17 ms·

The general assumption at the time when VW was put under a microscope for these issues is that everyone is cheating, VAG just got caught first. What stinks see

by fein 8y ago

The general assumption at the time when VW was put under a microscope for these issues is that everyone is cheating, VAG just got caught first. What stinks seems to be the way the regulations are being implemented moreso than what sort of detours the manufacturers can take to avoid them. I won't be surprised when we see more auto makers added to the list, however I wonder if anyone will criticize the regulations instead of shaming auto manufacturers. Here's a non paywalled BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44763905 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44763905

hervature 8y ago
Completely agree that what is lacking here is the regulations. I have tried to argue (often unsuccessfully) that VW did not commit fraud, that the numbers reported by the tests were 100% accurate. The problem being that the way the car is tested is not even remotely similar to how people drive. The clear fix to me is to simply give normal people free leases for a short period of time and generate something similar to http://www.fuelly.com/ http://www.fuelly.com/ . The only way to cheat that is to convince people to drive more efficiently, seems like a win.
- devy 8y ago
  Without knowing the general driving population's driving habits, it's difficult to estimate how effective driving will improve fuel efficiency and/or reduce pollution. Sure there are known bad driving habits like sudden accerlation/sudden stops will increase fuel consumption, but what about road sign design, speed limits, traffic light designs and Electronic Toll Collection systems? Those are all factors of fuel efficiency. Also, the government regulation on emission is going to get tighter and tighter due to incentives to push for EV adoption. So arguing emission test method is a moot point.
- wildebaard 8y ago
  How is embedding software that changes the way the engine behaves during tests versus during actual usage not fraud? The numbers may have been accurate _for an engine with the 'limit emissions' mode enabled_ but it's still fraudulent if you do not make that explicitly clear.
  - pofilat 8y ago
    If you use the car the way tests use the car, the performance will be the same. The trick is you can't complete your daily driving needs by driving the way the test does.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      The intent was to cheat the tests by secretly tailoring the behavior to the tests, even though they knew that real-world driving would be different and that the tests are supposed to indicate real-world emissions. Intent matters. You can’t set out to cheat a test, succeed, and then say that it’s legal because you succeeded, any more than you can steal from a store by hiding an item under your coat and then say that it’s legal because you disguised it well enough to fool the guard.
    - wlll 8y ago
      The only way to drive in a way that would have replicated the results of the VAG tests would be to not touch the steering wheel. At all. For VAG this wasn't a case of the test not being quite the same as regular driving, it was VAG deliberately detecting a tests and altering the way the engine worked to avoid failing.
    - Siecje 8y ago
      If you turned the steering wheel the test would fail, you can't drive without turning the steering wheel.
      - hwillis 8y ago
        It would also turn off if the back wheels were spinning.
    - wildebaard 8y ago
      That's the whole point: you cannot use the car the same way as during the tests, even if you exactly match speed, acceleration, distance, friction, temperature and any other variable. The software that limits emissions is disabled during "normal" operation, ie. driving.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Regulations are obeyed and enforced by humans. There’s a general expectation that common sense is applied, which is hard to define but “you know it when you see it”. “The engine will fundamentally perform differently when you’re testing it because it will detect the test” is not common sense and is not a reasonable interpretation of how to comply with the rules. I agree that a better method would be to attack sensors to a random (and ideally, concealed from OEM) sample of cars and charge automakers per unit of detected emissions. That would force them to optimize for real world driving, which is much harder to game.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Emissions tests are different from fuel efficiency tests, and in fact are often at odds with each other. A more efficient car doesn’t necessarily have better emissions, and there’s no easy way for a typical driver to measure their emissions.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    NOx emissions specifically are a problem because the engines are run very efficiently at high burning temperatures with complete combustion.
