On Friday, The Obama administration instructed Volkswagen to recall approximately 500,000 vehicles due to a software Volkswagen purposely designed to avoid the environmental standards for smog reduction.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued Volkswagen a notice of violation and made accusations that they illegally place software in their vehicles that is known as a “defeat device” in specially 4 –cylinder Volkswagen’s and Audi’s spanning from 2009-15.

This specific device is essentially programmed to sense when a car is in the midst of official emissions testing and to automatically turn on the full emission control systems during the specific time testing is being done.  As for normal driving conditions, these controls are turned off therefore causing the vehicles to pollute a lot more than is being reported from the manufacturer.

This notice of violation given to Volkswagen is part of a much bigger and more aggressive enforcement effort on the auto industry by the federal environmental regulators.  According to analysts, the intention for this was to send a clear message to automakers they will be reap the repercussion for compromising federal rules.