On VW: I’m still mystified

The news is all over.  Shock, horror at what Volkswagen has done.  Europeans are getting into the act, too, as Reuters reports that 

A European Union-level inquiry is needed into the emissions-cheating scandal at German carmaker Volkswagen AG and the probe should be extended to French carmakers too, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said on Tuesday.

and CNBC reports that in Germany

There have even been calls for a special debate in the national parliament over the issue. The German state of Lower Saxony still owns around 20 percent of Volkswagen – a shareholding which has lost close to a fifth of its value since Monday morning.

But, again, as I wrote over the weekend, back in February, this is what The Guardian reported:

Europe is to become the first place in the world to force ‘real world’ emissions tests on car makers, opening up a new front in the fight to tackle air pollution.

New regulations will introduce the tests to reveal what cars’ emissions are like when driving on roads and in traffic rather than in ideal laboratory-like conditions as is currently the case, the Guardian has learned. . .

the current ‘New European Drive Cycle’ laboratory test for measuring these emissions is a quarter of a century old, and has been outpaced by technological developments in the car industry. Studies have shown that lab techniques to measure car emissions can easily be gamed with techniques such as taping up doors and windows to minimise air resistance, driving on unrealistically smooth roads, and testing at improbably high temperatures.

Campaigners say that car makers also use tricks such as programming vehicles to go into a low emissions mode when their front wheels are spinning and their back wheels are stationary, as happens in such lab experiments.  (emphasis added.)

Again, this is The Guardian, in February, citing unnamed “campaigners” who cite exactly what VW has done, as a known fact.

Has everyone had their memory wiped?  Is this a case of Emperor’s New Clothes, that no one is willing to say, “we knew this already”?

Where is the article that says, “everyone already knew that VW and/or other carmakers have a special low-emissions mode for testing”?

Where?