  - hervature 8y ago
    Thank you for the extra insight, I may have had the wrong conclusion but I think the logic still follows. From this system I outlined, the manufacturers would be forced to alter designs to get the desired emissions during normal driving conditions. This is the whole spirit of the regulation right?
    - mikeash 8y ago
      My point is that the system you outline doesn’t work, because ordinary drivers can’t check their own emissions. It would be fine for fuel consumption since that’s easily measured, but emissions requires special equipment and careful testing.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- acranox 8y ago
  The VW stuff wasn't simply about fuel efficiency it was about emissions output. I think this was the video where a guy basically reverse engineered the system. (Starts around 40m in) https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scandal_dieselgate#video https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand... I'd encourage you to watch that, and still see if you say that it wasn't fraud. VM gamed the test in order to produce results that were not achievable by consumers, with the intent to deceive people.
  - hervature 8y ago
    I will watch that video later and get back to you. I understand what they did. I'm not saying that what they did was right, simply that it wasn't fraud. My point being that if the test is already deceptive for true vehicle emissions (laboratory settings, very particular configurations, etc.) then the test itself is the problem. If we flip the script and say that a car fails the emissions testing but is in reality the cleanest car, is it not "fraudulent" to label this car as dirty?
    - acranox 8y ago
      Intent matters. Your example of flipping the script would only be comparable if the manufacturer engineered the car to fail the test. VW built their car to produce a specific test result to get buyers to buy the car. It fits the description at the link below all too perfectly. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud
wuliwong 8y ago
Do you have any links to something I could read about the way the regulations are being implemented? It is relevant to my interests.
jartelt 8y ago
I am all for shaming the auto manufacturers that get caught cheating. The regulations are aimed at reducing pollution and I think that is a good thing!
- duckerude 8y ago
  The regulations might have a good aim, but when everybody is violating them it's probably safe to say something is wrong with them. I don't know if the problem is in the content or in the enforcement, but it exists. I don't think criticism of regulations should replace shaming of auto manufacturers, but it might be more effective.
- amarant 8y ago
  it's not about what the regulations AIM to do, it's what they achieve, and also if they could feasibly achieve something closer to their aim, which is what was suggested. that's to say, if emission testing was done differently, maybe we would have caught these cars earlier. Now it seems likely every single non-electric car on the market is polluting more than advertised/allowed, which begs the question if there is a systemic issue here. I tend to agree that there is.
  - ghostly_s 8y ago
    The 'systemic issue' is that conducting lab tests in cooperation with automakers is clearly an inadequate way of enforcing the regulations. That does not imply the regulations are faulty, it implies they need a more robust enforcement methodology.
    - amarant 8y ago
      yes, i see now i formulated that rather poorly. this is what I meant by systemic failure. the regulations themselves are not the issue.
  - eurticket 8y ago
    What if the AIM was to create the incentive for electric cars manufacturing
stephengillie 8y ago
From a recent HN thread[0], it sounds like this issue is present across the auto industry: > One way to reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements is the following. The actual programmer & designer of the software is the supplier of the engine control units (ECUs), in most cases Bosch. The software that they supply actually already contains these cheating routines. These routines are delivered as a part of the software packages, and can be turned on/off with some flags. It is up to the auto company how to set these flags. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286697
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
blattimwind 8y ago
> The general assumption at the time when VW was put under a microscope for these issues is that everyone is cheating, VAG just got caught first. Well, they do. Here's a list of some car manufacturers who do or did emissions cheating: - Volvo - Volkswagen - Renault - Jeep - Hyundai - Honda - Citroen - Fiat - Chrysler - Ford - General Motors - Toyota - Nissan - Mercedes - Mitsubishi (Which pretty much sums up to "all car manufacturers")
