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If you've ever been near a major automaker's test engineering lab, you quickly realize that ~all of them are doing shady things to hit their numbers. This is a

by avn2109 10y ago

If you've ever been near a major automaker's test engineering lab, you quickly realize that ~all of them are doing shady things to hit their numbers. This is a result of the cold hard engineering fact that our current level of technology is insufficient to hit the numbers without raising costs significantly. But once one automaker starts to fudge the numbers at a given price point, all the others must do the same thing or they fall behind. Being honest might add hundreds or thousands of dollars to the dealer cost of a family sedan, which is an absolute dealbreaker when your rivals are getting the same benefit by just lying. There's a spectrum from shady-but-nearly-defensible to absolute lies, and different manufacturers fall on the spectrum at different points. One that comes to mind is Mitsubishi [0], but there have been others. And as you suggest, there will be plenty more in the future. [0] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/26/news/companies/mitsubishi-cheating-fuel-tests-25-years/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/26/news/companies/mitsubishi-ch...

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
As someone who manufactures automotive test equipment, please apply a bit of Occam's razor. A lot of the "shady" stuff they're doing is just reducing and simplifying the cost of testing. It would always be nice to run a more accurate, more real-world test. Certain Ford specs, for example, require multi-axis robot arms with independently mobile manikin forms to apply loads to the seats. Old Ford specs, and some current competitor specs, just have a hemispherical indenter that moves through a sinusoidal profile on a straight line at a fixed speed by an electric motor. Hardware for the "realistic" test costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus about a man-year of expert engineering time by the test lab or a systems integrator to turn the robot arm into standards-compliant, turn-key test equipment. We're talking high-speed data aquisition, 3D modeling, CNC machining, user studies, and all that fun stuff. Checking that it works correctly requires high-speed cameras, pressure mats, and a lot of work. The old-style test requires bit of steel, a few bearings, an on/off switch, an electrical counter or timer (that even an ME can wire up, and that's saying something!) and an electric motor for cost a few thousand dollars, and can be built by anybody with a welder and a few wrenches, maybe a machinist lathe and old Bridgeport mill if they want to get fancy. You can verify the correct operation with a pair of calipers, a stopwatch, and a gentle kick to make sure the bearings are still tight. Or there are multi-million-dollar sled systems that throw assembled prototype vehicles at barriers to see how they break. I don't even want to get into the complexities of those. And a lot of what you measure there can be tested by chaining sub-components to a hydraulic ram and slowly tearing them apart to see what maximum force they can take. The two systems produce roughly the same test results. In rare cases, there's an effect that the simple system misses that would be caught by the complex one. In my realm, thankfully, it would be difficult and pointless to design it to pass only the simple test. In many cases, it's not about honesty, it's about pragmatism. In this case, the fault lies not with the technology but with the intentional effort that the manufacturer went through to cheat the test.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
afterburner 10y ago
"This is a result of the cold hard engineering fact that our current level of technology is insufficient to hit the numbers without raising costs significantly. But once one automaker starts to fudge the numbers at a given price point, all the others must do the same thing or they fall behind." I'm going to have to remember to bring this up as an example whenever people claim private industry can police/regulate themselves. It's perfect.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- wonder_er 10y ago
  there'd be no incentive to lie if the EPA wasn't forcing these "standards" on them. Now, there's no reason to innovate because someone spends big bucks to actually do what everyone else is lying about. This isn't damming of private industry - it's damming of the regulation. (Er, to me. Obviously you might come to a different conclusion. Just wanted to throw in how this article can be read both ways.)
  - saulrh 10y ago
    Without the regulation they wouldn't be doing anything, because any attempt at limiting emissions is more expensive than none at all. Regulations aren't perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good enough.
    - TylerE 10y ago
      The standards escalated way too fast though. They were asking for essentially multiple orders of magnitude improvement in a single generation. Even the dirtiest of the cheating VWs would have passed the previous standards (from not that many years ago) with flying colors.
      - enraged_camel 10y ago
        >>The standards escalated way too fast though. Um, no. The EPA didn't pull the numbers out of their asses. They worked with the auto industry to come up with requirements that were stringent but realistic. Government agencies are commonly criticized for regulating industries that they have no expertise in. In reality though, things don't work that way. Either the regulators themselves have industry experience (what is commonly referred to as "revolving doors") or they consult experts.
toomuchtodo 10y ago
I would've thought there might be more incentive then for manufacturers to spend a few bucks to test and rat out the models of other manufacturers then; guess not.
Zigurd 10y ago
Another reason to think it's nearly industry-wide is that ECUs, ECU firmware frameworks, sensors, and interface firmware come from a small set of common suppliers. Anyone not hitting a competitor's' numbers knows their competitors are using the same hardware and much of the same software.
- alphabettsy 10y ago
  These organizations are obsessive about IP and they definitely don't share engine management code on a regular basis, even if they use the same ECU and the result is largely similar code.
  - Zigurd 10y ago
    It's only that the result is functionally similar, it's that much of the code is identical, provided by the hardware supplier, and much of what differs is declarative.
arprocter 10y ago
iirc the original (college) study which found VW emissions were way higher than they should've been also found that a BMW diesel produced the book figure Edit: Ah - "Vehicle C was fitted with a 3.0L turbocharged in-line six-cylinder engine in conjunction with an aqueous urea-SCR system and DPF for NOx and PM control, respectively" from here[0] page 25 [0]http://www.eenews.net/assets/2015/09/21/document_cw_02.pdf http://www.eenews.net/assets/2015/09/21/document_cw_02.pdf
LordKano 10y ago
It's not just automakers. I have seen things in heavy industry that not only push the envelope but could be called outright cheating.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  Yeah like the French company that's been falsifying tests on heavy steel forgings that are used for nuke plants. In that case worryingly the carbon distribution isn't uniform. Which puts the parts at risk for brittle fracture[1]. [1] If steel is ductile (lower carbon) it'll absorb an enormous amount of energy before failing. Brittle, think glass.

