4 ms·

What's the business motivation of this research, for VW?

by AlexCoventry 8y ago

pas 8y ago
Batteries? Fuel efficiency? Better catalytic emission filter?
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
  Better cheating? Although they're already pretty successful at that, the dieselgate thing cost them some money, but none of the executives in charge of the fraud is in jail or financially punished. ["How VW Paid $25 Billion for 'Dieselgate' – and Got Off Easy" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal ]
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
  - jhayward 8y ago
    > none of the executives in charge of the fraud is in jail or financially punished. This is nothing relevant to the article, it's just ad-hominem attacks, and factually incorrect at that. The very wiki page you cite says that CEO Winterkorn is charged with fraud, the CEO of Audi has been arrested, and 6 executives in the US are presently under charges.
  - chillwaves 8y ago
    I love my VW GTI.
_Nat_ 8y ago
They probably sold it to management as exploring future simulation-and-optimization methodologies. I mean, right now, the D-Wave computers seem too weak to be worth the expense compared to classical computers. So, it seems unreasonable for them to expect near-term practicality from this sort of investigation. But in principle, if D-Wave systems greatly improve to the point that they're competitive with classical optimizers, then it'd be good for VW engineers to be able to leverage them to do stuff like, in this case, predict chemical properties. This seems to be how the article sells it: > “Our present work was a first field study of quantum chemistry problems on quantum annealing devices,” he says. “Our goal was to get a feeling for the bottlenecks of the problem. This in the end helps [us] to understand the underlying problems, and find new solutions or suitable subproblems.”
chaboud 8y ago
1) Lithium Hydride? That's battery chemistry right there. 2) Marketing buzz from being seen as a forward thinking research company instead of a place that engineers their way out of costly regulatory compliance. Given that this came from their SF group, it seems like a low-cost high-buzz exercise, and, if it had worked out, they might have some interesting methodologies for chemistry/structural improvement. It seems like a win-win-win thing to me.

What's the business motivation of this research, for VW?

pas 8y ago

Batteries? Fuel efficiency? Better catalytic emission filter?

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
Better cheating? Although they're already pretty successful at that, the dieselgate thing cost them some money, but none of the executives in charge of the fraud is in jail or financially punished. ["How VW Paid $25 Billion for 'Dieselgate' – and Got Off Easy" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal ]
- blattimwind 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
- jhayward 8y ago
  > none of the executives in charge of the fraud is in jail or financially punished. This is nothing relevant to the article, it's just ad-hominem attacks, and factually incorrect at that. The very wiki page you cite says that CEO Winterkorn is charged with fraud, the CEO of Audi has been arrested, and 6 executives in the US are presently under charges.
- chillwaves 8y ago
  I love my VW GTI.

_Nat_ 8y ago

They probably sold it to management as exploring future simulation-and-optimization methodologies. I mean, right now, the D-Wave computers seem too weak to be worth the expense compared to classical computers. So, it seems unreasonable for them to expect near-term practicality from this sort of investigation. But in principle, if D-Wave systems greatly improve to the point that they're competitive with classical optimizers, then it'd be good for VW engineers to be able to leverage them to do stuff like, in this case, predict chemical properties. This seems to be how the article sells it: > “Our present work was a first field study of quantum chemistry problems on quantum annealing devices,” he says. “Our goal was to get a feeling for the bottlenecks of the problem. This in the end helps [us] to understand the underlying problems, and find new solutions or suitable subproblems.”

chaboud 8y ago

1) Lithium Hydride? That's battery chemistry right there. 2) Marketing buzz from being seen as a forward thinking research company instead of a place that engineers their way out of costly regulatory compliance. Given that this came from their SF group, it seems like a low-cost high-buzz exercise, and, if it had worked out, they might have some interesting methodologies for chemistry/structural improvement. It seems like a win-win-win thing to me.