Adrian put finger to keyboard:

On Tue, 29 Sep 2015 15:08:03 +0000, Scion wrote:

So... Euro V 0.230g/km, Euro VI 0.170g/km

The US figures are in mg/mile - so Euro VI is about 27mg/mile, and
Euro V is about 36mg/mile. Both are way down in the lower bins. Even
Euro III's .56g/km = 89mg/mile. Hell, even 1992's Euro I had a cap of
HC+NOx of 0.97 = 155mg/mile - within the current upper US bin, and
only 5.5x the Euro VI figure, let alone the alleged "40x"...

Could be that the 40x is what the people who discovered the anomaly
found during 'real-world' tests vs. the permitted output for the band
that the cars were in.

So the "real world" emissions are six or seven times what was permitted
nearly 25 years ago...?

"The VW cars under investigation emit up to 40x the national standard for
nitrogen oxide, which is linked to asthma & lung illnesses." - a tweet
from the EPA on Sep 18th. So yes, it seems that way, with a caveat for the
"up to" phrase - perhaps that's an instantaneous reading vs. an average
over a longer time for the test.

No, I don't buy it. I don't buy that VW's engineers are uniquely
incompetent and disingenuous, either.

I don't doubt that other manufacturers have all sorts of tricks to reduce
emissions during testing; I would be surprised if they all cheat as
blatantly as VW has done. BMW for example have specifically said they
don't use test-run detection software.