- teamhappy 8y ago
  IIRC Mercedes wasn't caught cheating they just got in trouble because they use the same engine control units which contain the routines that make cheating possible.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    Mercedes was already ordered to recall affected models.
  - Maybestring 8y ago
    Mercedes was entering an allowable disclosed higher emission mode with an unallowable, undisclosed, entry condition. In EPA terminology, a defeat device.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  This gets repeated on every thread on this topic but from what I've read is not true and heavily favors VW. VW was caught actively faking the test results by having the ECU detect it's being tested and change its settings. What every manufacturer has been caught doing is optimzing for the test and not getting the same results in real world conditions. That's a fault of the test and is perfectly legal. The only guilt of the manufacturers is lobbying to not upgrade the test.
ken 8y ago
> VAG just got caught first. Sure. Since the VW incident, many cars from several of the big automakers have been found to fail emissions tests. > I wonder if anyone will criticize the regulations instead of shaming auto manufacturers. It's telling that the automakers have chosen to cheat rather than call out the tests for being unrealistic -- or build a slightly less powerful car. By doing so, they forfeit any possible sympathy from me. You don't get to cheat on a test, brag about how you passed, and then if you're discovered, claim that the test was too hard. Too late.
- nashashmi 8y ago
  > You don't get to cheat on a test, brag about how you passed, and then if you're discovered, claim that the test was too hard. Too late. It is the competition that pushes you to such extremes. If others are doing it, then what is to stop you. Too much regulation and court procedures are preventing others from coming out and blowing the whistle on themselves.
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    The point of regulation is so that everyone has to reach the same bar. Breaking the rules to cut costs doesn’t absolve you.
    - nashashmi 8y ago
      And when the regulation fails to regulate for a long period of time, such that all eventually meet the regulation with either a loophole or a crime, it does not make the system any fairer when the axe falls. If the reg's were never put into effect, and companies never given citations, it is institutional failure. And very unfair to all entities who are suddenly scolded at not meeting the criteria. VW presumably started it. Other companies eventually competed. And all of a sudden everyone is now in violation. It is like cheating on a test. One kid starts it. Teacher does not care. Kid does not get scolded. Competition gets intense. Rest of kids start cheating too. The axe falls, sometimes on the dull, slow kid, and then everyone falls in line. But then teacher goes back and sees who else cheated in the past, and the entire class is outed. How is this fair again?
wlll 8y ago
> however I wonder if anyone will criticize the regulations instead of shaming auto manufacturers. What's wrong with the regulations? It seems that they're designed to prevent cars from spewing toxic shit into the atmosphere, something that seems to be an admirable goal.
- closeparen 8y ago
  This mindset is exactly the problem: you’ve judged the regulations on their goal, rather than their effectiveness and how they interact with the industry’s incentives.
  - wlll 8y ago
    Well what do you suggest then? I mean, the current regulations seem to have caught a number of car manufacturers faking test data and presumably they will be punished. I think we can agree that the goal is to reduce dangerous emissions, but if we're not going to have regulations that state a limit and perhaps a penalty for abuse, then how?
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      The worry is that they start to become impossible (or at least impossible without massively increasing the cost and complexity of the system). So "cheating" starts to look more and more worth the risk. Granted, I don't think we are quite at that point yet, and don't take this to be implying that we should not have environmental regulations here, just that we need real information about what's possible and how, and there needs to be a 2 way conversation with the manufacturers to evolve the regs with what's possible.
      - wlll 8y ago
