of opened the can of worms," said Carder who found out the on-road emission levels for Volkswagen were way higher than what is actually permissible under U.S. regulations.

The outcome of the study carried out by Carder and his small team was confirmed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board (CARB).

Carder’s team comprises of two graduate students, a research professor, a faculty member and himself. They executed some tests around Los Angeles and up the West Coast to Seattle to confirm their own research results.

"The first thing you do is beat yourself up and say, 'Did we not do something right?' You always blame yourself," Carder told Reuters. "(We) saw huge discrepancies. There was one vehicle with 15 to 35 times the emissions levels and another vehicle with 10 to 20 times the emissions levels," he added.

Carder is the interim director of West Virginia University's Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions in Morgantown.

The vehicles for the study in the West Virginia included the VW Passat, the VW Jetta and the BMW X5. Amongst the three, only BMW performed at or below certified level.

Carder had started his research one and a half year ago and on stating the facts on public platform, they were interrogated by the Volkswagen.

Volkswagen finally admitted on September 22 that around 11 million clean diesel cars had been sold globally that have software to deceive regulators. A high number of such cars were sold in Europe.

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