Just a few years back a little news shook half of the world; the news is that Volkswagen had been cheating on emission tests, which started circulating on social media as Diesel Gate. It hit the company hard, and now Porsche has followed suit. Porsche UK has now been accused of cheating on the emissions test of the Cayman R in the UK.
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Porsche has been known for its superb driving pleasure, a wide range of sports cars and the most important thing, its quality. No one could have expected Porsche to be involved in this type of scandal and cheating, but it has indeed happened. The allegation leveled against Porsche is that they modified their car to run differently for emissions, helping them place the car in a lower tax bracket.
A report on an “unrelated safety issue” lead to the uncovering of the emissions cheating. This issue was uncovered by the legal team of a Porsche Cayman R owner that had sued Porsche back in 2011 for having defects in his vehicle. At that time the claim was settled by Porsche, but the owner inquired about the information relating to the vehicle’s emissions and also demanded the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) for all the relevant emissions data. But both Porsche and VCA refused to disclose the data saying that the irregularities with the emission data were due to different taxation regimes.
It was uncovered that the Cayman R had been driven in second gear for the tests while keeping the RPM’s very low to minimize the amount of CO2 emitted at urban speeds. The Cayman R has a hardcore version of the 3.4-litre flat six engine, which when driven in second gear produced the 221g/km CO2 rating in the UK, which is 7g/km lower than the rate in Europe which is 228g/km. This amount may seem pretty small, but this lower CO2 footprint allowed the Cayman R to be taxed at 315 UK Pound per year (49,165 PKR). This, however, would have been 540 UK Pound per year (84,283 PKR )if the car had been placed in the 226-255 g/km category according to the previous tax system. Due to this, the cars got placed in the “k” tax bracket rather than the “L” bracket. It is speculated that the UK Treasury has lost almost 3 million UK Pounds as a result of shady emission testing by Porsche which led to the placement of the Cayman S, Cayman R, Boxster S and Boxster Spyder in the incorrect tax group. According to a media outlet, as many as 1500 owners have the mentioned cars and could have paid less tax as a result of the test change in 2009.
Even though this issue is in no way near widespread as dieselgate nor as severe, but if the allegations are true, then it means that the company knowingly mislead its customers and the authorities. Porsche has refused to comment on the matter, citing the ongoing dieselgate legal proceedings which also involve a high ranking official of Porsche.
