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Volkswagen Test Rigging Follows a Long Auto Industry Pattern

45 points by tysone 11y ago

grandalf 11y ago
Is the software actually designed to "dupe" regulators? Might there be many legitimate reasons why the emissions vs performance tradeoff might be tailored to driving conditions? Of course when the car is idling it would make sense to minimize emissions as much as possible, just as an idle CPU can utilize a lowered clock speed.
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  Do you think that VW's CEO would have resigned if this was not the case?
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    I think the VW software actually checks to see if it was in test mode, and altered emissions. Varying emissions based on load is perfectly reasonable.
    - grandalf 11y ago
      > software actually checks to see if it was in test mode, and altered emissions I saw this reported, but also saw that it actually just looks for acceleration and steering conditions often found in testing scenarios. There was no mention of whether these conditions are also found in routine use of the vehicle. Not sure which is true.
  - dustinchilson 11y ago
    I'm thinking the 25% drop in stock prices might've had more to do with it.
    - grandalf 11y ago
      Agreed. Once the accusations were made public and the stock price dipped, the optimal solution may involve the CEO stepping down... and likely goes a long way to appease regulators and deflect further scrutiny.
    - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
      Not according to him: http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/news/2015/09/Statement.html http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/ne...
- downandout 11y ago
  Apparently in the VW case, this was their specific intent. Also, limits are limits. You can't have the software allow violations of emissions limits because the driver wants to go faster at a particular point. That isn't to say that the CEO is at fault, nor would it be expected that the CEO of an enormous company with thousands of engineers would know about or direct specific engineering decisions (and in fact he denies that he knew). More likely than not, he issued unrealistic directives to the engineering team, who met the demands in the only way they could at the time. That doesn't make it right by any stretch, but that appears to be what happened.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    > You can't have the software allow violations of emissions limits because the driver wants to go faster at a particular point. It depends on how the emissions are measured. They could be measured per RPM, per mile, per gallon, per pound transported, or by any of those over time, or some basket of utilization patterns modeled after real-world use. If you slam the accelerator to the floor, the vehicle produces more emissions than if you'd continued along at a steady pace. Emissions control is a combination of active and passive systems, along with careful moderation of inputs to the engine. So it seems plausible that a complex, computer-controlled vehicle would optimize emissions vs performance by modifying many of the available variables in response to driving conditions.
    - downandout 11y ago
      >It depends on how the emissions are measured. That is certainly a good point. However in this case, the specifics of what they were doing obviously crossed the line. Normally I roll my eyes when I hear about EPA issues, given that agency's penchant for making mountains out of molehills and ravenous appetite for horrendous fines. But in this case, many rational, scientifically credible people all seem to agree that they were intentionally and egregiously violating the law.
      - grandalf 11y ago
        > scientifically credible people all seem to agree that they were intentionally doing this. That does seem to be the case. I'm curious when the dust settles if the spirit or the letter (or neither, both) of the EPA requirement was violated.
- rconti 11y ago
  From this article and every other article I've read, yes. It specifically detects when it is being tested versus normal road driving.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    I haven't seen specific proof of this, other than describing the computer as detecting a lack of steering, etc. Conditions that could also describe the car idling or being driven in real world use cases. It would seem that this point is the crux of the accusation, so I find it odd that more detail hasn't been offered.
    - wiredfool 11y ago
      They have admitted that the software detects tests.
      - grandalf 11y ago
        Was the software designed only to detect tests? Or is detecting tests (and other cases where limiting performance has no adverse consequences) a side-effect of the system's intended behavior. For instance, suppose the vehicle was programmed to shut off its engine when stopped at a stoplight. Suppose the test scenario measures emissions while stopped at a stoplight...
        wiredfool 11y ago
        All of the reports indicate that the ECUs were programmed to detect tests and enable the changes that reduce NOx emissions. The intended behaviour was to have one performance profile for emissions tests, and one for power/efficiency elsewhere. The engine shutoff feature is irrelevant, as it happens in the wild when not running emissions tests.
SlipperySlope 11y ago
Very similar to the way Intel, years ago, rigged its Pentium CPU to excel on certain industry benchmarks. http://www.classactionrebates.com/settlements/intel-pentium-4/ http://www.classactionrebates.com/settlements/intel-pentium-...
- nerdy 11y ago
  Yep, or GPU benchmark cheats back in the early 2000s
  - gravitronic 11y ago
    except for, you know, the environmental damage.
    - ChuckMcM 11y ago
