I'm still waiting for the smoking gun of actual code that detects a testing cycle and changes the operational parameters in a way different from the way paramet

I'm still waiting for the smoking gun of actual code that detects a testing cycle and changes the operational parameters in a way different from the way parameters are adjusted normally for different operating ranges. Optimizing for test cases is rampant in the car industry. Nobody who has owned a GM car in the OBD II era has ever said "Wow, I get better MPGs than the EPA rating!" Heck, I'd be thrilled if any GM I'd ever owned came close on the highway doing 55 with the cruise control on. One of my GM's had something called Active Fuel Management. Cylinder deactivation. In normal driving it rarely comes on, but when it did there would be an annoying vibration and hum from the exhaust that would make you give the car more throttle in order to make it stop. My real-world MPGs sucked but apparently that anti-feature boosted GM's numbers for MPG and CAFE purposes. Another GM car I currently own with a manual transmission forces a 1 -> 4 shift if I attempt to shift from 1st below certain throttle position and RPM thresholds. Out on an actual road, even with a giant V8, lugging around in 4th gear at 1,000 RPM is an undesirable condition. Naturally I do my best not to let that happen by applying my foot to the throttle, but somehow, again, this anti-feature improves the government numbers while I average 18MPGs on a mostly highway cruising commute and much less in stop-and-go city driving. How are these GM anti-features any different from what VW has admitted? In the GM case the cars very obviously are detecting conditions within a test cycle and causing the car to operate in a manner undesirable to the driver, and which will cause the driver to alter their behavior to avoid them. Is what VW did so blatantly obvious to a driver? What's the legal distinction? Where's the smoking gun code piece of code that makes their actions a "Defeat Device"? On the premise of this article, the whole automotive testing industry is optimized around testing to the government standards. Just like No Child Left Behind has our teachers "Teaching to the Test", the automotive industry is "Testing to the Test." Nobody has any motivation to care about, or even look at, what happens outside of the test parameters. No grand conspiracy is necessary for this to have gone undetected or ignored. If the government considers this a problem then the solution is to create more tests that better simulate real-world driving conditions.