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Totally agree. But I'm having a hard time believing anyone explicitely ordered to make such a device. It would get caught soon or later anyway, right? I fail t

by fla 11y ago

Totally agree. But I'm having a hard time believing anyone explicitely ordered to make such a device. It would get caught soon or later anyway, right? I fail to see how a big corp like this could not see the impact. Why take such a stupid risk?

onewaystreet 11y ago
Looking at past scandals like this it's usually the result of someone promising results that they can't deliver until they are faced with the career-ending choice of admitting their mistakes or committing fraud.
- madez 11y ago
  But this was not done by one person. How can't someone who was developing that software report such an important issue to Wolfsburg?
  - onewaystreet 11y ago
    People will go along with things for a lot of reasons. Threats, bribery, the "I do what I'm told" mentality etc.
- fla 11y ago
  This may sound crazy, but this reminds me the behavior of a self-optimizing system. Too many people work on little parts of it, nobody sees the big picture. Everybody applies the 'spec' blindly. At the end you get something that becomes very good at explotiing loopholes by 'itself'. It's a side effect. I mean, your sunday-afternoon genetic algorithm would do the same kind of things :)
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    If no one has the big picture, systems engineering is not doing its job. Systems engineering is supposed to flow the top-level specs down to the various teams, If those teams have issues with their requirements, they flow that back up. That is, of course, easier said than done. I have had to deal with my share of unrealistic flow-downs and unsympathetic systems engineers. In this particular case at VW the most likely root cause was a team that had a flow-down they couldn't meet honestly and couldn't change, so they cheated their way around it.
- lagadu 11y ago
  I'd say it was made as a temporary fix, until they could get emissions to the target levels and it was just left there, forgotten.
rtpg 11y ago
well, if the original idea is that it would only be for this year's model, someone could have enough suspension of disbelief to feel it's safe Humans are notoriously bad at risk judgement for this kind of thing. Basically the adult equivalent of "If I can't see you, you can't see me"
rhino369 11y ago
Typically this sort of corporate cheating is done by a single person or group of people acting on their own. But this cheating seems surprisingly coordinated.

by fla 11y ago

onewaystreet 11y ago

Looking at past scandals like this it's usually the result of someone promising results that they can't deliver until they are faced with the career-ending choice of admitting their mistakes or committing fraud.

madez 11y ago
But this was not done by one person. How can't someone who was developing that software report such an important issue to Wolfsburg?
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  People will go along with things for a lot of reasons. Threats, bribery, the "I do what I'm told" mentality etc.
fla 11y ago
This may sound crazy, but this reminds me the behavior of a self-optimizing system. Too many people work on little parts of it, nobody sees the big picture. Everybody applies the 'spec' blindly. At the end you get something that becomes very good at explotiing loopholes by 'itself'. It's a side effect. I mean, your sunday-afternoon genetic algorithm would do the same kind of things :)
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  If no one has the big picture, systems engineering is not doing its job. Systems engineering is supposed to flow the top-level specs down to the various teams, If those teams have issues with their requirements, they flow that back up. That is, of course, easier said than done. I have had to deal with my share of unrealistic flow-downs and unsympathetic systems engineers. In this particular case at VW the most likely root cause was a team that had a flow-down they couldn't meet honestly and couldn't change, so they cheated their way around it.
lagadu 11y ago
I'd say it was made as a temporary fix, until they could get emissions to the target levels and it was just left there, forgotten.

rtpg 11y ago

well, if the original idea is that it would only be for this year's model, someone could have enough suspension of disbelief to feel it's safe Humans are notoriously bad at risk judgement for this kind of thing. Basically the adult equivalent of "If I can't see you, you can't see me"

rhino369 11y ago

Typically this sort of corporate cheating is done by a single person or group of people acting on their own. But this cheating seems surprisingly coordinated.