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Volkswagen CEO Issues Apology Over Emission-Cheating Software
cartechboy writes: Last Friday we learned that Volkswagen got caught cheating on emissions testing via software programming. The punishment? It could get slapped with up to $18 billion in fines. While the company has yet to admit to any wrong doing, the CEO has now issued a formal apology and said the automaker will cooperate fully with any and all investigations. It's issued a stop-sale on all new and used TDI vehicles until further notice. VW's currently in talks with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board in regards to these allegations. It's also ordered an external investigation of its own into the matter. Whether criminal charges will be filed is yet to be seen.
It's the 1970s all over again.
Now the only way to get a diesel passenger vehicle is to buy a $30k+ Audi, Mercedes Benz or a massively overpriced crew cab pickup truck.
Is there really any more to it?
When Toyota had the audacity of becoming number 1, their CEO got dragged in front of the US congress about some acceleration issues.
VW just made the mistake of becoming number 1, and suddenly we discover they've been cheating at emissions. Expect a congress hearing and lots of demands for sanctions.
Was there a punishment when GM recently had a major oops?
The Audi A3 is one of the models implicated in this scam. It appears that it includes any VW and Audi vehicles that don't have a urea injection system.
I suppose I'll have to get my firmware updated which will cut my performance down. I could decline the recall but then I probably wouldn't be able to pass the emissions here in CA to get my tag renewed.
Goodby 42 MPG.
VW is a lot more afraid of EPA than it is of you, so if the recall "fix" makes your TDI run like shit then so be it.
Don't assume they won't do it if you're taking it in for something unrelated either. You can be absolutely certain the terms with EPA will be to apply it in all cases, without asking.
Just some friendly advice. In the immediate future you should regard your VW as hostile and willing to mess up your vehicle. Let the other suckers learn what happens before you find out the hard way.
You must be confused: the Nazis would never stoop so low as to lie about fuel economy...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The only remotely affordable passenger vehicle with a diesel motor, and bam. What a drag.
Do they do it?
If not, nothing was learned here. Either by accident or intentionally, it will happen again, eventually.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No I didn't RTFS but exactly what would the criminal charges be in a case like this? There was something similar a while back in which some car maker used a distinct programing settings in the ECM which allowed fuel economy to be inflated but shipped a different version so the consumer didn't complain the car was a turd in performance. As far as I know, the only thing that came of that was a change in economy measurement standards and revised estimates.
Is there any reason to expect that a simple firmware fix is even possible? With the stories of the actual emissions being 40x legal, some hardware might be required.
But I'm guessing the apology was something along the lines of:
"We're sorry we were caught."
Why did they do this? Did they think they could get away with it?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
that don't have a urea injection system.
I'm guessing that peeing into the gas tank isn't an option.
Saavik: On the test, sir... will you tell me what you did? I would really like to know.
McCoy: Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario.
Saavik: How?
Kirk: I reprogrammed the simulation so it was possible......
Saavik: What?
David Marcus: He cheated.
Kirk: I changed the conditions of the test; got a commendation for original thinking. I don't like to lose.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The EPA is full of shit. Do you want a 70mpg car? To effin bad! The EPA says it produces more pollutants per gallon than allowed. Doesn't matter that the car get 3 times more mpg!
That settles it, Sir!
if anyone's truly worried about vw/audi failing emissions... based on what the computers have to report about it, tailpipe-test them and see if they are lying.
In the German press, the CEO is already painting this as a bunch of rogue American engineers doing this.
One problem: If there was any engineering in the US, it was probably only to tweak the existing calibrations. It's pretty rare to see the actual source to ECUs, which is mostly unchanged over long periods of time. Most of the adjustments made are in the calibrations - a checksummed block of mapped constants in the ROM image file where the symbolic map has been exported by the compiler.
As somebody who has actually authored calibration tools used in the automotive industry, and worked on some of the software used to provide version control, I have a pretty clear idea of what is going on here.
In this case, the code itself - the algorithms used in the ECU, specifically disabled emissions controls (either by an alternative set of calibrations, or by skipping entire routines) when in Emissions Test Mode. If it's using an alternative set of calibrations... it still demands an answer to why it would need a second set of calibrations to begin with.
Sadly, the press and many of the investigators involved in this will probably not understand the techical aspects of this, and why this is a fundamental cheat that could only have been created by the team that engineered the ECU.
They got caught with their dick in the pig. You damn right he's apologizing.
test it in a fashion that will not trigger the emissions mode features.
