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The amount of logic that went into this program just so Volkswagen wouldn't have to lessen their emissions seems...illogical. Did it really cost less to build,

The amount of logic that went into this program just so Volkswagen wouldn't have to lessen their emissions seems...illogical. Did it really cost less to build, QA and deploy this software (and keep it under wraps for this long) than it would have to just fix the damn engines?!

InclinedPlane 11y ago
Looking at it holistically, it seems pretty obvious that something like this would happen eventually. Look at the history. There have always been concerted efforts to game the standards as much as possible. In Europe where the standards are laxer there have been lots of dirty tricks employed for a long time. For example, you use a special test car for the emissions testing. One that has an engine lubricated by extraordinarily expensive, specialized lubricants. One that uses over inflated, slick tires. And so on. Taking every inch possible. Transitioning from that sort of behavior of playing chicken with the standards to outright subverting them is not nearly as drastic a change in behavior as going from purely lawfully abiding by the strict letter of the standards to deciding to smash them to pieces the next day. Not to mention that the fact that automakers have been gaming the system by inches for so long and getting away with it almost certainly led to a widespread belief that automakers could get away with much, much more, as well as perhaps taking the standards bodies less seriously. Once they began down that road, they probably didn't realize how severely the actual emissions would differ from the "fooling the test" mode to normal driving mode. And as they tuned the performance of the vehicle the divergence would simply grow to the limit of the system, which turned out to be enormous (up to 40x). I highly doubt that anyone at any stage was fully aware, until perhaps very late in the process, that the divergence was so large. But by then they were committed. Many poor decisions often result from such incremental processes.
- hvidgaard 11y ago
  When they test the efficiency of new cars, it's fairly obvious that it serves only as a comparison between different cars, and it does not translate to real world experience. I really wish that companies was required to perform the tests with a car only as it is sold to the customers.
adrianpike 11y ago
Physics is a cruel mistress.
phire 11y ago
The problem is that lower emissions leads to lower MPG. Volkswagen wanted the best of both worlds, Low emissions and high MPG, so they changed their settings based on what was being tested. This allowed them to sell their cars with much higher MPG ratings while still passing the emission standards test.
mpweiher 11y ago
I sincerely doubt that. Please remember that the engine control software is already there, doing exactly the same thing in normal operation: adjusting the engine settings to produce optimal results for the current driving situation. For example, the mix should certainly be different when the car is stationary (sitting at an intersection), than when accelerating or going full throttle. There is nothing underhanded about this, quite the contrary, it is a Good Thing™. Once you have knobs to turn, the temptation to turn them just a little too far is always great, especially if you have conflicting goals. On the one hand, you are supposed to reduce CO2 emissions, which having great mileage does, on the other hand you are supposed to reduce NOX emissions. So you fiddle. And car companies have always fiddled with any knob they could to get performance and always pushed it as far as they could. For example, this particular problem has been known for some time and was tolerated, see http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146711288/Die-Bundesregierung-kannte-die-Betrueger-Technik.html http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146711288/Die-... or http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=ab029b73 http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=ab029b73 (German). Furthermore, manipulating the catalytic converters has also been long-standing industry practice, I found a Toyota forum post complaining about the practice from 2003, also in German: http://www.toyota-forum.de/threads/kat-schaltet-unter-vollast-aus.27911/ http://www.toyota-forum.de/threads/kat-schaltet-unter-vollas... However, I remember those discussions from the late 80ies and early 90ies. So if everyone is doing it (they are) and have been for a while (they have) why now and why Volkswagen? Your guess is as good as mine, but the EPA needed a win after some bad publicity, and going after a US manufacturer probably wouldn't have been quite as politic. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-22/dear-volkswagen-was-your-biggest-mistake http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-22/dear-volkswagen-was... Also remember that even one single Barbecue grill or wood-fired stove/fireplace (even the "green" pellet-based ones) emits more of the pollutants in question than a thousand of these cars. So maybe a little perspective may be in order... UPDATE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10265534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10265534 has more links indicating how widespread this is (apparently all the french car manufacturers)
