Slashdot Mirror
VW Fiasco Puts Ethics In Engineering Under the Spotlight, CEO Steps Down
szczys writes: By now you've heard that VW has been accused of doctoring the software in their small diesel models to sidestep emissions standards. The thing that hasn't been talked about is engineering ethics. An algorithm in the code detects when the vehicle is under test conditions and causes it to perform differently. This couldn't have been accomplished by just one person. Brian Benchoff looks at the conditions leading up to the scandal and discusses the engineering ethics involved. Automotive engineers are held to a higher standard because mistakes and cut corners can kill people. This kind of suspected deceit goes well beyond concerns of environmental damage. Willing ethics violations challenge our trust of the engineering as a whole. Volkswagen‘s chief executive Martin Winterkorn has announced he is stepping down.
Now we can have the same distrust society affords to doctors and lawyers! We're finally real professionals. Let's start a guild.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
This was a financial decision, pure and simple. Someone in a suit decided it would be more profitable to hide non-compliance, rather than spend the resourcing fixing the problem *with* proper engineering.
Finally, engineers get some attention -- for something bad.
And, in a couple of weeks the attention will die away, and the public will laud somebody who can sing more than somebody who can create devices that make peoples lives better.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
One thing is for certain. No whistles were blown. Which is pretty impressive considering how long this has been going on and the extent of who all must have been in the know. I don't think this falls into the category of one software developer tweaking some parameters. I mean the engine was designed without a urea injection system in the first place, which is pretty much necessary to make a diesel engine conform to emissions standards that strict. So it sure leans towards the falsification pathway going way, way back.
Better known as 318230.
But since VW is a foreign company, this is going to be blown completely out of proportion. When American companies are caught cheating, it's just fierce competition, and it gets them a slap on the wrist. That is an ethics issue.
I imagine the European engineers rationalized this "it's good enough for environmentally conscious Europe, why shouldn't it be good enough for the US? The US environment is shitty anyway, with all those SUVs and no trains! The EPA is just trying to make life difficult for European importers!"
Of course, the two problems with that way of thinking are that European environmental regulations are not as strict as American ones, and that VW is so important to the German economy that it gets a pass on pretty much everything.
And the manager said, "You're fired."
FTFY
GPU's (and their drivers) have often been written to specifically perform well on the benchmark tests.
ISP's and mobile carriers have structured their bandwidth to perform better in 'speed test' situations then they do under normal usage.
The way it's always been explained to me is that a corporation has no responsibility other than to the share-holders. "Maximize Profits" is the defining ethos. Perhaps this question is aimed at a lower level. When you're the specific programmer/engineer that is told, 'make the system lie' do you do it, or do you resign?
I'm often in that situation when writing analytics software. "These numbers aren't what we want to see can you work around this set of data that doesn't conform?" I'll explain my position about how I need to represent all the data, and if you think it's incorrect, fix the data rather than having the program lie. However, they are never that interested. Polite refusals aren't enough.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
I'm not sure why you don't like the comparison, it seems rather apt.
Gaming a test is not unethical.
Yes, it is.
If you found this kind of clever hack, would you tell?
You bet your ass.
I remember reading (way back) where a system engineer/developer was told to implement a system that would allow the company to partake in spam campaigns. His way around the dilemma (do it or get fired)? He went ahead and implemented it, but made sure that any of the traffic this thing generated was properly blacklisted in the majority of the spam filters (before turning it on).
TomAto, Tomato.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We must be naive to think only one car company does this.
The mileage I get from my car are not as good as what my dashboard say and I don't have a VW.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
This was a financial decision, pure and simple.
The engineers did the dirty deed. It wasn't ONLY an engineering decision but the engineers do not escape culpability here. Management cannot make this happen without the cooperation of engineering. I don't doubt for a moment that this was ordered by an executive somewhere but "just following orders" isn't a valid defense. The Germans of all people ought to know that by now.
Someone in a suit decided it would be more profitable to hide non-compliance, rather than spend the resourcing fixing the problem *with* proper engineering.
And someone with a pocket protector decided it was ok if they committed fraud. There will be plenty of people with their hand in this cookie jar. The real question will be how high up the food chain this reaches.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Actually, she's no longer Secretary of State ('natch).
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
.. not an Engineering one!
This is what happens when you exempt corporate engineers from licensing standards. There are no repercussions, no sense of proper conduct, and no accountability?
Would you allow your doctors to skip board certification but still practice medicine if they worked for a healthcare company?
Would you allow lawyers to skip the bar but still bring court cases if they worked for a corporation?
