The charge that German auto giant Volkswagen duped federal regulators into believing its diesel cars’ emissions were on the up-and-up has been officially dubbed “dieselgate” by the media, suggesting the incident has reached a level of scandal typically reserved for politicians.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued findings Sept. 18 that showed VW’s line of “clean diesel” cars had software that deliberately switched off emission controls when the cars were being driven and switched them on when the cars’ emissions were being tested.
The EPA and California’s air regulator showed that the automaker deliberately installed what the industry calls a “defeat device” to escape strict emission standards for its diesel cars sold in the United States. EPA said nearly 500,000 vehicles on the road were in violation of the Clean Air Act, with civil and criminal fines potentially reaching tens of billions of dollars.
“Using a defeat device in cars to evade clean air standards is illegal and a threat to public health,” said Cynthia Giles, EPA’s head of enforcement. “EPA is committed to making sure that all automakers play by the same rules. EPA will continue to investigate these very serious matters.”
“Dieselgate” started being used after it became clear that high-level company officials had been complicit in the violation. EPA made the announcement on a Friday. Volkswagen said it was sorry over the weekend and its CEO stepped down on Wednesday. “Dieselgate” started showing up in media accounts by mid-week.
The “Dieselgate” tag appears to have been coined first by news websites dedicated to the car industry, such as Hybridcars.com, before reaching full “gate” status – a la the Watergate scandal – earlier this week when it could be found nearly everywhere.
Here’s a list of the evolution of dieselgate’s use in the wake of the scandal:
- The headline “What Volkswagen’s ‘Dieselgate’ Is, and Why it Matters” appeared Tuesday, Sept. 22, on the website Hybridcars.com.
- On Sept. 24, it popped up in India Today, which used “Volkswagen Dieselgate” as a subject heading before announcing “India to investigate Volkswagen for possible irregularities.” On the same day, the term showed up on the Washington Post’s website in Richard Read’s Car Connection column. “The ‘dieselgate’ scandal at Volkswagen continues to widen, and based on what we’ve seen at other companies in crisis, things are going to get a whole lot worse for VW before they get better,” Read wrote.
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By Thursday, it could be seen nearly everywhere, from the clean-energy technology website Cleantechnica.com to Forbes magazine and Scientific America. The news site Boing Boing on Friday even started applying “dieselgate” to allegations that companies far removed from the auto industry were cheating on environmental regulations. A Friday Boing Boing headline reads: “Dieselgate for TVs: Samsung accused of programming TVs to cheat energy efficiency ratings.” It reports that the European Commission says Samsung televisions were programmed to cheat on energy efficiency by being able to sense “when they were being tested for energy efficiency and changed their power consumption to get better ratings than they deserved.”
