After Volkswagen’s ‘dieselgate’ scandal, American car brand Ford is now in the crosshairs by the US Environmental Protection Agency for its emissions certification processes. Two months ago, Ford has voluntarily disclosed to California’s Air Resources Board and the US Environmental Protection Agency what they call as a “potential concern”. After it’s employees raised concerns about the testing procedures, Ford in February hired external experts to check its testing procedures.
The investigation is whether Ford has unambiguously evaluated the “Road Load” which means the drag and resistance on the vehicle and the “Coast Down” tests, which simulates the stopping of the vehicle once the power is no longer applied to the vehicle. The representation models can alter the certified emission significantly. A report suggests that almost all manufacturers underplayed road load figures by an average of 7% in carbon emissions.
The concerns are not about the use of defeat devices, which are cheat devices used to deliberately lower the emissions during testing which were used in the 2015 Volkswagen scandal in testing procedures.
The matter is still in the preliminary stages and the investigations are going on. Ford could well be fined even though the discrepancies are far lower than that in case of the defeat devices. US Environmental Protection Agency has said that more legal actions will be taken against car manufacturers as almost all of them exceed the limits in real-world tests.