9 ms·

VW Presentation in 2006 Showed How to Foil Emissions Tests

129 points by abhi3 11y ago

abhi3 11y ago
It increasingly seems that the cheating at Volkswagon was systematic and not the fault of rouge engineers as they claim.
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't rewrite titles when the original is neither misleading nor linkbait. This is a rule here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The submitted title was "Volkswagen seriously made a PowerPoint deck on how to cheat emissions tests". That's more linkbait, which is driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
  - abhi3 11y ago
    Got it, thanks for correcting it.
  - stevesearer 11y ago
    It might be a good idea to link to or explain submission title rules on the submit page as most new submitters probably won't go looking for the Guidelines page. Many new users could be coming from forums or sites where editorializing headlines it the norm and/or expected.
- imglorp 11y ago
  Yeah, we knew as soon as they said it. Any product feature like that would most likely need to be known to a number of teams such as marketing, engineering, production, documentation, compliance, supply chain, QA, tooling, support, or whatever they call those inside VW. So many teams would be coordinated by a pretty high level exec. source: rogue engineer
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  It's an interesting case study in regulations not being complied with. I guess the lawmakers expected the car companies to take the financial and performance hit to meet the emissions standard. Instead the car companies cheated. I imagine governments will be more careful in checking manufacturers are actually meeting standards after this.
  - ThePaco 11y ago
    Or maybe they'll realize it's not too effective to tell companies how to make their products.
    - jjawssd 11y ago
      Are you implying that we should abolish pollution restrictions on car manufacturers?
      - Sharlin 11y ago
        Free market is so well-known for handling negative externalities well...
      - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        Not necessarily, no.
    - mikestew 11y ago
      Right, because the air in Los Angeles is barely breathable, just as it was in the 70s. Wait, I got that wrong; the air in L. A. isn't too bad these days. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, the effectiveness of regulations. On that topic, now I'm not saying there's direct cause-and-effect here, but...
      - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
        Cleaner air in LA is primarily due to two technological breakthroughs: positive crankcase ventilation, and catalytic converters. That's the proper way to do regulations: once a cleaner tech is invented, make it mandatory. The other way around, mandating a steady decrease de-coupled from technological advances, is more likely to lead to cheating.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kuschku 11y ago
  Of course it was. The day it was announced the CEO stepped down, said he knew of it, and assumed responsibility. I’m not sure where the "rogue engineers" myth comes from, but VW Germany said on day one that it was top-level managers involved in it.
  - wzdd 11y ago
    The '"rogue engineers" myth' comes from the CEO of VW USA. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-theory-of-the-volkswagen-scandal http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-th... Edit: The rest of your comment is false. The day the news came out, Winterkorn posted a video acknowledging the problem but not mentioning resignation -- he did not resign that day. And when he did resign, he explicitly said that he was not aware of any wrongdoing on his part. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/volkswagen-chief-martin-winterkorn-resigns-amid-emissions-scandal.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/vol...
    - kuschku 11y ago
      That's an interesting translation. He said he took the responsibility, but was unaware of wrongdoing when he resigned (I read the original announcement). So, no, my comment isn't false — but yours isn't either.
edejong 11y ago
When a company willingly and knowingly foils rules put in place to increase lifespan and reduce the death toll of cancer due to air pollution, shouldn't these top-executives be charged with mass murder? Why can't we compare this with a war crime? Millions of healthy life-span-years could have been lost due to these acts.
- pkulak 11y ago
  Because most people make decisions with a bit of perspective. Trucks (I'm not talking semis, really anything over 6000 pounds, I think) are still allowed far more emissions than any VW diesel car, and anything built before the new law went into place is still on the road doing it's carcinogenic thing. Any car company is in the business of polluting the hell out of the environment (save Tesla, unless you watch a lot of Fox News). VW polluted a little bit more than they were allowed to for a few years and the executives are "mass murderers"? That's a hell of a president.
  - ythl 11y ago
    Even Tesla has a significant environmental impact with its massive Lithium footprint
  - edejong 11y ago