- learc83 11y ago
  >Also remember that even one single Barbecue grill or wood-fired stove/fireplace (even the "green" pellet-based ones) emits more of the pollutants in question than a thousand of these cars. So maybe a little perspective may be in order... If we we're talking about the same study, the 1,000 cars thing is talking only about particle pollutants not C02 and NOX. Also that study had to tweak the numbers a bit to get to 1,000 cars. They said that wood burning stoves produce 150g of particle pollutants per 4 hours. While new cars only produce 0.15g per 30 kilometers driven. A car will normally drive much more than 30 kilometers in 4 hours. >(even the "green" pellet-based ones) A quick look here http://www2.epa.gov/residential-wood-heaters/fact-sheet-summary-requirements-woodstoves-and-pellet-stoves http://www2.epa.gov/residential-wood-heaters/fact-sheet-summ... shows that as of this year all residential wood heaters have to emit no more than 4.5g of particle pollutants per hour. So either all new wood burning stoves are illegal or you can in fact buy "green" wood burning stoves that produce way less particle pollutants per hour than 1,000 cars. Edit: This link http://www.burningissues.org/comp-emmis-part-sources.htm http://www.burningissues.org/comp-emmis-part-sources.htm Shows that the average pellet burning, (and even EPA certified) wood burning stoves release much, much less than 150g of particle pollutants per hour.
function_seven 11y ago
Just like "good, fast, cheap: pick two" there's a similar rule in automotive tuning: "Fast, efficient, clean: pick two" VW decided to go for all three.
- chao- 11y ago
  That's an interesting comparison. What would it mean, from a mechanical or chemical perspective, for an engine (or the whole car?) to be both very fast and very clean, but not efficient? Does not the inefficiency also lead to a lessening of cleanliness? I know that would probably require defining "clean" as distinct from "efficient", I simply know very little about cars and so the fast+clean idea feels a little off, and I'd like to know where I'm wrong.
  - ars 11y ago
    > and very clean, but not efficient ... Does not the inefficiency also lead to a lessening of cleanliness Not at all. You can burn tons of fuel, while making no pollution at all. It might not be efficient, but it will be clean. In a car, they use some of the energy to clean the waste product of burning the fuel, so that all that comes out is Water and CO2. But it costs energy to do this cleaning, it's easier not to. For an internal combustion engine higher temperature means more efficient, but higher temperature also makes more NoX (i.e. nitrogen that burned in air). So you can lower the temperature, or try to clean the exhaust.
  - function_seven 11y ago
    > Does not the inefficiency also lead to a lessening of cleanliness? All depends on what we're measuring. In the case of VW, it's the NOx limits that they were cheating on. In order to reduce NOx, you can run a richer air/fuel mixture, which consumes more fuel and is thus inefficient. If you're instead talking about C02, then you're generally right. Efficiency and cleanliness are aligned. And my original comment could probably be rephrased as, "fast, clean, efficient, reliable, cheap: pick any three". But that doesn't have zing to it :-)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Looking at it holistically, it seems pretty obvious that something like this would happen eventually. Look at the history. There have always been concerted efforts to game the standards as much as possible. In Europe where the standards are laxer there have been lots of dirty tricks employed for a long time. For example, you use a special test car for the emissions testing. One that has an engine lubricated by extraordinarily expensive, specialized lubricants. One that uses over inflated, slick tires. And so on. Taking every inch possible. Transitioning from that sort of behavior of playing chicken with the standards to outright subverting them is not nearly as drastic a change in behavior as going from purely lawfully abiding by the strict letter of the standards to deciding to smash them to pieces the next day. Not to mention that the fact that automakers have been gaming the system by inches for so long and getting away with it almost certainly led to a widespread belief that automakers could get away with much, much more, as well as perhaps taking the standards bodies less seriously. Once they began down that road, they probably didn't realize how severely the actual emissions would differ from the "fooling the test" mode to normal driving mode. And as they tuned the performance of the vehicle the divergence would simply grow to the limit of the system, which turned out to be enormous (up to 40x). I highly doubt that anyone at any stage was fully aware, until perhaps very late in the process, that the divergence was so large. But by then they were committed. Many poor decisions often result from such incremental processes.

