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How the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions
- joelkevinjones 8y agoA coworker and I had a discussion with another coworker when this scandal broke. We couldn't convince him that he was wrong when he said there is no way car software could "cheat" like that. Even after we came up with several things that could be done in the space of about a minute, he remained unconvinced. If you follow through the article to the reference US DoJ press release, VW's software used several of the ideas we came up with as part of their "cheat". This coworker also thought that the California drought was a big hoax, so...
- oska 8y agoWhat's the point of this anecdote other than to make you look smart and your coworker look dumb? Maybe both things are true but it's hardly a very interesting observation that there are both smarter and dumber people in the population.
- Gibbon1 8y agoYou know I wouldn't have have read his comment if you hadn't wrote this one.
- gcb0 8y agoin the middle he points how the software "features" were decidedly malicious as they are similar to their own hypothetical solutions to circumvent the law?
- Theodores 8y agoIt is how scandals work. Lots of people believe the lies and can't be persuaded to think from an evidence first viewpoint. They need the story to be headline news on the BBC or some other reputable source before they will 'believe it'. Every scandal relies on groupthink to keep it quiet.
- godelmachine 8y agoExcellent review by Adrian Colyer for those interested - https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/06/20/how-they-did-it-an-analysis-of-emissions-defeat-devices-in-modern-automobiles/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/06/20/how-they-did-it-an-analy... Also, the book How they did it gives insightful glimpses.
- makomk 8y ago" Schmied responded that as long as emissions went down when limits were tightened, his department didn’t mind they were many times higher than allowed." Some context for this: the official European test cycle was known not to be representative of real driving conditions. Because it was less aggressive than real-world driving, it pretty much always overstated fuel efficiency and understated emissions. So real-world emissions not going down at the same rate as tested emissions is a sign of foul play, but them being higher isn't necessarily. (The US test cycle is better.)
- mirimir 8y agoSure, but don't the laws limit emissions? Irrespective of how well standard government tests were measuring those emissions? So "We publish this data" just sounds like "I'm doing my job. Anything more is not my problem."
- makomk 8y agoThe laws limited emissions in the standard government test cycle, and the thresholds on emissions were chosen based on how well cars could be made to perform in those test cycles. While actual defeat devices were illegal, the legal emissions limit wasn't actually the real-world emissions limit and everyone knew it. (The EU is now gradually moving to real-world emissions testing and a more realistic test cycle, though judging from the other reply they might have some cheating problems with that - especially as real-world testing inherently has wider errors than lab testing.)
- rurban 8y ago> The US test cycle is better. Then you never heard about the US test cycle cheating scandal. It's not better, it's actually simplier to cheat. The US test cycle is tailored to a more realistic city environment with a lot of stop's and go's, cold starts, and requires an actual professional driver. No automation. These drivers learned soo much how to cheat the system, that they were in high demand and they were all held exclusively by the US car industry, so Asian and European companies were at disadvantage. That's why the Asian industry agreed to use the European test cycles and not the more realistic US system. It was too expensive and too easily tricked. The European standard was cheaper and fairer (those times). Until they found a way to trick it also.
- ummonk 8y agoI remember Mazda having trouble making their diesel engines performant while conforming to California emissions regulations, and wondering why they were having so much trouble compared to European car manufacturers. Then this scandal broke and it was obvious why.
- alkonaut 8y agoI wonder why mazda or some other competitor didn’t find this by doing their own research? I make software for structural engineering and when some competitor launches a program that makes “better designs” it has usually turned out to be because they simply don’t follow the design codes/regulations. We wouldn’t be pushed from the market by that - we’d fund the analysis, reverse engineering and legal processes necessary to show the competitor is cheating.
- sjwright 8y agoIf Mazda was attempting and failing to get their cars to pass the defined emissions test, one can imagine they were only ever testing their own and their competitor's cars under those test conditions—which we now know triggered the cheat mechanism in VW cars. But yes, had the research group not performed their on-road tests, it would have only been a matter of time before an honest car maker would have realised their competitor's sums don't add up and perform or fund their own independent investigation. (Perhaps this is exactly what happened behind the scenes? It's known that CARB ordered the research due to discrepancies in US v EU numbers—but someone pushed them to look at the numbers closely. They put a lot of work in to perform these tests so it couldn't have been on a whim.)