Why do we allow engineers to practice engineering without a license if they work for a corporation? As with all the professions above, engineers must be registered and licensed to perform engineering work for the public - why does this change if there is an intermediary corporation who takes than work and then sells it to the public?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
True Scotsman would use better reasoning.
Gaming a test is not unethical.
This is almost the very definition of fraud. I wonder who raised you if you think fraud is in any way ethical.
Tests were made to be gamed, rules were made to be broken.
This isn't some child's game where nobody gets hurt. You seem to have a profoundly broken moral compass if you think this was in any way justifiable.
The ethical question is: If you found this kind of clever hack, would you tell?
Yes I would. What they did offends me on a variety of levels. They profited through a deliberate deception and realized unlawful gains.
I believe there was at least one mechanical engineer that designed the motor and found that it didn't meet emission standards.
Also "real" engineers that screw up do not necessarily go to jail. The one who caused the GM ignition switch problem hasn't even been charged. Some go to jail, some don't and when they do it is usually for directly causing death or injury.
I didn't know Tom Brady had a Slashdot account. Weird.
Volkswagen should totally use the Tom Brady defense. "No one told us cheating at emission tests was punishable, so you can't punish me!"
All they have to do is buy a Senator or Presidential Candidate to rail against "job crushing regulations within the industry", and immediately propose removal of all regulations for cars.
Hell, cars can come out of the factory without even seatbelts. Or wheels. Because it would stimulate the economy.
Either that, or they would work hard to get the law changed so that what VW did was perfectly legal. After all, that's how the financial industry works. Credit Default Swaps? Still entirely legal.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You missed the part about breaking emission laws and causing additional pollution which effects the environment and people's health.
The basic problem is a lack of management ethics.
The engineers who did this were equally lacking in ethics as any management involved. This was a deliberate fraud and there is no way they did not know this was wrong and illegal and harmful. Any engineer who went along with this is every bit as guilty. The engineers assisted in the commission of a what they had to know was a crime. "Just following orders" is not an acceptable defense and the Germans better than anyone ought to know that.
With the complexities of the of system design it may have been possible to shield some of the knowledge from those implementing it by breaking down components and expecting certain outcomes. However at some high level this was fully known and authorized. VW is going to take a real beating on this and rightly so.
They didn't game the test. They violated the rules while nobody was looking.
It would be like letting the air out of the footballs so that the ball was more grippable and throwable for only one team in a championship game. And we know how that turned out. Oh, wait...that's a bad example.
To put it in a car analogy way, imagine if you calculated your fuel economy numbers but only took data when you were headed downhill on at least a 1% grade. You would technically be calculating the fuel economy of the car, but it wouldn't represent the actual average fuel economy. That's pretty much what they did. And is both unethical and illegal.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If their ECU code had been Open Source and so reviewed by millions this would not have happened.
GPU's (and their drivers) have often been written to specifically perform well on the benchmark tests.
ISP's and mobile carriers have structured their bandwidth to perform better in 'speed test' situations then they do under normal usage.
All of which are examples of fraud and which should result in lawsuits if not criminal charges.
The way it's always been explained to me is that a corporation has no responsibility other than to the share-holders.
They also have a responsibility to follow the law. Their fiduciary duty does not extend to the point where breaking the law is acceptable.
When you're the specific programmer/engineer that is told, 'make the system lie' do you do it, or do you resign?
If you have an sort of ethical backbone then yes you resign. Personally I would consider gathering evidence to become a whistleblower.
Now begins the testing of all vehicles' claims; it makes you wonder what will be dug up in the next few months. Odds of this being isolated to VW, low.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Oh yes, by all means, lets discuss the ethics of lying, cheating, and stealing, not to mention willfully polluting the shit out of the atmosphere we all breathe.
Anyone that could possibly defend what VW here did is an idiot or a VW executive. This was corporate wrong-doing on a massive scale, and the fact that this made it into production means that it wasn't the work of some rogue engineer or even a rogue group.
This had to have been approved at the highest levels within the company- there is simply no other way this could have occurred.
It makes me long for the old days when all we could criticize Volkswagen for was building vehicles for the Nazis.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Too right. Someone in management signed off on this plan.
So did the engineers that implemented said plan. There is no way the engineers involved are not equally guilty as any management who ordered this fraud. Just because the mastermind orders the bank heist doesn't mean the guys who carry it out aren't just as guilty. This was a fraud and any engineer involved damn well knew that what they were doing was both illegal and unethical.
1) Do they put in a software patch that makes the cars go SLOW? Do they buy them all back?
2) NO it is not done in all industries. It is especially avoided where governments are testing products, not just a magazine doing benchmarks.