Just as an FYI Honda got caught doing this with the accords back in like '05 or so. They were doing it by watching for if the rear abs sensors showed the wheels not moving while the car was 'in motion' and if so running the engine in a special 'emissions profile' to make them appear cleaner than they were. If you had a 4 wheel dyno they wouldn't trigger as such and you could get the real emission readings.
There is one other possible trick left in that particular box, but I will leave it as an exercise to the reader :)
I recently passed over getting a TDI in lieu of a 2.5 gas. My initial reason for passing on the TDI was the known issues with failure of the High Pressure Fuel System (HPFS). A quick google on TDI HPFS will confirm, also see below. I live in california and am not a fan of the California Air Resources Board CARB and having to pay a premium for emissions components over other states - try $500 for a new CAT vs $200 in other states.This is a major blow as TDI were a nice alternative to Hybrids, especially with diesel averging $2.89/gl to gas' $3.30.
NHTSA Investication
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/c...
As an expert witness to the EPA/DOJ, whoever is prosecuting the case. If this is as serious of a concern as it seems, they might at least consider you to write a brief or testify.
This will be reduced to some completely unimportant sum like 18 million. Further its hilarious how the CEO is blaming rogue American engineers when it's clearly a upper management decision. Reading 'they launched an independent investigation' actually made me spit up my coffee it was so hilarious.
http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15.pdf
It has plenty of specific regs that were stepped on.
I wonder if the per-violation stuff is per car or per emissions test?
If per-car puts the penalty at 20% of VW, per-test might put it over 100% of VW.
At some point, this may be political between countries instead of simply regulatory actions.
I wonder if Germany can catch any of the big three doing something bad?
The day after Christmas will be a great time to buy a VW if you're in the market for one.
They'll be desperate for sales (assuming they're allowed to sell them by then.)
Is he sorry they did it, or sorry they got caught?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
No that will cause the sensitive hpfp to fail and a 10k repair.
http://www.edmunds.com/car-news/feds-close-probe-into-vw-audi-tdi-vehicles-for-high-pressure-fuel-pump-failure.html
Am I the only one who thought "Huh, that was pretty clever."?
VW is certainly taking it in the nads re: their stock price.
In the pantheon of automaker screw ups this isn't the worst by far.
Full text: "We're sorry we got caught!"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Bearing in mind that one's financial prowess plays such a large role in the apparent seriousness of any degree of deliberate immorality at someone else's expense.
Requiem for the American Dream
It appears that all diesel VW and Audi vehicles do have a urea injection system, but some only enable it during tests.
Car tax is based on emissions, perhaps tax on my old car should be reduced since all the other cars are cheating.
Why didn't they just include the DEF injection system and offer an "economy"/low-power mode to drive without DEF, but with increased performance with the DEF reservoir filled? It's a whole lot better than having a diesel vehicle which refuses to start when you're out of DEF and the local filling station doesn't have any in stock.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
That we got caught.
The lesson here is to use hardware to cheat the emissions testing. We have been doing that on most every car for about 40 years, injecting air into the exhaust to lower the ratio of emissions.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Have we learned nothing from the quack3.exe fiasco?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
My 2014 TDI at 80mph in 6th gear and no traffic gets 56mpg. In moderate traffic @ 50 - 65mph I get no less than 42mpg. I am a gear head and I know you would need to adjust the fuel injection (no spark it's a diesel) to occur a little before the power stroke to get a hotter burn and reduce NOx. The problem is this will reduce performance and mpg.. both the main reasons why I bought a diesel tdi. I want my money back. once the ecu is updated to be EPA compliant the car will not perform as well and mpg not as good. I want a refund + tax , title, registration, +6% of sale to cover taxes on my new non VW vehicle purchase since I won't have a trade and be subject to full sales tax.
Audi is in the recall too!
yeah.. you have to be careful with winter fuel. Not enough antigel on a cold winter day can cause frozen fuel in the HPFP and ice will be injected into the engine at 29000 psi. resulting in damage.
A3 and A4.. plus any other audi diesel that has a 2.0L TDI engine
it's amazing what people think they can hide in code, on a chip, and in the wiring to that chip.
i am not saying they're all cheating on emissions..
i assume it's all wide open to "gaming"..
is it not?
With the disintegration of the European Union the German VW CEO will never be brought to trial because that would displeasure the Merkel Regime.
"I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it would do any good."
It's not that it disables emissions control.