        > The worry is that they start to become impossible (or at least impossible without massively increasing the cost and complexity of the system). That's not really a worry. Governments are well aware that people need cars that they can afford. Governments are ultimately elected by the people, and messing around with transport makes you unpopular (the recent backlash at the possibility that fuel duty will be unfrozen in the UK is an example).
lawnchair_larry 8y ago
This incident only related to cars sold in Japan. The VW scandal was different.
bloomthrowaway 8y ago
In the auto industry its generally understood that the emissions limits are so low, especially for diesel, that its physically impossible to meet them in some situations like cold engine + cold weather and when driving up grade. Emissions regulations have made great progress in cleaning up auto emissions, but now politicians keep squeezing the numbers without realizing some of the limits are becoming impossible. So everyone starts cheating, because otherwise we would have no combustion powered cars. Insane irony is that ships and even some buildings burn horrifically impure "bunker fuel" or wood, and with car emission limits so low these sources are the vast majority of harmful emissions. Its like cities in Cali forcing citizens to make drastic changes to conserve water, when over 90% is used by farmers.
- wlll 8y ago
  > especially for diesel There's another way of looking at this, and that's that maybe diesel just isn't clean enough for consumer cars?
  - bloomthrowaway 8y ago
    maybe, but its cleaner in other ways. It burns hotter and more efficiently, creating less CO2 and some other byproducts by a decent margin. It produces more SO due to fuel sulfur content, and more NOX which is produced because of high temperatures. So its a trade-off. But at this point the limits are just politicians pulling levers. There's not enough science involved to debate which pollutants we care about and what the lowest realistic limits are.
- cryoshon 8y ago
  >Its like cities in Cali forcing citizens to make drastic changes to conserve water, when over 90% is used by farmers yes, this is a common process by which private costs are offloaded onto the public so as to increase the private benefits of exploitation of public goods. it's legalized theft.
- mikelward 8y ago
  Forbes says that it would have cost an extra $430 per vehicle for VW to meet the NOx requirements fairly. That's hardly the same as regulations resulting in no combustion-powered cars. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2015/09/28/all-to-save-e300-per-volkswagen-jetta/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2015/09/28/all-to-s...
taf2 8y ago
I think it's great that they're falling on their faces... Hopefully it locks them into only 1 solution - all electric zero. Pumping gas sucks. Smelling gas sucks. Hearing gas burn sucks. Gas cars suck.
- phikai 8y ago
  That's the answer... shift the emissions burden to power companies and battery disposal companies! But I'll feel good driving my "zero environmental impact" electric car around!
  - function_seven 8y ago
    I think you meant this as snark, but I agree with it non-ironically. Shifting the emissions burden to centralized power plants makes later reductions simpler to achieve as power generation migrates to cleaner technologies. It's easier to determine how dirty the energy is when it's being generated at N places rather than 1e6(N) places. Emissions per watt decrease as new solar/wind capacity is added to the grid. You have full control over your energy source with an electric car (i.e. you can switch to solar now if you'd like and charge from that).
  - lagadu 8y ago
    Actually yes, despite your tone. It's significantly easier to control emissions and implement emission control systems at the production side because economies of scale means that for the same cost of making $number of cars cleaner you can make 1 power plant significantly cleaner using far more expensive technologies and still be more cost efficient.
- bsagdiyev 8y ago
  That is a ridiculous solution. Batteries are far from clean, what do you propose we do for disposal of these batteries? What about the environmental and human cost to greatly increasing production of materials required? All electric isn't the utopia people make it out to be.
  - 8y ago
csours 8y ago
VAG cheated for years, got caught, then lied to regulators for a year, then got caught in the lie. That's how you REALLY piss off regulators (or law enforcement in general). Also, yes, regulations should be better matched to real world performance.
Reason077 8y ago
"everyone is cheating, VAG just got caught first." Everyone was cheating in Europe, because European emissions rules were/are weak and you could get away with a defeat device provided it was for "engine protection". The difference with VW was that they tried to pull the same thing in the USA, which had much stronger rules and a clear prohibition against defeat devices.