- dave7 8y ago> It's known that CARB ordered the research due to discrepancies in US v EU numbers—but someone pushed them to look at the numbers closely. This is revealed in these quotes from the article: German and his colleagues at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) in the US just wanted to tie up the last loose ends in a big report, and thought the research would give them something positive to say about diesel. ... German’s group also forwarded the findings to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California’s Air Resources Board (Carb). “We were definitely scared. We wanted EPA and Carb to take over.”
- TheRealDunkirk 8y agoI work in this industry, so I've been following it from the start. I've run test cells and written software to analyze the results from the emissions cycles that the government uses to validate the emissions compliance. I have worked around and for a very large diesel engine manufacturer who I am convinced does not cheat on this test. You'll understand why, below. I recently leveled-up my career, and I now work with the person who originally setup such testing at this manufacturer, and one of the two people who literally wrote the spec, which is one of the most thorough technical documents I've ever laid eyes on. These are 2 of the highest-caliber engineers I have ever met in my 25-year professional career, both in terms of intelligence and capability, and in terms of integrity and trustworthiness. This quote from the article pisses me off: "What I understand now is that the people we entrusted with the power to protect us essentially decided not to bother. Instead, they have allowed carmakers to spew whatever they want into our air." Really?! The government commissioned the spec. The government mandated that engine makers make their engines comply, and validate this compliance with internal testing. The government then paid independent testers to validate the manufacturer's results. Excuse me, but what more did the author expect the government to do? The regulators entrusted this process to expert engineers, and expert testers. Did the author expect people who could invent the spec and create a test cell to do the validation to go to work for the EPA directly, and do the paperwork, instead of the engineering? Did they expect them to escrow the code, and validate that there was no cheating? Possible, but, again, you're asking a very specific skillset to give up DOING, and instead REGULATING, and that doesn't usually work. The fault of this scandal lies -- of course -- with the manufacturers, but the fault also lies with the legislators. To control diesel engine emissions within the spec requires an array of very expensive after-treatment components. That can work in the class-8 heavy trucking industry, but you can't even fit it into a passenger car, let alone make it affordable at gasoline car prices. To think that cars could use diesel engines, be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives, AND pass the ridiculously-low emissions standards that lawmakers have arbitrarily decreed was simply wishful thinking.
- ip26 8y agoI guess it depends a little on whether you feel like the spec writer or testers should have anticipated cheating, and attempted to detect it or not. If the job of a tester includes catching cheaters, or if a good spec should be very hard to cheat, I'm not sure missing that falls at the feet of the legislators.
- pkaye 8y agoSo did the recall all those failing 97% of 250 car models in the EU?
- armada651 8y agoYes, but in many countries like the UK the recall is voluntary, it's just a recommendation.
- thepangolino 8y agoThank God it is as it worsens mileage.
- AnthonBerg 8y agoThank God it is as it allows you to place externalities on us?
- walrus01 8y agoI've seen claims that VW's whole diesel emissions and engine control subsystem was actually contracted out to Bosch. But VW execs knew about the software defeat device.
- pintxo 8y agoAfaik, yes. bosch was contracted to provide the engine control modules, including features to automatically disable the emission reduction measures. Boach apparently wrote in the contracts that such disablig was only to be used for internal testing, not in production.
- _ph_ 8y agoThe controlling unit indeed comes from Bosch, but it is a generic unit that can control any kind of engine. The car manufacturer using this unit programs it to perform the actual world, mostly by specifying parameter sets for its operation. The car manufacturer has for example to determine, how exactly the ignition needs to be set up for a given temperature and load etc. There are plenty sensor inputs these profiles can depend on like engine temperature, revs, load, outside temperature, speed of the car. The Bosch software can offer the "test dectection" as one of the inputs. There can be quite reasonable use cases for that information, but that VW used it in the way they did, was VWs choices. The same or a similar control from Bosch unit is probably used by many other car manufacturers, but without abusing this specific "feature". As the article writes, there are other "strange" engine configurations with other car manufacturers, like using the outside temperature. Reducing or switching off the exhaust cleaning system at outside temperatures below 17C (the tests are guaranteed to be done at 20C) achieves a similar effect to what VW was doing without literally breaking the law by using a defeat device.
- pedrocr 8y ago> There can be quite reasonable use cases for that information What reasonable use case is there for a detection of the test cycle just from ECU information? If you're just testing stuff surely you have access to the ECU to just set a flag manually for anything you need?
