I am quite sure this won't be confined to strictly diesel cars soon. All cars emissions will likely need to be tested to insure the majority of possible configurations comply. There may even be cases where actual bugs in software lead to bad results and not actual malicious coding

The one good thing that may come from all this is a potential opening of code. Maybe not in the open-source kind of way, but hopefully at least in the auditing-so-we-know-you're-not-lying kind of way.

It honestly sounds cheaper just to subject these cars to randomized spot testing than to expect people to review this code all that well. Reviewing code is expensive in either time or money, and a lot of this code exists in the world.

The VW stuff was found by testing 30 cars 30 times each, and even then it wasn't a slam dunk. Besides, by then, it's too late.

Except for EVs. I think we can trust that Nissan LEAFs, Teslas, and similar are not lying about their emissions! I wonder if this will give them a boost in the market.

I wonder which industry is the dirtiest: power or fuel processing? (if you include that)

Even when an EV is powered entirely by coal power, it's still on par with a decent gasoline vehicle. Add any other power to the mix (it's rare to have a power grid that's exclusively coal) and you do better than traditional cars, even when said traditional cars aren't gaming the system.

We can probably be confident that power plants aren't cheating, because they're so few in number and are therefore much easier to monitor. And we can be highly confident that solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, etc. aren't lying about their emissions.

Don't forget lithium mining, processing, and battery creation/disposal.

It depends on a lot of things: power source, location, etc…

But it’s certainly easier to monitor a few thousand smokestacks than 200 million cars.

Question, are these cars just tested right off the lot? Here in the US, there is a policy that mandates cars at random to be tested by EPA when they're between 2 and 5 years old. People will get randomly picked for that test and get compensated for it. I had my 2009 Dodge Caliber tested like this. They took the car for couple of weeks and gave me a nice rental along with several hundred bucks and any repairs free of charge. My car ended up failing the EPA tests so they replaced a few things in it to get it up to spec so it passes.

Passing the test is critical, but making these tests meaningful is even more important: "Some of the emissions measured in the certification cycle differed dramatically from the real traffic emissions"[0].

[0] http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luc_Pelkmans/publication...

What's more important?

a) some cars have are equipped with defeat devices.

b) some cars shouldn't have passed the emissions tests.

c) all the cars emit much more NOx and fine particles than the European Environment Agency and the manufacturers claim.

Clickbate title with little information.

The EU is urging all 28 member countries to start their own investigations.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-24/vw-cheatin...