3) the Engineers SHOULD have blown the whistle. VW is a BIG company, the code had to have been tested by several teams.
You have the Project specs team that finds out how the US tests, the coders, the QA team that tests the cars under testing scenarios.
Then management gets reports on how all these teams have spent their time. The CEO knew about it, so everyone between him and the engineer that thought up the change knew about it.
SOME computer software should be "signed off on" by a licensed professional who is subject to the same kinds of professional sanctions as engineers are if they behave unethically.
I'm mainly thinking pacemaker- and other medical-device-firmware but I would throw air-bag and other auto-safety-system software in there as well. You sign off on pacemaker software where corners were cut and someone dies or their health is endangered, YOU should get your license sanctioned or revoked, even if you did it at your employer's behest, just like if a civil engineer signed off on a sub-standard bridge design or inspection because his employer pressured him to do so.
As for software engineers who write engine pollution control software, where nobody gets seriously injured or killed (at least not immediately *coughwheezegaspithoughtwewereinkansasnotbeijing*), they should certainly behave ethically but the purpose of professional licensing is to protect the public safety and the client (in this case, the car company) from financial abuse by the professional (in this case the employee). It is not to protect the car-buying public from being ripped off by the car company lying through their teeth. We've got other forms of government regulation and civil and criminal courts to address those issues.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That's right--Timmy cheated on his history test, and that makes it perfectly okay for me to lie to Mom about the five dollars I stole from her purse.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The one who caused the GM ignition switch problem hasn't even been charged.
The GM fiasco was at core an engineering mistake which was later (apparently) covered up. The mistake isn't worthy of charges. Nobody at GM set out to make a defective part. The cover up that (maybe) happened later might be worthy of charges depending on whether it was deliberate or not.
The VW case however was a fraud right from the start. They clearly did this intentionally and it clearly meets the definition of fraud. People at VW should go to jail for this.
Not condoning the cheating, but there is another issue. Many Americans drive, as their family vehicle as well as work vehicle, "light" trucks (e.g. Dodge RAM 3500) and SUVs which have much larger Diesel engines in them than the ones being discussed in these VW cars.
What I've been told about the structure of the EPA regulations is that driving a much more polluting large Diesel pickup truck as your personal vehicle is allowed, but driving a relatively much more efficient and less polluting small European Diesel vehicle is not allowed.
Something is seriously messed up there.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
FYI, Kia got burned for doing that a couple of years back, especially on their 2012 Soul models.
They tried to play it off as "human error", but that 2-6 mpg 'error' cost Kia $300 million in fines (and in not-insubstantial checks written to a lot of Soul owners, my wife being the recipient of one of them).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm not sure about #3. They were certainly competent enough in their engineering when it came to evading the inspections.
When you can strip a corporation of it's right to operate in it's current market segment, and put the corporation in jail (mothball all assets for, say 10-50 years), or kill a corporation altogether (forfeiture of all assets, permanent ban of the reuse and licencing all corporation names, trademarks, IP, and assets, banning of the current registered corporate officers from ever being a registered corporate officer in the future), then we can talk about being accountable as a corporation.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This is what happens when you exempt corporate engineers from licensing standards. There are no repercussions, no sense of proper conduct, and no accountability?
You think a license makes people honest? There are plenty of doctors and lawyers and other licenses and bonded professionals that behave unethically and even criminally. A license doesn't solve this problem. All a license does is attempt to ensure a base level of functional competence. It doesn't ensure honesty one bit.
Why do we allow engineers to practice engineering without a license if they work for a corporation?
Well, speaking as an engineer, it's probably because for most types of engineering a license would serve no meaningful public interest and would not improve the quality of engineering. It simply doesn't matter for what I do. Certain types of engineers (notably civil and sometimes in areas like aviation and others where bodily harm can result) ARE required to be licensed and have to pass appropriate examinations. For others like the type of engineer I am (industrial) it doesn't matter at all. The worst thing that happens if I screw up is the company makes less money. My wife is an MD and if she screws up, people can die. See the difference?
A Nazi organization to have ethics.
Asymptotically approaching Godwin's Law...
No, I mean the CEO of a US corporation would've never stepped down over something like this... s/he would've threw one of his (disposable) underlings under the bus instead.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
We must be naive to think only one car company does this.
The mileage I get from my car are not as good as what my dashboard say and I don't have a VW.
You are probably also not driving as fast as the dash boards says. Without GPS a car has to assume the largest wheel size your car can fit, but if you are using standard wheels this means miles are overestimated, typically by around 10%. The alternative would be showing too low speeds causing the drivers to get regularly fined.