- yeukhon 8y agoNetflix'a Dirty Money documentary Ep 1 covers this topic: https://www.netflix.com/title/80118100 https://www.netflix.com/title/80118100
- Yaggo 8y agoEuropean here. My next car will be electric, likely a Tesla. The dieselgate is the reason why I'm not even considering Volkswagen's upcoming 'ID' family of electric cars. I've similar feeling about the whole traditional auto industry.
- gcb0 8y agobetter buy from a car company founded by a money launderer who is currently lying on tweeter to manipulate stock prices illegally and fighting hard to keep under wraps the auto pilot killer bugs. any reason why you are not buying from the dozen asian manufacturers that are not involved in either shenanigans if you base your purchases solely on moral grounds?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dpau 8y agoyou mean like zoox or xiaopeng? https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/03/21/tesla-sues-former-employees-zoox-for-alleged-trade-secret-theft/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/03/21/tesla...
- adrianN 8y agoUnfortunately you seem to be in the minority. People are still happily buying VW.
- 3o4xkp 8y agoI don't care about whether things are "ecologically sound" or not. I know the earth is important and blah blah, but I have bigger fish to fry every day. I'm sure most people feel like that.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoWhy "unfortunately"? Would it be better if every company that does a bad thing was forced to just close shop? If that be the case I'm pretty sure we'll have to shut down Tesla within a couple of years over their "Autopilot"/"Full Self Driving" claims.
- carboy 8y agoI could never understand how something that was less refined, diesel, meaning that it had more unnecessary “stuff” could produce less emissions. Diesel always did, and always will, as far as I’m concerned he snake oil when it comes to emissions.
- benj111 8y agoIts less refined in the sense of less cracking. It contains more energy for a given volume, so you get better fuel economy than with petrol. It might not be better for the particulates and NOx that we are now optimising for, but its better for CO2, that we were optimising for. So I don't think the snake oil label is warranted.
- lscotte 8y agoDiesel engines are also significantly more efficient at converting that energy into usable torque. That's why an idling diesel consumes almost no fuel - it isn't doing any work.
- CzechTech 8y agoI always cringe when one of these "we could have been driving electric cars" articles shows up. Cars are not bread and the vast vast majority of the planet's population (who even own a car) don't just go around shopping for new cars. It's going to take DECADES before electric cars have a significant impact on the climate change. That is an economic reality. (Not to mention that electric cars are only now starting to barely match gasoline cars in terms of usability and range.)
- jokoon 8y agoI live in france, and I often spot cars that have a grey/blue smokes. Many other cars also have this awful smell. Here, every 2 years, cars must legally be examined in a "controle technique", like an exam which controls several aspects of a vehicle. I wonder if those fumes are legal, and I really wonder if people can manage to cheat at that exam, because I think I'm noticing an epidemic of those fumes. How can I really be expected to ride a bike next to cars like this? I'd rather spend time in a tram or bus than expose my lungs to this.
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y agoIn Spain we have a similar exam and unfortunately I know that there are indeed people that cheat. I don't know the details but there are ways to make their car emit less smoke only that day, and then go back to "normal". Probably we should do as many Asians do in this, and make it normal to go out with a face mask. Not sure what kind of masks have to be used to effectively not breathe pollution, and their effectivity, though. Getting informed about that is in my to-do list.
- jokoon 8y agono mask can filter particles
- blattimwind 8y agoFiltering airborne particulates is pretty much the baseline reason to use masks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (However surgical masks aren't meant to do that, they're only meant to catch things expelled from you, not the other way around. So I guess your interjection is somewhat correct in that running around with a surgical mask does pretty much nil to improve the quality of the air you inhale.)
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y agoDoctors also have masks to protect them from external things (for example, when they deal with patients that have tuberculosis), although I've just learned from Google that they are not technically called masks, but respirators (N95 respirators). They are quite uncomfortable to wear, though. You can breathe just fine for extended period of time but it feels (at least to me, a layman in these things) like you get less air. I wouldn't wear it as an everyday thing. I have no idea if there are more comfortable solutions that can handle pollution.
- sidcool 8y agoThis happens in almost all industries. Big oils' repetitive attempts to kill EVs, Big Pharmas, insurance and hospitals lobbying against healthcare reforms, Big Banks working against finance regulations etc.