by fein 8y ago

hervature 8y ago

Completely agree that what is lacking here is the regulations. I have tried to argue (often unsuccessfully) that VW did not commit fraud, that the numbers reported by the tests were 100% accurate. The problem being that the way the car is tested is not even remotely similar to how people drive. The clear fix to me is to simply give normal people free leases for a short period of time and generate something similar to http://www.fuelly.com/ http://www.fuelly.com/ . The only way to cheat that is to convince people to drive more efficiently, seems like a win.

devy 8y ago
Without knowing the general driving population's driving habits, it's difficult to estimate how effective driving will improve fuel efficiency and/or reduce pollution. Sure there are known bad driving habits like sudden accerlation/sudden stops will increase fuel consumption, but what about road sign design, speed limits, traffic light designs and Electronic Toll Collection systems? Those are all factors of fuel efficiency. Also, the government regulation on emission is going to get tighter and tighter due to incentives to push for EV adoption. So arguing emission test method is a moot point.
wildebaard 8y ago
How is embedding software that changes the way the engine behaves during tests versus during actual usage not fraud? The numbers may have been accurate _for an engine with the 'limit emissions' mode enabled_ but it's still fraudulent if you do not make that explicitly clear.
- pofilat 8y ago
  If you use the car the way tests use the car, the performance will be the same. The trick is you can't complete your daily driving needs by driving the way the test does.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    The intent was to cheat the tests by secretly tailoring the behavior to the tests, even though they knew that real-world driving would be different and that the tests are supposed to indicate real-world emissions. Intent matters. You can’t set out to cheat a test, succeed, and then say that it’s legal because you succeeded, any more than you can steal from a store by hiding an item under your coat and then say that it’s legal because you disguised it well enough to fool the guard.
  - wlll 8y ago
    The only way to drive in a way that would have replicated the results of the VAG tests would be to not touch the steering wheel. At all. For VAG this wasn't a case of the test not being quite the same as regular driving, it was VAG deliberately detecting a tests and altering the way the engine worked to avoid failing.
  - Siecje 8y ago
    If you turned the steering wheel the test would fail, you can't drive without turning the steering wheel.
    - hwillis 8y ago
      It would also turn off if the back wheels were spinning.
  - wildebaard 8y ago
    That's the whole point: you cannot use the car the same way as during the tests, even if you exactly match speed, acceleration, distance, friction, temperature and any other variable. The software that limits emissions is disabled during "normal" operation, ie. driving.
SilasX 8y ago
Regulations are obeyed and enforced by humans. There’s a general expectation that common sense is applied, which is hard to define but “you know it when you see it”. “The engine will fundamentally perform differently when you’re testing it because it will detect the test” is not common sense and is not a reasonable interpretation of how to comply with the rules. I agree that a better method would be to attack sensors to a random (and ideally, concealed from OEM) sample of cars and charge automakers per unit of detected emissions. That would force them to optimize for real world driving, which is much harder to game.
mikeash 8y ago
Emissions tests are different from fuel efficiency tests, and in fact are often at odds with each other. A more efficient car doesn’t necessarily have better emissions, and there’s no easy way for a typical driver to measure their emissions.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  NOx emissions specifically are a problem because the engines are run very efficiently at high burning temperatures with complete combustion.
- hervature 8y ago
  Thank you for the extra insight, I may have had the wrong conclusion but I think the logic still follows. From this system I outlined, the manufacturers would be forced to alter designs to get the desired emissions during normal driving conditions. This is the whole spirit of the regulation right?
  - mikeash 8y ago
    My point is that the system you outline doesn’t work, because ordinary drivers can’t check their own emissions. It would be fine for fuel consumption since that’s easily measured, but emissions requires special equipment and careful testing.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
acranox 8y ago
The VW stuff wasn't simply about fuel efficiency it was about emissions output. I think this was the video where a guy basically reverse engineered the system. (Starts around 40m in) https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scandal_dieselgate#video https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand... I'd encourage you to watch that, and still see if you say that it wasn't fraud. VM gamed the test in order to produce results that were not achievable by consumers, with the intent to deceive people.
- hervature 8y ago
  I will watch that video later and get back to you. I understand what they did. I'm not saying that what they did was right, simply that it wasn't fraud. My point being that if the test is already deceptive for true vehicle emissions (laboratory settings, very particular configurations, etc.) then the test itself is the problem. If we flip the script and say that a car fails the emissions testing but is in reality the cleanest car, is it not "fraudulent" to label this car as dirty?
  - acranox 8y ago
    Intent matters. Your example of flipping the script would only be comparable if the manufacturer engineered the car to fail the test. VW built their car to produce a specific test result to get buyers to buy the car. It fits the description at the link below all too perfectly. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud

wuliwong 8y ago

Do you have any links to something I could read about the way the regulations are being implemented? It is relevant to my interests.

jartelt 8y ago

I am all for shaming the auto manufacturers that get caught cheating. The regulations are aimed at reducing pollution and I think that is a good thing!

duckerude 8y ago
The regulations might have a good aim, but when everybody is violating them it's probably safe to say something is wrong with them. I don't know if the problem is in the content or in the enforcement, but it exists. I don't think criticism of regulations should replace shaming of auto manufacturers, but it might be more effective.
amarant 8y ago
it's not about what the regulations AIM to do, it's what they achieve, and also if they could feasibly achieve something closer to their aim, which is what was suggested. that's to say, if emission testing was done differently, maybe we would have caught these cars earlier. Now it seems likely every single non-electric car on the market is polluting more than advertised/allowed, which begs the question if there is a systemic issue here. I tend to agree that there is.
- ghostly_s 8y ago
  The 'systemic issue' is that conducting lab tests in cooperation with automakers is clearly an inadequate way of enforcing the regulations. That does not imply the regulations are faulty, it implies they need a more robust enforcement methodology.
  - amarant 8y ago
    yes, i see now i formulated that rather poorly. this is what I meant by systemic failure. the regulations themselves are not the issue.
- eurticket 8y ago
  What if the AIM was to create the incentive for electric cars manufacturing

stephengillie 8y ago

From a recent HN thread[0], it sounds like this issue is present across the auto industry: > One way to reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements is the following. The actual programmer & designer of the software is the supplier of the engine control units (ECUs), in most cases Bosch. The software that they supply actually already contains these cheating routines. These routines are delivered as a part of the software packages, and can be turned on/off with some flags. It is up to the auto company how to set these flags. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286697

