But did they actually break any rules ?
As AC says right at the top - these vehicles passed the legally mandated tests<period>. Unless the law very very clearly states that "X, Y, and Z are not allowed" then that's that. No, I don't know what the actual regulations are, perhaps someone knows where to dig that up and translate it into real world English !
If the cars then emit much more in real life than they did in the tests, well then the test parameters don't represent real life well enough. It was always fairly predictable - impose emissions limits that are hard (impossible ?) to meet, use a testing regime with a well known subset of real driving conditions, manufacturers are going to design the cars to pass those tests. I'm sure that if a real user were to drive the car in a manner that matched the test, then they'd get the low emissions the test requires.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