      There was an interesting follow up on this which pointed out three things, one GM killed people with their ignition switch cover-up and the CEO didn't resign, the "fix" is a software patch to leave the engine controller in 'minimize emissions' mode all the time, and in spite of this 'cheat' emissions overall have come down 76% in the last 10 years. So was it more damaging that a small percentage of cars were cheating on their emissions? Yes. But how much more damaging? Not much, especially since diesel cars are a very small fraction of VW's sales in the US. Overall it is better that this group of cars were cheating as opposed to say Toyota's gasoline powered cars. The overall effect was so small it was not detected by the EPA's and CARB monitoring efforts on air quality which they model against the assumption that people are complying with the regulations.
      - at-fates-hands 11y ago
        >> Overall it is better that this group of cars were cheating as opposed to say Toyota's gasoline powered cars I'm assuming this is due to the fact diesels run cleaner than gas powered cars? This is what I've been told my whole life, so it seems this part of the scandal has been forgotten or overshadowed by the bad deeds of rigging their cars?
Theodores 11y ago
This VW scandal has done everyone a big favour. There is a chance that air pollution by all cars - petrol and diesel - will be taken that bit more seriously in the future. Anyone with the remotest interest in automobiles knows that petrol engine cat-converters do not work when cold, i.e. for the first fifteen minutes or so. Therefore all of those school runs and all of those trips to the local supermarket to pick up a few things are pollution nightmares for people with asthma. Nobody thinks this through to that conclusion, even though it is not rocket science. The real evil with diesel is the ultra small particles that are too fine for one's lungs to cough up. This has not been addressed, again, it is just the way it is and someone else's problem - maybe that asthma sufferer. This don't care attitude has history, our parents were quite happy to drive around pumping lead into the faces of children just because everyone did it. Maybe there can be a turning point here with car driving becoming the new smoking, with drivers made pariahs too. As much as VW are a remarkable company in many ways with many highly desirable products, I do hope that the lawsuits keep on coming - total bankruptcy would be just desserts. I also hope for contagion with pretty much every other car maker also given a severe grilling. As a product the car really is enemy number one as far as the environment is concerned. There is the noise, the danger, the wars for oil as well as the air pollution. Imagine how much our urban centres would be improved if every road had those rows and rows of tin boxes removed. On a recent trip to the countryside I opened a local paper. Page after page concerned road accidents. It seemed that was all there was to report. We have got to move on from these horrible little tin boxes and the filth they spew as our lives depend on it.
- ams6110 11y ago
  I would wager than statistically, internal combustion engines have saved far more lives than they've cost.
  - revscat 11y ago
    Perhaps historically, but shift your gaze forward and the opposite is likely to be true. Climate change will likely lead to the end of many millions of lives (billions?). Not to mention, of course, all the death and disease that has been caused as a result of the various pollutants produced by ICEs.
oxryly1 11y ago
Time for Consumer Reports to do emissions testing.
njharman 11y ago
This. People at work are saying this is the end of VW. The fines are so big, they will never be able to pay them. My answer is "Lawyers". VW's lawyers will argue and deal until fines, civil penalties are slaps on the wrist and written off to reduce next year's taxes. We really need corporate "death" penalty. And if by some miracle, regulators grow balls and ability to beat corporate lawyers. All the executives will ride home on golden parachutes. Company will be restructured. Business will continue as normal. Only people paying for this crime will be 11million owners of fucked up cars, thousands of "little people" workers and the Environment.
- iSnow 11y ago
  >We really need corporate "death" penalty. Well, IDK. Those who order criminal behavior are the ones higher up who have a lot of connections and will find a new job. The average worker will pay the price by being long-term unemployed. If you want the regulators and their lawyers to grow fangs, they should go after the executives and jail them. And strengthen whistleblower laws.
greendesk 11y ago
I looked for the "European Federation for Transport and Environment," which is cited to be the agency that alerted of the differences between laboratory and real world testing. I'd add the link from their website too: http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/vw%E2%80%99s-cheating-just-tip-iceberg http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/vw%E2%80%99... The reason is their expectation that (quote): "The evidence suggests he will not be the last head of a carmaker offering apologies in the next few months as other manufacturers will be found making use of “defeat devices” for tricking laboratory tests."
bluepostitnote 11y ago
I do wonder what the "fix" will be for these cars. The test drive is a quintessential part of the purchasing decision in my experience, and potentially the fix will significantly alter the drive feel.
tefo-mohapi 11y ago
Can we then rely on electric car manufacturers as they rely heavily on software? Something to ponder about as we also discuss it in this podcast http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke-as-the-south-african-government-is-set-to-investigate/ http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke-as-...