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

blattimwind 8y ago

> The general assumption at the time when VW was put under a microscope for these issues is that everyone is cheating, VAG just got caught first. Well, they do. Here's a list of some car manufacturers who do or did emissions cheating: - Volvo - Volkswagen - Renault - Jeep - Hyundai - Honda - Citroen - Fiat - Chrysler - Ford - General Motors - Toyota - Nissan - Mercedes - Mitsubishi (Which pretty much sums up to "all car manufacturers")

teamhappy 8y ago
IIRC Mercedes wasn't caught cheating they just got in trouble because they use the same engine control units which contain the routines that make cheating possible.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Mercedes was already ordered to recall affected models.
- Maybestring 8y ago
  Mercedes was entering an allowable disclosed higher emission mode with an unallowable, undisclosed, entry condition. In EPA terminology, a defeat device.
pedrocr 8y ago
This gets repeated on every thread on this topic but from what I've read is not true and heavily favors VW. VW was caught actively faking the test results by having the ECU detect it's being tested and change its settings. What every manufacturer has been caught doing is optimzing for the test and not getting the same results in real world conditions. That's a fault of the test and is perfectly legal. The only guilt of the manufacturers is lobbying to not upgrade the test.

ken 8y ago

> VAG just got caught first. Sure. Since the VW incident, many cars from several of the big automakers have been found to fail emissions tests. > I wonder if anyone will criticize the regulations instead of shaming auto manufacturers. It's telling that the automakers have chosen to cheat rather than call out the tests for being unrealistic -- or build a slightly less powerful car. By doing so, they forfeit any possible sympathy from me. You don't get to cheat on a test, brag about how you passed, and then if you're discovered, claim that the test was too hard. Too late.

nashashmi 8y ago
> You don't get to cheat on a test, brag about how you passed, and then if you're discovered, claim that the test was too hard. Too late. It is the competition that pushes you to such extremes. If others are doing it, then what is to stop you. Too much regulation and court procedures are preventing others from coming out and blowing the whistle on themselves.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  The point of regulation is so that everyone has to reach the same bar. Breaking the rules to cut costs doesn’t absolve you.
  - nashashmi 8y ago
    And when the regulation fails to regulate for a long period of time, such that all eventually meet the regulation with either a loophole or a crime, it does not make the system any fairer when the axe falls. If the reg's were never put into effect, and companies never given citations, it is institutional failure. And very unfair to all entities who are suddenly scolded at not meeting the criteria. VW presumably started it. Other companies eventually competed. And all of a sudden everyone is now in violation. It is like cheating on a test. One kid starts it. Teacher does not care. Kid does not get scolded. Competition gets intense. Rest of kids start cheating too. The axe falls, sometimes on the dull, slow kid, and then everyone falls in line. But then teacher goes back and sees who else cheated in the past, and the entire class is outed. How is this fair again?

wlll 8y ago

> however I wonder if anyone will criticize the regulations instead of shaming auto manufacturers. What's wrong with the regulations? It seems that they're designed to prevent cars from spewing toxic shit into the atmosphere, something that seems to be an admirable goal.

closeparen 8y ago
This mindset is exactly the problem: you’ve judged the regulations on their goal, rather than their effectiveness and how they interact with the industry’s incentives.
- wlll 8y ago
  Well what do you suggest then? I mean, the current regulations seem to have caught a number of car manufacturers faking test data and presumably they will be punished. I think we can agree that the goal is to reduce dangerous emissions, but if we're not going to have regulations that state a limit and perhaps a penalty for abuse, then how?
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    The worry is that they start to become impossible (or at least impossible without massively increasing the cost and complexity of the system). So "cheating" starts to look more and more worth the risk. Granted, I don't think we are quite at that point yet, and don't take this to be implying that we should not have environmental regulations here, just that we need real information about what's possible and how, and there needs to be a 2 way conversation with the manufacturers to evolve the regs with what's possible.
    - wlll 8y ago
      > The worry is that they start to become impossible (or at least impossible without massively increasing the cost and complexity of the system). That's not really a worry. Governments are well aware that people need cars that they can afford. Governments are ultimately elected by the people, and messing around with transport makes you unpopular (the recent backlash at the possibility that fuel duty will be unfrozen in the UK is an example).