Or numerous people in this forum would have been sued numerous times.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Nobody ever said, "go forth and flaunt the law" maybe $Engineer did not even realize what he was doing violated the testing rules.
I have spent a good portion of my career as an engineer in the automotive industry. There is NO WAY the engineers doing this were not fully aware that what they were doing was in violation of the law. To program this they would have to be aware of what the rules were and so they cannot argue that they didn't realize what they were doing. They weren't stupid, they weren't naive. They knew exactly what they were doing at the time they did it.
No, this was a deliberate fraud. Probably ordered by management but executed and carried out by engineers who damn well knew or should have known what they were doing was illegal as hell.
It seems to me that at least some of this finger pointing should go towards the idiots who created the circumstance where the item under test was informed it was under test. That presumes an atmosphere of trust that the very idea of "testing for compliance" does not, and should not, incorporate.
I'm not saying VW is blameless in this, or making any statement about the consequences to society or lack thereof. I'm just saying someone, or more than one someone, is culpable as having set up the circumstances where this could even happen.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Skills, yes. But credentials do not an engineer make, kiddo.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Oh sure... The only difference is that if the US company get's in too much trouble, the company just heads to bankruptcy court and reorganizes. If it's bad enough and the company has Union workers, the UAW will demand and get a government funded bail out of said company to keep the union membership employed under the guise of being "too big to fail"....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Your boss tells you to do something, you refuse to do it, you get fired and they get someone else to do what they want anyway.
If your boss is ordering you to do something that you damn well know is illegal then you should refuse. If they want to fire you for that then so be it. This is not a complicated scenario. Having a family to feed is not adequate justification for fraud and frankly weren't not talking about the sort of workers who cannot ever get another job. These are well paid engineers with options.
it was the decision of someone in a suit, not the author(s) of the code in question.
Bullshit. That's the "I was just following orders" defense. The order may have come from up high but the decision to execute that illegal order makes the engineers every bit as culpable. The guy executing the crime is just as guilty as the guy who plans the crime.
There might not be a 'proper engineering' solution to the emissions problem.
That's not an excuse to commit fraud even if true.
What bothers me most about this is the implication that the diesel engine cannot be designed to provide both good fuel economy and low emissions. This hack is a tacit acknowledgement that those two goals are mutually exclusive. Why should reducing emissions make the engine less efficient?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The Engineers had to willingly participate in this scheme in order for it to ship. It's the same thing we say about Kim Davis: if the job you're being asked to do violates your personal ethics, then resign! The engineers deliberately chose continuing to receive a paycheck over doing the right thing. Although, I can't say I would have chosen any differently.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's ironic; usually it's the corporate management that are complete tools!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
How does one ``accidently'' engage in a cover up?
It's not actually clear if it was a cover up or merely incompetence. You can argue that the difference shouldn't matter and I might agree with you but it isn't clear that anyone acted with deliberate fraud in mind. Maybe they did but the point is that the initial engineering wasn't a fraud, only subsequent actions once there was evidence of a problem.
I seem to recall that GM was/is in hot water because there was some internal communication that pointed out the cause of the problem but that management chose to `downplay' (nice way of saying `cover up') the problem. Recalls cost money, ya know.
Right but that's not necessarily so weird. You issue a recall if the problem is of a certain severity and if you have hard proof but it's not hard to see how for a rare condition (a few out of millions) management might draw the conclusion that there isn't enough evidence to warrant a recall. Easy to see the decision as wrong in hindsight but at the time it may not have been so clear. Of course it is just as possible that it was very clear (or should have been obviously clear) that a recall was warranted and they tried to cover up the problem rather than fix it.
Take a quick look at the fate of whistle-blowers in the USA. Every single one, even those who finally (usually 10 to 15 years later) get their cash settlement, are blackballed within their industry, if not outright shunned by 'most everyone they knew in their former company. Typically a (USA) company engages in a propoganda war against the whistle-blower, starting with firing him for misconduct or violating IP or similar nonsense; then moving on to significant character assassination.
Whistle-blowing ain't gonna happen, so quit trying to blame the technical staff.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Force VW to open source their current and future code. This would benefit the country way better than any monetary fine.
First let me admit, that I have no understanding of the amount of code in these cars and especially the amount of code in the fuel pumps and engine.
But as a software engineer, I have setup many test modes. And I have done this many times previously to setup a test mode that provides the correct results, then tried to construct code to achieve the desired results.
So my question here is: Could the person who wrote this code originally, have been writing code for the desired operation that got included later, without their knowledge?
Don't get me wrong the person who wrote the bit of code to detect the situation the car was in to get it to run in this mode is definitely wrong and those who made the decision to add this in are in the wrong. But the original code, might not have been written with malicious intent.