    It is likely they have broken rules for far longer (25 years perhaps? [1]). And after we (as in, we the tax payers, who pay for all the health bills) have asked scientifically grounded questions, strict rules were put in place. Rules that deal with life and death... Rules that reflect the severe impact on us, our surroundings, our planet. It can be expected of an academic executive that the basis of these rules lie in extending our (healthy) life span. It can be expected thusly, that the decision of knowingly breaking these rules by 10- to 40-fold, will have cost the lives of thousands world wide [2]. This is not a victimless crime. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/26/news/companies/mitsubishi-cheating-fuel-tests-25-years/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/26/news/companies/mitsubishi-ch... [2] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vw-pollution-footprint-20151007-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vw-pollution-footprint...
  - 11y ago
Aelinsaar 11y ago
This level of criminality requires some kind of response, or really, lets just drop the idea of crime as a concept and just monetize "justice". At least we could dispense with some of the more galling hypocrisy, without changing how the system works one iota.
- pcurve 11y ago
  It explains why the CEO stepped down so quickly. He knew full well what led up to the scandal and there was no surviving what's to come.
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    vw still tried some good ole blame-shifting at the beginning http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSKBN0TT14V20151210 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSK...
    - tim333 11y ago
      They're still claiming top management was unaware according to the NYT article, which seems a little improbable.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  Indeed, one wonders why the government (of the US or of Germany) continues to tolerate the existence of this company at all. They've clearly conspired at the executive level to mislead regulators. The corporation is a figment of the government's imagination. It seems like the government should just stop imagining it.
  - Aelinsaar 11y ago
    Exactly. If private citizens tried fraud on this scale they'd be in prison until they died. Surely dissolution is the least that VW deserves at this point.
mjfern 11y ago
Yes, the defeat device VW employed for emissions is an environmental tragedy, but this is just a symptom of a much more central issue. That is, VW was actively promoting technical and business leaders that lacked any sort of moral compass. How can we have faith in global corporations and their (grossly overpaid) leaders if these are the choices they're making and the examples they're setting?
- colechristensen 11y ago
  The 'trust but verify' model of your morality was broken. If you give the opportunity to cheat, there will be cheaters. The emissions tests were bad and made it easy to cheat. Providing an environment which makes cheating easy and profitable is just as morally corrupt as the cheating itself, and entirely more predictable and preventable. Solve solvable problems like bad testing and not unsolvable problems like unscrupulous businessmen.
  - acranox 11y ago
    "Providing an environment which makes cheating easy and profitable is just as morally corrupt as the cheating itself" No, it isn't. This is called victim blaming. It is like saying not locking your door is as morally corrupt as the thieves that walked into your unlocked house. We create standards for emissions. And companies should comply with the tests even without the need for tests. We expect people should follow the laws, and we should use the minimal amount of enforcement to get compliance. But it's silly to blame the epa for poor tests. The vault is with VW for selling cars that didn't comply with emissions standards.
    - mjfern 11y ago
      Well said, and in addition to asking leaders to abide by the law, why aren't we holding our leaders to some kind of moral standard? I just can't believe that we need laws to prevent executives from choosing to elevate their careers (and companies) by committing crimes against humanity.
      - 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
Those Germans, always meticulous in their record keeping. It amazes me what people will upload to a server and communicate through email. If whistle-blowing hadn't been as under attack as it is I'm certain a lot of other companies would be found to have been knowingly violating laws in order to squeeze additional profit.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tonylemesmer 11y ago
Its common for competing companies to test each other's products as a benchmark for their own. So all of these companies will have known that other companies were doing the same and no-one said anything. That's thousands of people.
w_t_payne 11y ago
I feel that this is only the first of a series of scandals in which respectable companies and institutions will be found to have done nefarious and harmful things: attempting to secrete their misdeeds in the seemingly impenetrable and arcane minutiae of everyday software.
yeureka 11y ago
I bought a new car in March and I really wanted to get a VW. But the behaviour of VW's executives in this matter completely put me off the brand. I feel sorry for the factory workers and the people who have nothing to do with this, but it will take a while until I will trust VW again.

