Several diesel brands emit more than VW: report

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Several diesel car brands emit higher levels of pollution than Volkswagen, a study published one year after the so-called Dieselgate scandal has found.

Environmental pressure group Transport and Environment said carmakers Fiat, Vauxhall and Suzuki sell vehicles that emit higher pollution than more than models made by the German carmaker and do not comply with the latest ‘Euro 6’ standard.

VW landed itself in hot water a year ago for cheating in emissions testing, leading to the depature of the then chief executive, Martin Winterkorn.

US officials ordered the carmaker to recall as many as 50,000 vehicles over the scandal.

“It’s important to say that none of the car manufacturers out there actually meets the pollution standards on the road,” said Julia Poliscanova, manager for clean vehicles and air quality at Transport & Environment.

“If we do a comparison indeed the new vehicles by the Volkswagen group which were produced after 2014 are some of the cleanest in Europe with the most polluting ones coming from Fiat, Renault, Opel,” she said.

“On average we see that 80 percent of the vehicles used today on European roads are grossly polluting cars which illegally emit over 3 times at least the European limit.”

The largest number of so called ‘dirty’ diesels is found on French roads (5.​5 million), followed by Germany (5.3 million), the UK (4.3 million), and then Italy (3.1 million).

Transport and Environment analysed emissions test data from 230 models.

They found that Fiat and Suzuki were at the top of the list of vehicles that are supposed to meet ‘Euro 6’ standards, followed by vehicles from the Renault-Nissan group and General Motors’ Opel-Vauxhall.

Since September 2015, new diesel cars should comply new European exhaust emissions standard called ‘Euro 6’ which set a limit of 0.08g per km.

The previous ‘Euro 5’ standard set a limit at 0.18g per km.