I leased a VW Jetta TDI three years ago. It pretty much always got better than the advertised economy. I rarely got below 48 MPG and I think it was rated at 42. I only checked the dash MPG against the actual MPG a few times when it was brand new and they were within .1 MPG. It was an amazingly efficient vehicle.
When slavery was legal, would it have been unethical to not report a runaway slave, pretending you knew nothing about it?
If your answer is yes, then you have described ethics-in-place as at times both dangerous and antisocial rather than a universal good, and therefore something that should be subject to further analysis before being blindly complied with.
If your answer is no, then you have (correctly) determined that following law/rules is not always the correct thing to do, and that those who choose not to follow the law/rules are not always in the wrong.
The important question here is what harm, if any, was done to the consumer and to the environment; and this must be balanced against what benefits were obtained. It's not inherently a matter of "sociopathy."
Most people -- or in other words, people, in a widespread manner -- choose not to follow one law or another; be it spitting on the sidewalk, underage drinking, indulging in wackyweed, exceeding the speed limit, "forgetting" to declare this or that when crossing a national border, not throwing back that not-quite-big-enough trout, picking up vertebrate fossils on public land, not "getting around" to changing one's snow tires quite on time, installing an aftermarket exhaust system, indulging in various kinds of consensual sex play that isn't permitted by law, not reporting out-of-state transactions to the tax authorities, keeping more cats than the law allows, etc., etc., etc.
We often do this because we find the rules to be less than compelling in their rationale(s) and/or enforcement and/or their very existence. Not always because we're "sociopaths", but because the "rules", as it were, are not the be-all and end-all of what is good and righteous. The "ethics" that underlie our actual rules are often less than worthy of our attention outside of our derision. The same goes for the rules they spawn.
From my POV, if you want to convince me that VW is really guilty of being "bad" here, then you have to point to significant harm(s) that outweigh the benefit(s.) Aside from one ridiculous and scale-ignorant polemic about NOX above, nothing I've seen yet has described, much less demonstrated, any particular harm, aside from the actual act of "breaking the rules", which I just don't care about. And frankly, until the rules are shown to be rational and appropriate to the circumstance (not likely in the case of these particular emissions rules), I can't really see you doing so.
Also, as I mentioned in a comment above, I think it's pretty silly that the item under test was informed, or able to tell, that it was under test. Either way, the testing setup was pathologically stupid and unrealistic.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You really need to tone it down a bit. Your black and white, absolutist, perfect world assertions are starting to undermine some of the points you're making.
I disagree. I think this situation is very clear and I think attempts to defend the engineers who did this is a disgrace to the profession. I think these engineers should be in jail for their actions and I make no apologies for that stance. If you think this was in any way justified by the engineers then you and I have an irreconcilable difference of opinion.
We don't know, yet, whether there was an official directive, threats of termination, a group of engineers slipping one past management or what. It's very easy to sit back and say "resign" without understanding the situation that the engineers were in.
I don't care what their situation was. This action was very clearly a fraud. If they did it under duress that might be a mitigating factor in sentencing but it doesn't excuse what they did at all. Is it ok to dump toxic garbage because you were afraid of losing your job? Is it ok to lie about what your product can do because you are afraid of losing your job? No it isn't. This is very clear.
Also, the comparisons to Nazi Germany, and other examples of "just following orders" coming from some posters are way out of line.
Again I disagree. The consequences and grotesqueness of the crimes are different but the defense being put forth ("just following orders") for illegal and immoral acts is identical and equally wrong in both cases. You would think that lesson would have been learned long ago in VW given their history and especially since they are part owned by the German government.
If you can't tell the difference between genocide and a fraudulent product, you need to get help.
And if you can't understand an analogy and a rhetorical argument then you need to grow up. If you can't understand that performing an illegal act that will harm others (through pollution and deceptive financial gain) cannot be defended by saying you were just doing what you were told then you need to get a clue. Nobody including me is saying they were committing a crime on the level of genocide or that the punishment should be the same. But the basic lesson is that it is never ok to do something illegal just because you were ordered to by a supervisor.
Gaming a test is not unethical.
James Kirk didn't think so either.
...
Something is seriously messed up there.
There is indeed. It is the fruit of corporate lobbying.
Domestic vehicle makers have maintained a relative advantage in the SUV and sport truck marketplaces, practically alone among all vehicle categories. They also (not surprisingly) have their highest profit margins on these vehicles. Accordingly they have worked hard to make sure that special favors to promote those vehicle categories are written into law. The regulatory-industry turnstile ensures that favorable interpretations by (soon to be industry consultant) regulators.
