Did Volkswagen Really Gas Monkeys To Prove Diesels Are Clean?

We all know that animal testing is, at the very least, frowned upon in this modern day and age in which we live. From emissions to cosmetics and everything in between, testing any kind of chemical or medication on any animal other than lab rats will get you tried, convicted and executed in the court of public opinion, and in today’s like/comment/share society, all it takes is one relatively small screw up to become the next viral jerk.

Volkswagen, however, must not have gotten the memo on that, or they are so ridiculously confident in themselves that they ignored it, thinking they are on the way to wowing the world with the cleanliness of their Diesel engines’ emissions. Of course, as we all would later learn, Volkswagen was quite literally cheating by building a system into the car that scrubbed the exhaust to fudge the results while their emissions, in actuality, were not particularly great, which conflicted with their claims.

Engineering Explained’s host, Jason, drops in with his delivery to explain things to us in ways we can break down and digest.

He explains how the cheat system on the car itself works, how they setup the monkey gassing tests to read exactly the way they wanted the results to read, and he also dives into such dramatic steps being taken when we actually have the technology now so can keep tabs on what our emissions look like from both sides of the problem. As you might imagine, this went over like a lead balloon and has cost the company a ton of money, a subject Jason also briefly mentions.