129 points by abhi3 11y ago

abhi3 11y ago

It increasingly seems that the cheating at Volkswagon was systematic and not the fault of rouge engineers as they claim.

dang 11y ago
Please don't rewrite titles when the original is neither misleading nor linkbait. This is a rule here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The submitted title was "Volkswagen seriously made a PowerPoint deck on how to cheat emissions tests". That's more linkbait, which is driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
- abhi3 11y ago
  Got it, thanks for correcting it.
- stevesearer 11y ago
  It might be a good idea to link to or explain submission title rules on the submit page as most new submitters probably won't go looking for the Guidelines page. Many new users could be coming from forums or sites where editorializing headlines it the norm and/or expected.
imglorp 11y ago
Yeah, we knew as soon as they said it. Any product feature like that would most likely need to be known to a number of teams such as marketing, engineering, production, documentation, compliance, supply chain, QA, tooling, support, or whatever they call those inside VW. So many teams would be coordinated by a pretty high level exec. source: rogue engineer
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
It's an interesting case study in regulations not being complied with. I guess the lawmakers expected the car companies to take the financial and performance hit to meet the emissions standard. Instead the car companies cheated. I imagine governments will be more careful in checking manufacturers are actually meeting standards after this.
- ThePaco 11y ago
  Or maybe they'll realize it's not too effective to tell companies how to make their products.
  - jjawssd 11y ago
    Are you implying that we should abolish pollution restrictions on car manufacturers?
    - Sharlin 11y ago
      Free market is so well-known for handling negative externalities well...
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      Not necessarily, no.
  - mikestew 11y ago
    Right, because the air in Los Angeles is barely breathable, just as it was in the 70s. Wait, I got that wrong; the air in L. A. isn't too bad these days. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, the effectiveness of regulations. On that topic, now I'm not saying there's direct cause-and-effect here, but...
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      Cleaner air in LA is primarily due to two technological breakthroughs: positive crankcase ventilation, and catalytic converters. That's the proper way to do regulations: once a cleaner tech is invented, make it mandatory. The other way around, mandating a steady decrease de-coupled from technological advances, is more likely to lead to cheating.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kuschku 11y ago
Of course it was. The day it was announced the CEO stepped down, said he knew of it, and assumed responsibility. I’m not sure where the "rogue engineers" myth comes from, but VW Germany said on day one that it was top-level managers involved in it.
- wzdd 11y ago
  The '"rogue engineers" myth' comes from the CEO of VW USA. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-theory-of-the-volkswagen-scandal http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-th... Edit: The rest of your comment is false. The day the news came out, Winterkorn posted a video acknowledging the problem but not mentioning resignation -- he did not resign that day. And when he did resign, he explicitly said that he was not aware of any wrongdoing on his part. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/volkswagen-chief-martin-winterkorn-resigns-amid-emissions-scandal.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/vol...
  - kuschku 11y ago
    That's an interesting translation. He said he took the responsibility, but was unaware of wrongdoing when he resigned (I read the original announcement). So, no, my comment isn't false — but yours isn't either.

edejong 11y ago

When a company willingly and knowingly foils rules put in place to increase lifespan and reduce the death toll of cancer due to air pollution, shouldn't these top-executives be charged with mass murder? Why can't we compare this with a war crime? Millions of healthy life-span-years could have been lost due to these acts.