Some years back there was actually a tax credit for heavy SUVs and trucks, which were classified automatically as "commercial vehicles" which in turn got an automatic "commercial vehicle purchase" tax credit without needing any showing of commercial use so that the tax payer was subsidizing the sale of gas guzzling toys to the well off (but they were American! toys.)
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Can you afford to walk away from your job right this minute?
Yes I can. In fact I have done just that on two occasions.
Knowing you'll get no unemployment compensation, no welfare, no assistance of any kind?
Nice strawman you have there.
It's one thing to voluntarily follow orders, quite another when the person giving the orders is holding the welfare of your family hostage against your good behavior. In my book people who refuse to recognize this are complicit with management in the act, they directly help management perpetuate the conditions that let management get away with these crimes.
Then you gather evidence of the crime and how you are being ordered to commit an illegal act under duress and you leave as soon as you can manage it. This crime didn't happen overnight though and your argument is a strawman really. This took months if not years. The engineers who did it were well paid and educated people with options and most likely a social safety net. The notion that they were anything but willing participants strikes me as absurd. And frankly even if they were in a tough situation it STILL doesn't excuse their actions. What they did was a fraud and a disgrace to the profession and I strongly believe those responsible should see time behind bars for it.
And you missed the part about demonstrating that they have done anything even remotely significant WRT "affecting people's health."
VW's rule-exceeding engines are, in fact, not significant contributors to the overall levels of the pollutants that are relevant to this. So you are barking up entirely the wrong tree here. We're pretty much all living longer, and better, than yesterday here in the developed countries. The problem -- and there is a problem -- is something else entirely, and that is the system for testing for emissions can be gamed, which opens up the potentiality for many more vehicles to test one way, and operate another, which is a lot more likely to actually result in serious consequences.
If you actually want this fixed, what needs fixing far more than anything else is the testing regime itself.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...I have a few problems with this oath. What does the phrase "When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation for the public good" actually mean? Does it mean "when the government declares a crisis, it can draft me and make me work like a slave for free?" If so, then shove it.
And, if it means anything of the sort, then it directly contradicts the clause "I shall participate in none but honest enterprises." since the majority of government activity is dishonest.
Lastly, if "I shall give the utmost" can ever be construed as "work long hours when someone else wants me too" then shove it.
Bring back the corporate death penalty. If memory serves, no state has used that option since the '50s. Used to be that corporations were were required to act in the public interest in return for their being allowed to form in the first place. Nowadays, when you listen to some people, their only obligation (widely parroted by the major media outlets) is to make money for the shareholders. I say it's time -- heck, way past time -- to bring back the requirement that corporations be accountable to the public that granted their charter. Can't live up to that as a corporation? Goodbye charter.
(Corporate apologist? Go ahead and flame away. I'm outta here.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
When I am asked to design something the first thing is to ask for the requirements and how they are going to be verified. This is the only way to be sure your design will meet the requirements. Let's say you have a requirement to not out out more than a certain amount of NOx. How will this be verified? What speed, altitude, fuel, path, what accessories are on, weight of cargo, and 100 other factors. Then your job is to meet that requirement. From what I have seen so far it looks like they were just clever meeting the requirements. All it would take is saying you have to pass this during actual highway driving. I have a car that deactivates cylinders to boost mileage. If you put it on a flat road at 60 it gets 30 mpg but driving in stop and go it's more like 18 mpg.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The mileage I get from my car are not as good as what my dashboard say and I don't have a VW.
The MPG estimates on your dash don't have anything to do with emissions testing. They are bullcrap to begin with, even more than the EPA mileage estimates.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ethic? Wasn't that word removed from the dictonnary this year for lack of use in the modern language since it had lost all meaning?
What bothers me most about this is the implication that the diesel engine cannot be designed to provide both good fuel economy and low emissions
The way I read it is that it correctly implies that the diesel engine cannot be designed to provide both good fuel economy and low emissions without increasing cost.
The article also says that there are things you can do at a reasonable cost to improve emissions (vs. not doing those things) without hurting fuel economy (too much) but practically every car manufacturer already does those things, and that doing just those things won't get you both good-enough-to-be-satisfying fuel economy and performance and meet the newer, tougher emission standards that governments now require. To get both, you have to spend money, which means higher prices for the customer or less profit for you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I don't know that it is that simplistic (nor do I think that the language you've used is necessarily appropriate),
HOWEVER
you are exactly correct! I mean, there are some grave predictions about the future of VW and they didn't kill anyone. Yes, VW should be punished and what they will get may even be the proper penalization. Relatively speaking, though, they should not be punished more harshly than companies that knowingly allowed dangerous parts to remain in cars even after people were killed.
remove nospam. to email!