45 points by tysone 11y ago

Is the software actually designed to "dupe" regulators? Might there be many legitimate reasons why the emissions vs performance tradeoff might be tailored to driving conditions? Of course when the car is idling it would make sense to minimize emissions as much as possible, just as an idle CPU can utilize a lowered clock speed.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago
Do you think that VW's CEO would have resigned if this was not the case?
- jfoutz 11y ago
  I think the VW software actually checks to see if it was in test mode, and altered emissions. Varying emissions based on load is perfectly reasonable.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    > software actually checks to see if it was in test mode, and altered emissions I saw this reported, but also saw that it actually just looks for acceleration and steering conditions often found in testing scenarios. There was no mention of whether these conditions are also found in routine use of the vehicle. Not sure which is true.
- dustinchilson 11y ago
  I'm thinking the 25% drop in stock prices might've had more to do with it.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    Agreed. Once the accusations were made public and the stock price dipped, the optimal solution may involve the CEO stepping down... and likely goes a long way to appease regulators and deflect further scrutiny.
  - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
    Not according to him: http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/news/2015/09/Statement.html http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/ne...
downandout 11y ago
Apparently in the VW case, this was their specific intent. Also, limits are limits. You can't have the software allow violations of emissions limits because the driver wants to go faster at a particular point. That isn't to say that the CEO is at fault, nor would it be expected that the CEO of an enormous company with thousands of engineers would know about or direct specific engineering decisions (and in fact he denies that he knew). More likely than not, he issued unrealistic directives to the engineering team, who met the demands in the only way they could at the time. That doesn't make it right by any stretch, but that appears to be what happened.
- grandalf 11y ago
  > You can't have the software allow violations of emissions limits because the driver wants to go faster at a particular point. It depends on how the emissions are measured. They could be measured per RPM, per mile, per gallon, per pound transported, or by any of those over time, or some basket of utilization patterns modeled after real-world use. If you slam the accelerator to the floor, the vehicle produces more emissions than if you'd continued along at a steady pace. Emissions control is a combination of active and passive systems, along with careful moderation of inputs to the engine. So it seems plausible that a complex, computer-controlled vehicle would optimize emissions vs performance by modifying many of the available variables in response to driving conditions.
  - downandout 11y ago
    >It depends on how the emissions are measured. That is certainly a good point. However in this case, the specifics of what they were doing obviously crossed the line. Normally I roll my eyes when I hear about EPA issues, given that agency's penchant for making mountains out of molehills and ravenous appetite for horrendous fines. But in this case, many rational, scientifically credible people all seem to agree that they were intentionally and egregiously violating the law.
    - grandalf 11y ago
      > scientifically credible people all seem to agree that they were intentionally doing this. That does seem to be the case. I'm curious when the dust settles if the spirit or the letter (or neither, both) of the EPA requirement was violated.
rconti 11y ago
From this article and every other article I've read, yes. It specifically detects when it is being tested versus normal road driving.
- grandalf 11y ago
  I haven't seen specific proof of this, other than describing the computer as detecting a lack of steering, etc. Conditions that could also describe the car idling or being driven in real world use cases. It would seem that this point is the crux of the accusation, so I find it odd that more detail hasn't been offered.
  - wiredfool 11y ago
    They have admitted that the software detects tests.
    - grandalf 11y ago
      Was the software designed only to detect tests? Or is detecting tests (and other cases where limiting performance has no adverse consequences) a side-effect of the system's intended behavior. For instance, suppose the vehicle was programmed to shut off its engine when stopped at a stoplight. Suppose the test scenario measures emissions while stopped at a stoplight...
      - wiredfool 11y ago
        All of the reports indicate that the ECUs were programmed to detect tests and enable the changes that reduce NOx emissions. The intended behaviour was to have one performance profile for emissions tests, and one for power/efficiency elsewhere. The engine shutoff feature is irrelevant, as it happens in the wild when not running emissions tests.