Modern motors are electronically controlled, by a so-called ECU. There's a lot of software in that, deciding how much fuel is injected at which time, etc.
Now Volkswagen's ECU had two modes: a "sheep mode" with low emissions to satisfy the EPA and a "wolf mode" with higher emissions (and higher power) to satisfy the buyer.
When testing for emissions, it put on the "sheep mode". When on the road, "wolf mode" was it. Classical win-win situation, if you ask me[1].
Now how and why the car has to "know" that it's in an emissions test is beyond my grasp.
[1] Of course I'm being ironical. VW's loss of reputation is the least which should happen, and it doesn't matter whether the upper boss Winterkorn knew or not: he's responsible for a culture which makes this possible (as is the buyer btw).
Peeing into the gas tank isn't even possible on a diesel vehicle, and peeing in the diesel tank is not good anyway.
You shall ensure that you never, ever mix the reagent with diesel - either diesel in the reagent tank or reagent in the diesel tank since it causes crystals to form that clogs the entire system causing a very expensive repair.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I found GM had special procedures for getting Fiero's to pass emissions in the '80s. What other GM models, and what other companies have done this? Who knows.
Volkswagen is not the first to write software that recognizes and adapts to the condition of being under test. Some 22 years ago my boss came downstairs and slapped an open copy of Infoworld on my desk. "How 'bout them apples?" He said. There was a gleam in his eye.
The article was the 8-Mar-1993 hardware column written by Steve Gibson (thanks Google!) and it created a novel scandal in the industry. Once again, a particular graphics card exhibited stellar -- even bizarre -- performance on the popular Winbench test.
Gibson and other had been tracking down and exposing a series of graphic benchmark cheats that turned out to be various tweaks in the software drivers that shipped with graphics cards, to exploit benchmark programs in various ways. He set his debugger on the driver but failed to find any point where the code branched during the test condition... and yet, his video hardware snoop clearly discerned that the card was deferring multiple writes of a certain text string "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back and sat on a tack." It turned out that this benchmark cheat had been written in as part of the microcode in the chip itself.
These days that might not seem so incredible, but remember. Flashable firmware is now the rule and chipsets are almost always designed with more than enough slack memory for field fixes and protocol upgrades, even (gasp!) malware. Many high level operations are pipelines to chip level directly. There's lots of elbow room, even double plus memory if you wish to keep the previous version in flash for a smooth rollback. But in the ROM days there was this unspoken assumption that such high-level antics as recognizing and adapting to test conditions at the chip level would be too difficult. This scandal swept that assumption under the rug. I especially like the manufacturer's sort-of confession, that those clever engineers of his were always coming up with new ways to get good WinBench scores. It was actually funny.
The next version of Winbench wrote random gobblegook to the screen instead.
Volkswagen shouldn't be laughing though about how easy it is to cheat, on the eve of self-driving cars. Neither should lab technicians testing for salmonella at peanut butter manufacturing plants.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
"Last Friday we learned that Volkswagen got caught cheating on emissions testing via software programming. The punishment? It could get slapped with up to $18 billion in fines."
Who wrote the software, who told him to write the software, why aren't criminal sanctions being applied?
No, the 2.0L 4 banger 2008-2015 models don't have urea injection. The 2016 models supposedly have it, as well as all V6 diesels.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
It appears that it includes any VW and Audi vehicles that don't have a urea injection system.
Piss on that.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I mean even just in terms of pragmatic emotionless corporation logic.
They introduced a series of cars that were WAY ahead of anything the competition could produce in terms of price/power/efficiency and seriously did not expect that somebody would want to analyze that magical engine to see how it works? (and find out it's cheating and drop the bomb in a couple of years to maximize the damage). Even if none of the competitors have anything to do with the reveal (which I find unlikely), that should have been the first thing VW execs should have expected!
I was going off this article, but I really should have known better than to trust the Daily Fail.
I suppose I'll have to get my firmware updated which will cut my performance down. I could decline the recall but then I probably wouldn't be able to pass the emissions here in CA to get my tag renewed.
Goodbye illegally obtained 42 MPG.
There. All better now.
Wonder what your gas mileage would have been had they played by the rules.
Criminal charges (and convictions and prison time) are the only real deterrents to such misbehavior. And not just for a scapegoat or two.
"I personally am deeply sorry that we got caught.” Winterkorn should have said in the statement.
My first thought was that German billionaire that committed suicide over his failed VW short position. Just a handful of years too early. http://www.reuters.com/article...