CAFE rules are some of the most asinine regulations I've ever seen. We almost didn't get any more small pickups, because they'd all have to get like 45mpg by 2020 - meanwhile giant pickups could skate by with less than 30.
Are you asserting that only software engineers can know how to design a test? It sure seems to me like that is what you are saying so far.
One would hope that the people who designed the test for "how much pollution does this vehicle generate" understand that the amount of pollution generated depends on how the machine is operated, and that the operation of the machine not only varies under load, but also because of input from its control systems, regardless if those are comprised of software and sensors or gears, floats and rubber bands.
I just can't take seriously the idea that one would have to be a software engineer to design the test well. But perhaps that's because I am a software engineer, among other things. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Even when a car is available with a variety of different wheel sizes from the factory, the tire diameter is usually the same for all of them. The larger-diameter wheels simply come with lower aspect-ratio tires to compensate.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Bull. There are only a handful of diesel SUV models sold in the US, and their sales are extremely low. Diesel engines are more popular in extremely heavy-duty trucks, but still not very popular, and those aren't viable "family vehicle(s)", and very rarely used as commuter vehicles, at all.
It only makes sense for heavy vehicles to have more powerful engines. You need that power to tow trailers and other large cargo... things a little car is NEVER going to do, however polluting the engine might be. Why don't you go complain that those 16-wheel semi-trucks are allowed to pollute more than small cars, too? It doesn't make sense.
And NOBODY is going to buy a huge pickup, because they couldn't get a tiny diesel car... It's not a competition at all. Gasoline cars pollute far less. So much so that Europe is developing huge smog problems, with those famous landmarks covered in soot. Paris even banned pre-2011 diesel vehicles to deal with the problem.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Frankly, this is the death-knell for diesel power small-cars in the US. It puts the lie to the claims of their advantages, that most people were doubting without evidence, even while their other unremarked problems have been made undeniably obvious. No question in hindsight that Europe made the wrong decision promoting diesel over gasoline, and now it looks like they're bound to continue declining in popularity there, too.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Many Americans drive, as their family vehicle as well as work vehicle, "light" trucks (e.g. Dodge RAM 3500) and SUVs which have much larger Diesel engines in them than the ones being discussed in these VW cars.
I'd say you're only half right. The vast majority of Americans who drive a truck or SUV as their family vehicle are driving the gasoline engine variant. The people with the larger diesels generally need the hauling capacity. The gas engines are still not very efficient, but they are not diesels.
WVU which ran the tests which detected the cheating VW cars also tested a diesel BMW X5. The X5 passed.
The larger diesel trucks use a urea injection system to reduce NOx emissions. The larger size of the truck makes it easier to add the system, and the truck's higher price means the system makes a smaller (relative) increase to the vehicle's purchase price. The brouhaha over VW's EA189 engine was that it (purportedly) complied with NOx emission regulations without the added cost and complexity of a urea injection system. That would've been wonderful if true, but alas it wasn't.
"ethics violations challenge our trust of the engineering"
Ethics violations are now and have been occuring for longer than I can remember. Make no mistake about it ... it's all about money, plain and simple.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the last 20-30 years should know by now that "trust" in Engineering, Medicine, etc. (pick anything) has been corrupted by the all mighty dollar.
Where is that in the constitution?
Not there? Then it's up to the states who grant their charter.. I'm guessing few states will sign up for this for fear of running off business and economic activity to tax and the ones that would, are in serious trouble with businesses departing for greener pastures anyway (Here's looking at YOU CA and IL).
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
What I've been told about the structure of the EPA regulations is that driving a much more polluting large Diesel pickup truck as your personal vehicle is allowed, but driving a relatively much more efficient and less polluting small European Diesel vehicle is not allowed.
Essentially, yes. Not just that, but gasoline engines produce as much fine soot as diesels do. So really, the vast majority of vehicles on the American road probably produce more pollution than do these VWs given that the age of the US fleet is at an all-time high. It's quite normal to detect the test procedure and game it, just not by as much as VW did.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Even when a car is available with a variety of different wheel sizes from the factory, the tire diameter is usually the same for all of them. The larger-diameter wheels simply come with lower aspect-ratio tires to compensate.
The obvious exception is anything that's an off-road vehicle. But virtually all vehicles these days have a programmable speedo correction factor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... is what made the fascist state and other assorted sordid deeds possible. Why is this a surprise?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
- or is it ja! ja!
