24-09-2015 07:00

Volkswagen is in trouble, and it could soon have to pay up to 18 billion dollars. Volkswagen skirted American clean air laws.

Volkswagen installed a special piece of software into its diesel cars. In the USA, there are around 500,000 of these cars which have this software. This software is not on when you drive normally. It is on when the car is undergoing an emissions test. When the test happens, the emissions look low.

This, however, is a lie. The emissions of nitrogen oxide (NO) are 40 times worse than they should be.

Difficult words: skirt (to avoid following a law), undergo (when something like a test or an operation is done to you, you undergo it), emission (the smoke which comes out of cars).

You can read the original story and watch the video in the Level 3 section.