Volkswagen is guilty – but it's not the only offender | John Vidal

VW's large-scale deception fits a pattern of carmakers cynically exploiting lax emissions tests

The biggest carmaker is imploding. Its chief executive has gone. The lawyers are gathering, the share price has plunged and today ministers announced their own inquiry into car emissions and testing. The scale of Volkswagen's deception of the public is huge. They rigged 11m cars which together may have emitted up to an extra 1m tonnes of a toxic gas that kills more than 23,000 people in Britain alone each year.

Related: The Volkswagen emissions scandal explained