by avn2109 10y ago

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

As someone who manufactures automotive test equipment, please apply a bit of Occam's razor. A lot of the "shady" stuff they're doing is just reducing and simplifying the cost of testing. It would always be nice to run a more accurate, more real-world test. Certain Ford specs, for example, require multi-axis robot arms with independently mobile manikin forms to apply loads to the seats. Old Ford specs, and some current competitor specs, just have a hemispherical indenter that moves through a sinusoidal profile on a straight line at a fixed speed by an electric motor. Hardware for the "realistic" test costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus about a man-year of expert engineering time by the test lab or a systems integrator to turn the robot arm into standards-compliant, turn-key test equipment. We're talking high-speed data aquisition, 3D modeling, CNC machining, user studies, and all that fun stuff. Checking that it works correctly requires high-speed cameras, pressure mats, and a lot of work. The old-style test requires bit of steel, a few bearings, an on/off switch, an electrical counter or timer (that even an ME can wire up, and that's saying something!) and an electric motor for cost a few thousand dollars, and can be built by anybody with a welder and a few wrenches, maybe a machinist lathe and old Bridgeport mill if they want to get fancy. You can verify the correct operation with a pair of calipers, a stopwatch, and a gentle kick to make sure the bearings are still tight. Or there are multi-million-dollar sled systems that throw assembled prototype vehicles at barriers to see how they break. I don't even want to get into the complexities of those. And a lot of what you measure there can be tested by chaining sub-components to a hydraulic ram and slowly tearing them apart to see what maximum force they can take. The two systems produce roughly the same test results. In rare cases, there's an effect that the simple system misses that would be caught by the complex one. In my realm, thankfully, it would be difficult and pointless to design it to pass only the simple test. In many cases, it's not about honesty, it's about pragmatism. In this case, the fault lies not with the technology but with the intentional effort that the manufacturer went through to cheat the test.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

afterburner 10y ago

"This is a result of the cold hard engineering fact that our current level of technology is insufficient to hit the numbers without raising costs significantly. But once one automaker starts to fudge the numbers at a given price point, all the others must do the same thing or they fall behind." I'm going to have to remember to bring this up as an example whenever people claim private industry can police/regulate themselves. It's perfect.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wonder_er 10y ago
there'd be no incentive to lie if the EPA wasn't forcing these "standards" on them. Now, there's no reason to innovate because someone spends big bucks to actually do what everyone else is lying about. This isn't damming of private industry - it's damming of the regulation. (Er, to me. Obviously you might come to a different conclusion. Just wanted to throw in how this article can be read both ways.)
- saulrh 10y ago
  Without the regulation they wouldn't be doing anything, because any attempt at limiting emissions is more expensive than none at all. Regulations aren't perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good enough.
  - TylerE 10y ago
    The standards escalated way too fast though. They were asking for essentially multiple orders of magnitude improvement in a single generation. Even the dirtiest of the cheating VWs would have passed the previous standards (from not that many years ago) with flying colors.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      >>The standards escalated way too fast though. Um, no. The EPA didn't pull the numbers out of their asses. They worked with the auto industry to come up with requirements that were stringent but realistic. Government agencies are commonly criticized for regulating industries that they have no expertise in. In reality though, things don't work that way. Either the regulators themselves have industry experience (what is commonly referred to as "revolving doors") or they consult experts.

toomuchtodo 10y ago

I would've thought there might be more incentive then for manufacturers to spend a few bucks to test and rat out the models of other manufacturers then; guess not.

Zigurd 10y ago

Another reason to think it's nearly industry-wide is that ECUs, ECU firmware frameworks, sensors, and interface firmware come from a small set of common suppliers. Anyone not hitting a competitor's' numbers knows their competitors are using the same hardware and much of the same software.

alphabettsy 10y ago
These organizations are obsessive about IP and they definitely don't share engine management code on a regular basis, even if they use the same ECU and the result is largely similar code.
- Zigurd 10y ago
  It's only that the result is functionally similar, it's that much of the code is identical, provided by the hardware supplier, and much of what differs is declarative.

arprocter 10y ago

iirc the original (college) study which found VW emissions were way higher than they should've been also found that a BMW diesel produced the book figure Edit: Ah - "Vehicle C was fitted with a 3.0L turbocharged in-line six-cylinder engine in conjunction with an aqueous urea-SCR system and DPF for NOx and PM control, respectively" from here[0] page 25 [0]http://www.eenews.net/assets/2015/09/21/document_cw_02.pdf http://www.eenews.net/assets/2015/09/21/document_cw_02.pdf

LordKano 10y ago

It's not just automakers. I have seen things in heavy industry that not only push the envelope but could be called outright cheating.

Gibbon1 10y ago
Yeah like the French company that's been falsifying tests on heavy steel forgings that are used for nuke plants. In that case worryingly the carbon distribution isn't uniform. Which puts the parts at risk for brittle fracture[1]. [1] If steel is ductile (lower carbon) it'll absorb an enormous amount of energy before failing. Brittle, think glass.