SlipperySlope 11y ago

Very similar to the way Intel, years ago, rigged its Pentium CPU to excel on certain industry benchmarks. http://www.classactionrebates.com/settlements/intel-pentium-4/ http://www.classactionrebates.com/settlements/intel-pentium-...

nerdy 11y ago
Yep, or GPU benchmark cheats back in the early 2000s
- gravitronic 11y ago
  except for, you know, the environmental damage.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    There was an interesting follow up on this which pointed out three things, one GM killed people with their ignition switch cover-up and the CEO didn't resign, the "fix" is a software patch to leave the engine controller in 'minimize emissions' mode all the time, and in spite of this 'cheat' emissions overall have come down 76% in the last 10 years. So was it more damaging that a small percentage of cars were cheating on their emissions? Yes. But how much more damaging? Not much, especially since diesel cars are a very small fraction of VW's sales in the US. Overall it is better that this group of cars were cheating as opposed to say Toyota's gasoline powered cars. The overall effect was so small it was not detected by the EPA's and CARB monitoring efforts on air quality which they model against the assumption that people are complying with the regulations.
    - at-fates-hands 11y ago
      >> Overall it is better that this group of cars were cheating as opposed to say Toyota's gasoline powered cars I'm assuming this is due to the fact diesels run cleaner than gas powered cars? This is what I've been told my whole life, so it seems this part of the scandal has been forgotten or overshadowed by the bad deeds of rigging their cars?

Theodores 11y ago

This VW scandal has done everyone a big favour. There is a chance that air pollution by all cars - petrol and diesel - will be taken that bit more seriously in the future. Anyone with the remotest interest in automobiles knows that petrol engine cat-converters do not work when cold, i.e. for the first fifteen minutes or so. Therefore all of those school runs and all of those trips to the local supermarket to pick up a few things are pollution nightmares for people with asthma. Nobody thinks this through to that conclusion, even though it is not rocket science. The real evil with diesel is the ultra small particles that are too fine for one's lungs to cough up. This has not been addressed, again, it is just the way it is and someone else's problem - maybe that asthma sufferer. This don't care attitude has history, our parents were quite happy to drive around pumping lead into the faces of children just because everyone did it. Maybe there can be a turning point here with car driving becoming the new smoking, with drivers made pariahs too. As much as VW are a remarkable company in many ways with many highly desirable products, I do hope that the lawsuits keep on coming - total bankruptcy would be just desserts. I also hope for contagion with pretty much every other car maker also given a severe grilling. As a product the car really is enemy number one as far as the environment is concerned. There is the noise, the danger, the wars for oil as well as the air pollution. Imagine how much our urban centres would be improved if every road had those rows and rows of tin boxes removed. On a recent trip to the countryside I opened a local paper. Page after page concerned road accidents. It seemed that was all there was to report. We have got to move on from these horrible little tin boxes and the filth they spew as our lives depend on it.

ams6110 11y ago
I would wager than statistically, internal combustion engines have saved far more lives than they've cost.
- revscat 11y ago
  Perhaps historically, but shift your gaze forward and the opposite is likely to be true. Climate change will likely lead to the end of many millions of lives (billions?). Not to mention, of course, all the death and disease that has been caused as a result of the various pollutants produced by ICEs.

oxryly1 11y ago

Time for Consumer Reports to do emissions testing.

njharman 11y ago

This. People at work are saying this is the end of VW. The fines are so big, they will never be able to pay them. My answer is "Lawyers". VW's lawyers will argue and deal until fines, civil penalties are slaps on the wrist and written off to reduce next year's taxes. We really need corporate "death" penalty. And if by some miracle, regulators grow balls and ability to beat corporate lawyers. All the executives will ride home on golden parachutes. Company will be restructured. Business will continue as normal. Only people paying for this crime will be 11million owners of fucked up cars, thousands of "little people" workers and the Environment.

iSnow 11y ago
>We really need corporate "death" penalty. Well, IDK. Those who order criminal behavior are the ones higher up who have a lot of connections and will find a new job. The average worker will pay the price by being long-term unemployed. If you want the regulators and their lawyers to grow fangs, they should go after the executives and jail them. And strengthen whistleblower laws.

greendesk 11y ago

I looked for the "European Federation for Transport and Environment," which is cited to be the agency that alerted of the differences between laboratory and real world testing. I'd add the link from their website too: http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/vw%E2%80%99s-cheating-just-tip-iceberg http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/vw%E2%80%99... The reason is their expectation that (quote): "The evidence suggests he will not be the last head of a carmaker offering apologies in the next few months as other manufacturers will be found making use of “defeat devices” for tricking laboratory tests."

bluepostitnote 11y ago

I do wonder what the "fix" will be for these cars. The test drive is a quintessential part of the purchasing decision in my experience, and potentially the fix will significantly alter the drive feel.

tefo-mohapi 11y ago

Can we then rely on electric car manufacturers as they rely heavily on software? Something to ponder about as we also discuss it in this podcast http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke-as-the-south-african-government-is-set-to-investigate/ http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke-as-...