pkulak 11y ago
Because most people make decisions with a bit of perspective. Trucks (I'm not talking semis, really anything over 6000 pounds, I think) are still allowed far more emissions than any VW diesel car, and anything built before the new law went into place is still on the road doing it's carcinogenic thing. Any car company is in the business of polluting the hell out of the environment (save Tesla, unless you watch a lot of Fox News). VW polluted a little bit more than they were allowed to for a few years and the executives are "mass murderers"? That's a hell of a president.
- ythl 11y ago
  Even Tesla has a significant environmental impact with its massive Lithium footprint
- edejong 11y ago
  It is likely they have broken rules for far longer (25 years perhaps? [1]). And after we (as in, we the tax payers, who pay for all the health bills) have asked scientifically grounded questions, strict rules were put in place. Rules that deal with life and death... Rules that reflect the severe impact on us, our surroundings, our planet. It can be expected of an academic executive that the basis of these rules lie in extending our (healthy) life span. It can be expected thusly, that the decision of knowingly breaking these rules by 10- to 40-fold, will have cost the lives of thousands world wide [2]. This is not a victimless crime. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/26/news/companies/mitsubishi-cheating-fuel-tests-25-years/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/26/news/companies/mitsubishi-ch... [2] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vw-pollution-footprint-20151007-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vw-pollution-footprint...
- 11y ago

Aelinsaar 11y ago

This level of criminality requires some kind of response, or really, lets just drop the idea of crime as a concept and just monetize "justice". At least we could dispense with some of the more galling hypocrisy, without changing how the system works one iota.

pcurve 11y ago
It explains why the CEO stepped down so quickly. He knew full well what led up to the scandal and there was no surviving what's to come.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  vw still tried some good ole blame-shifting at the beginning http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSKBN0TT14V20151210 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSK...
  - tim333 11y ago
    They're still claiming top management was unaware according to the NYT article, which seems a little improbable.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
Indeed, one wonders why the government (of the US or of Germany) continues to tolerate the existence of this company at all. They've clearly conspired at the executive level to mislead regulators. The corporation is a figment of the government's imagination. It seems like the government should just stop imagining it.
- Aelinsaar 11y ago
  Exactly. If private citizens tried fraud on this scale they'd be in prison until they died. Surely dissolution is the least that VW deserves at this point.

mjfern 11y ago

Yes, the defeat device VW employed for emissions is an environmental tragedy, but this is just a symptom of a much more central issue. That is, VW was actively promoting technical and business leaders that lacked any sort of moral compass. How can we have faith in global corporations and their (grossly overpaid) leaders if these are the choices they're making and the examples they're setting?

colechristensen 11y ago
The 'trust but verify' model of your morality was broken. If you give the opportunity to cheat, there will be cheaters. The emissions tests were bad and made it easy to cheat. Providing an environment which makes cheating easy and profitable is just as morally corrupt as the cheating itself, and entirely more predictable and preventable. Solve solvable problems like bad testing and not unsolvable problems like unscrupulous businessmen.
- acranox 11y ago
  "Providing an environment which makes cheating easy and profitable is just as morally corrupt as the cheating itself" No, it isn't. This is called victim blaming. It is like saying not locking your door is as morally corrupt as the thieves that walked into your unlocked house. We create standards for emissions. And companies should comply with the tests even without the need for tests. We expect people should follow the laws, and we should use the minimal amount of enforcement to get compliance. But it's silly to blame the epa for poor tests. The vault is with VW for selling cars that didn't comply with emissions standards.
  - mjfern 11y ago
    Well said, and in addition to asking leaders to abide by the law, why aren't we holding our leaders to some kind of moral standard? I just can't believe that we need laws to prevent executives from choosing to elevate their careers (and companies) by committing crimes against humanity.
    - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago

Those Germans, always meticulous in their record keeping. It amazes me what people will upload to a server and communicate through email. If whistle-blowing hadn't been as under attack as it is I'm certain a lot of other companies would be found to have been knowingly violating laws in order to squeeze additional profit.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tonylemesmer 11y ago

Its common for competing companies to test each other's products as a benchmark for their own. So all of these companies will have known that other companies were doing the same and no-one said anything. That's thousands of people.

w_t_payne 11y ago

I feel that this is only the first of a series of scandals in which respectable companies and institutions will be found to have done nefarious and harmful things: attempting to secrete their misdeeds in the seemingly impenetrable and arcane minutiae of everyday software.

yeureka 11y ago

I bought a new car in March and I really wanted to get a VW. But the behaviour of VW's executives in this matter completely put me off the brand. I feel sorry for the factory workers and the people who have nothing to do with this, but it will take a while until I will trust VW again.