lawnchair_larry 8y ago

This incident only related to cars sold in Japan. The VW scandal was different.

bloomthrowaway 8y ago

In the auto industry its generally understood that the emissions limits are so low, especially for diesel, that its physically impossible to meet them in some situations like cold engine + cold weather and when driving up grade. Emissions regulations have made great progress in cleaning up auto emissions, but now politicians keep squeezing the numbers without realizing some of the limits are becoming impossible. So everyone starts cheating, because otherwise we would have no combustion powered cars. Insane irony is that ships and even some buildings burn horrifically impure "bunker fuel" or wood, and with car emission limits so low these sources are the vast majority of harmful emissions. Its like cities in Cali forcing citizens to make drastic changes to conserve water, when over 90% is used by farmers.

wlll 8y ago
> especially for diesel There's another way of looking at this, and that's that maybe diesel just isn't clean enough for consumer cars?
- bloomthrowaway 8y ago
  maybe, but its cleaner in other ways. It burns hotter and more efficiently, creating less CO2 and some other byproducts by a decent margin. It produces more SO due to fuel sulfur content, and more NOX which is produced because of high temperatures. So its a trade-off. But at this point the limits are just politicians pulling levers. There's not enough science involved to debate which pollutants we care about and what the lowest realistic limits are.
cryoshon 8y ago
>Its like cities in Cali forcing citizens to make drastic changes to conserve water, when over 90% is used by farmers yes, this is a common process by which private costs are offloaded onto the public so as to increase the private benefits of exploitation of public goods. it's legalized theft.
mikelward 8y ago
Forbes says that it would have cost an extra $430 per vehicle for VW to meet the NOx requirements fairly. That's hardly the same as regulations resulting in no combustion-powered cars. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2015/09/28/all-to-save-e300-per-volkswagen-jetta/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2015/09/28/all-to-s...

taf2 8y ago

I think it's great that they're falling on their faces... Hopefully it locks them into only 1 solution - all electric zero. Pumping gas sucks. Smelling gas sucks. Hearing gas burn sucks. Gas cars suck.

phikai 8y ago
That's the answer... shift the emissions burden to power companies and battery disposal companies! But I'll feel good driving my "zero environmental impact" electric car around!
- function_seven 8y ago
  I think you meant this as snark, but I agree with it non-ironically. Shifting the emissions burden to centralized power plants makes later reductions simpler to achieve as power generation migrates to cleaner technologies. It's easier to determine how dirty the energy is when it's being generated at N places rather than 1e6(N) places. Emissions per watt decrease as new solar/wind capacity is added to the grid. You have full control over your energy source with an electric car (i.e. you can switch to solar now if you'd like and charge from that).
- lagadu 8y ago
  Actually yes, despite your tone. It's significantly easier to control emissions and implement emission control systems at the production side because economies of scale means that for the same cost of making $number of cars cleaner you can make 1 power plant significantly cleaner using far more expensive technologies and still be more cost efficient.
bsagdiyev 8y ago
That is a ridiculous solution. Batteries are far from clean, what do you propose we do for disposal of these batteries? What about the environmental and human cost to greatly increasing production of materials required? All electric isn't the utopia people make it out to be.
- 8y ago

csours 8y ago

VAG cheated for years, got caught, then lied to regulators for a year, then got caught in the lie. That's how you REALLY piss off regulators (or law enforcement in general). Also, yes, regulations should be better matched to real world performance.

Reason077 8y ago

"everyone is cheating, VAG just got caught first." Everyone was cheating in Europe, because European emissions rules were/are weak and you could get away with a defeat device provided it was for "engine protection". The difference with VW was that they tried to pull the same thing in the USA, which had much stronger rules and a clear prohibition against defeat devices.