New tests performed on Fiat Chrysler‘s cars during Italy’s emission-cheating investigation have discovered no unlawful engine software, Italy’s Transport Minister Graziano Delrio stated on Wednesday.
Delrio made the remarks after an initial report from the ministry revealed FCA automobiles were at first enabled to skip crucial tests during the investigation carried out following the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal.
In this report, provided to a European parliamentary committee in October however never formally published, results were missing from an on-road measurement phase and a reversed version of the EU’s basic lab test for three of the 7 FCA models tested.
All 7 FCA models also did not have data for an “Artemis” test that adjusts the EU laboratory regime to show urban driving styles. The three skipped tests are generally utilized to help unmask defeat devices by avoiding them from detecting the test.
Maurizio Vitelli, an official in charge of the ministry’s motor vehicle unit, informed Reuters previously on Wednesday that extra tests had been carried out on the FCA models and a final report will be released within days.
He stated the Artemis test was not part of checks required to examine whether an automobile adhered to regulations and the examiners could choose whether to apply it at their own discretion.
“There was no purposeful omission in having done that test only on a few of the vehicles, it was the inspectors’ choice to add it or not,” he stated.
Asked whether he dismissed the presence of prohibited defeat devices in FCA cars, Vitelli said he did not “leave out anything, however we have not discovered any.”
FCA currently faces a U.S. criminal investigation for alleged emissions adjustment and German accusations that it, like Volkswagen, utilized “defeat devices” to confound nitrogen oxide (NOx) tests.