If VW had any sense they would shrug their shoulders and say, oh those clever engineers and their over-zealous algorithms.
an Article on CNN stated that the probe has widened and now may include 11 million cars worldwide.
500k in the USA - but 11 million globally? New York Times has a better article. Wow - they tried to fool the world.
I bet they have the s/w under some sort of source control, which should tell who modified what when and maybe why.
Should be interesting if the changes were happened near when they had to pass US emissions tests.
The 2007 and newer standards (phased in from 2007-2010)
The emission standards included new, very stringent limits for PM (0.01 g/bhpÂhr) and NOx (0.20 g/bhpÂhr).
The preceding 2004-2006 standards:
The goal was to reduce NOx emissions from highway heavy-duty engines to levels approximately 2.0 g/bhpÂhr beginning in 2004.
From a Vox article with actual details ( http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9... ):
On the road, VW's Jetta was emitting 15 to 35 times as much nitrogen oxide as the allowable limit.
Assuming they mean the 2010 limit, that puts it at 3.0-7.0 g/bhp*hr
The VW Passat was emitting 5 to 20 times as much.
Or roughly 1.0-4.0 g/bhp*hr
So the NEW Passat is capable of meeting the OLD Passat's emissions rate, some of the time.
The NEW Jetta never comes close to meeting the OLD Jetta's emissions rate.
Somehow, not only did they not improve on power or mileage over the last 8 years, they also are doing worse on emissions?!?
I love my '06 Golf, but I've got to wonder what the hell they've been doing for the last decade...
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
When did engineers ethics drop so low.
Calling this a sophistacted defeat device is crap. Any engineer can do this when they lack ethics.
This CEO does not seem to know much of anything about getting away with illegal activity.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Behind every great fortune there is a crime;
Casteism
who's there?
diesel
diesel who?
diesel probably pass emissions now.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Let me just say that I sure HOPE that there are NO charges filed against Volkswagen for this scandal. All of you who may be environmentalists maybe be saying to yourself there better damn well be some but lets take a look at some recent events that may set the precedent for why there should be no charges. A few weeks ago GM was found guilty of putting faulty ignition switches in over 29 MILLION cars over a 10 year period that absolutely were directly attributable to over 124 human lives expiring. GM was fined 900 Billion by the DOJ and has to pay an additional 500 some odd billion to the victims of this act. (Odd that the gov gets more than double what the people who actually were harmed by this get?) No criminal charges were files against any GM employees for their reckless acts that directly impacted human lives. If GM didn't get charges than VW better not either. While it was wrong what they did, they didn't kill anyone, and that should be the biggest precedent when making legal decisions for this case.
Let's go back a few years now. In the past 7 years almost every single Too Big Too Fail bank has paid billions of dollars in fines related to the financial collapse of 2008. A collapse that saw the entire US population lose 50% of it's wealth and has left our country in turmoil ever since. The fines paid were related to predatory and illegal lending practices that the banks used to grow their mortgage portfolios. While none of the banks have ever admitted guilt, the settlements being the Billions are obvious signs that they were guilty. Nobody has ever gone to jail or been prosecuted for this illegal activity that effected every single American and most of the world. If no one went to jail for this heinous crime then why should anyone at VW go to jail for tricking the emissions computer?
What VW did is wrong, I'm not condoning it. But in the grand scheme, their action is very minor to what kinds of illegal schemes we have been exposed to over the past decade. Food for thought.
Voting systems, cars, refrigerators, whatever - if you take a simple task like regulating a fuel mixture, or counting votes, and rather than use a simple methodology or circuit to accomplish the task at hand and instead use a re-programmable Turing machine, you introduce the certainty that the owner of the device - who is not the same as the person who bought the device! - will change the code at will to do whatever makes the owner a profit. Change the code in the engine, beat emissions tests. Change a few votes, keep a reconstruction of a country to your advantage going. Put an AI in charge of driving a car, and police or dictators will use that AI to control people they don't like. There is no judicial solution for this, as you cannot jail a corporation. The solution is to de-complexify the systems, reintroduce simplest-possible solutions that do not use Turing devices to accomplish tasks. Fuel mixing do not require AI and a telematics system networked to the internet. Though it is inevitable that a generation born to complex IT solutions be blind to the downsides of those solutions. Rule of thumb: if you can't control what it is doing, don't trust it.
Henry Ford was a fascist-admiring Nazi admirer, yet somehow, no one seems to recall that come epithet time.
So, even after we see practical fusion power? That's always 25 years out.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.