hvidgaard 11y ago
When they test the efficiency of new cars, it's fairly obvious that it serves only as a comparison between different cars, and it does not translate to real world experience. I really wish that companies was required to perform the tests with a car only as it is sold to the customers.

adrianpike 11y ago

Physics is a cruel mistress.

phire 11y ago

The problem is that lower emissions leads to lower MPG. Volkswagen wanted the best of both worlds, Low emissions and high MPG, so they changed their settings based on what was being tested. This allowed them to sell their cars with much higher MPG ratings while still passing the emission standards test.

mpweiher 11y ago

I sincerely doubt that. Please remember that the engine control software is already there, doing exactly the same thing in normal operation: adjusting the engine settings to produce optimal results for the current driving situation. For example, the mix should certainly be different when the car is stationary (sitting at an intersection), than when accelerating or going full throttle. There is nothing underhanded about this, quite the contrary, it is a Good Thing™. Once you have knobs to turn, the temptation to turn them just a little too far is always great, especially if you have conflicting goals. On the one hand, you are supposed to reduce CO2 emissions, which having great mileage does, on the other hand you are supposed to reduce NOX emissions. So you fiddle. And car companies have always fiddled with any knob they could to get performance and always pushed it as far as they could. For example, this particular problem has been known for some time and was tolerated, see http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146711288/Die-Bundesregierung-kannte-die-Betrueger-Technik.html http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146711288/Die-... or http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=ab029b73 http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=ab029b73 (German). Furthermore, manipulating the catalytic converters has also been long-standing industry practice, I found a Toyota forum post complaining about the practice from 2003, also in German: http://www.toyota-forum.de/threads/kat-schaltet-unter-vollast-aus.27911/ http://www.toyota-forum.de/threads/kat-schaltet-unter-vollas... However, I remember those discussions from the late 80ies and early 90ies. So if everyone is doing it (they are) and have been for a while (they have) why now and why Volkswagen? Your guess is as good as mine, but the EPA needed a win after some bad publicity, and going after a US manufacturer probably wouldn't have been quite as politic. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-22/dear-volkswagen-was-your-biggest-mistake http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-22/dear-volkswagen-was... Also remember that even one single Barbecue grill or wood-fired stove/fireplace (even the "green" pellet-based ones) emits more of the pollutants in question than a thousand of these cars. So maybe a little perspective may be in order... UPDATE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10265534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10265534 has more links indicating how widespread this is (apparently all the french car manufacturers)

learc83 11y ago
>Also remember that even one single Barbecue grill or wood-fired stove/fireplace (even the "green" pellet-based ones) emits more of the pollutants in question than a thousand of these cars. So maybe a little perspective may be in order... If we we're talking about the same study, the 1,000 cars thing is talking only about particle pollutants not C02 and NOX. Also that study had to tweak the numbers a bit to get to 1,000 cars. They said that wood burning stoves produce 150g of particle pollutants per 4 hours. While new cars only produce 0.15g per 30 kilometers driven. A car will normally drive much more than 30 kilometers in 4 hours. >(even the "green" pellet-based ones) A quick look here http://www2.epa.gov/residential-wood-heaters/fact-sheet-summary-requirements-woodstoves-and-pellet-stoves http://www2.epa.gov/residential-wood-heaters/fact-sheet-summ... shows that as of this year all residential wood heaters have to emit no more than 4.5g of particle pollutants per hour. So either all new wood burning stoves are illegal or you can in fact buy "green" wood burning stoves that produce way less particle pollutants per hour than 1,000 cars. Edit: This link http://www.burningissues.org/comp-emmis-part-sources.htm http://www.burningissues.org/comp-emmis-part-sources.htm Shows that the average pellet burning, (and even EPA certified) wood burning stoves release much, much less than 150g of particle pollutants per hour.

function_seven 11y ago

Just like "good, fast, cheap: pick two" there's a similar rule in automotive tuning: "Fast, efficient, clean: pick two" VW decided to go for all three.

chao- 11y ago
That's an interesting comparison. What would it mean, from a mechanical or chemical perspective, for an engine (or the whole car?) to be both very fast and very clean, but not efficient? Does not the inefficiency also lead to a lessening of cleanliness? I know that would probably require defining "clean" as distinct from "efficient", I simply know very little about cars and so the fast+clean idea feels a little off, and I'd like to know where I'm wrong.
- ars 11y ago
  > and very clean, but not efficient ... Does not the inefficiency also lead to a lessening of cleanliness Not at all. You can burn tons of fuel, while making no pollution at all. It might not be efficient, but it will be clean. In a car, they use some of the energy to clean the waste product of burning the fuel, so that all that comes out is Water and CO2. But it costs energy to do this cleaning, it's easier not to. For an internal combustion engine higher temperature means more efficient, but higher temperature also makes more NoX (i.e. nitrogen that burned in air). So you can lower the temperature, or try to clean the exhaust.
- function_seven 11y ago
  > Does not the inefficiency also lead to a lessening of cleanliness? All depends on what we're measuring. In the case of VW, it's the NOx limits that they were cheating on. In order to reduce NOx, you can run a richer air/fuel mixture, which consumes more fuel and is thus inefficient. If you're instead talking about C02, then you're generally right. Efficiency and cleanliness are aligned. And my original comment could probably be rephrased as, "fast, clean, efficient, reliable, cheap: pick any three". But that doesn't have zing to it :-)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]