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
What the hell are you on about? All current VW diesel vehicles in the US are using urea exhaust treatment.
It is interesting that you say that. In Aus there is a definite preference for the SUV the soccer mum drives to be a diesel. Don't get me wrong there is a huge number of petrol variants sold but you will see the fact that a particular model is a diesel is put forward as a huge selling plus.
Citation needed.
citation. How do you think all these automakers got in this sort of trouble? VW was just the only one with the audacity to totally disable certain emissions equipment any time the test isn't running.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> The X5 passed
Cleverer software.
You're in Silicon Valley, a place well-known for high expenses and age discrimination. Facebook isn't going to hire you.
You aren't willing to move to Texas. Well, not yet anyway. You'll get over your anti-Texas issues once you are homeless, but then you won't be able to afford even a bus ticket.
There are jobs in the deep south. Lots of 45 year old engineers are hired by defense contractors. No, they don't do liberal stuff. They design bombs! Well, also cyberwar and missiles and fighter planes. The pay is OK, the hours are excellent, the cost of living is dirt cheap, the commute is trivial... and you can have this if you want it.
Fuel is taxed more in AU and Europe than it is in the US, so a more efficient diesel will have a lower operating cost.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
"The path to hell is paved with good intensions" and this applies to Engineers almost more than other people as they are in a position to actually create hell.
1. Creating an parameter map for the engine management system is a good thing. It allows the performance of the engine to be tuned, where all of the possible values are stored in one place where they can easily be changed and also tweeked during production.
2. Allowing several parameter maps which are linked to environmental conditions also makes sense. Vehicle speed, temperature, pressure are all possible inputs, and it wouldn't make much sense to limit this list. The more environmental inputs the better, right?
3. There would also be some testing to see how green the engine could be made to run, and a suitable parameter map produced. Why wouldn't you? It might be great and give you a great competative advantage.
4. You want to sell in different markets that have different environmental requirements. Best leave all of the maps in the software so that it doesnt need to be changed.
5. We need to have the car tested by the USA EPA for emissions before we can sell it there, but there is still some more work on the software that needs to be done.. thats ok. Load the car up with the software so that when it is tested it gets the 'right' map and passes. We don't want to delay the launch of our new model with new diesal engine.
6. Work done.. software complete. Lets not remove the EPA code, its too risky and we might break something else... and by the way, the guy that new that bit of the code has moved onto another project.
I'm not saying that this is what happened, but may be how some small steps led to this situation.
Does anyone think this was an engineers idea? Sounds more like marketing or sales.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I was never a huge fan of their previous models, but this "VW Fiasco" has me intrigued. I hope it's in my price range.
It was a German decision
germane Stupid spellchecker...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Umm.. I own one. And, no they don't.
What every bloodthirsty news consumer fails to see is that car emissions hardly matter, globally speaking, compared to other air pollution sources. One supertanker produces more emissions than 50 million cars. Shipping and energy production produces the vast majority of air pollution. VW was perhaps dishonest, but shrewd when you realize that US emissions regulations and checking on cars is bullshit, putting too much emphasis on a pollution source that is insignificant next to shipping, enegy, and the BIG POLLUTORS. This is a distraction. This is only going to serve to make people rich by devaluing VW stock temporarily, while at the same time allow the real polluters to go unniticed and unreported. And if the air seems stale, idiots will blame car manufacturers and traffic. Whatever this story is, it simply doesn't matter to our air and lungs, but we will exaggerate its importance anyway.
The Admin and the Engineer
My 1960 383 pollutes more in 100 miles than the entire fleet of VW econo boxes does in a year. And I like it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Image a PHB built a stupid metric. Say 'lines of code / day'.
No /.er would even consider defrauding his/her employer in such a situation, nor would they condone it.
I seem to recall some threads along similar lines. The opinion was unanimous, the PHB was right in his expectation that the metric would not be gamed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Is it really cheating? When you give someone what they want and leave out a few minor details...
If anybody really cared, they would test through a purge cycle.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What the hell are you on about? All current VW diesel vehicles in the US are using urea exhaust treatment.
Uh, no they weren't. Thus VW's cheating, and this scandal.
As of this week, though, current VW diesel vehicles use urea injection...as the others are have been banned from sales.
.: Semper Absurda
Gaming a test is not unethical. Tests were made to be gamed, rules were made to be broken.
And fines and jails were made for those who do so. Seriously, I believe we're seeing more and more of this kind of cultural shift in attitude here in the U.S. (not saying you're American there), much of it in the areas of professional sports, and in the belief that "whatever it takes" is okay. And, that attitude is spreading and needs to be stopped.
Just another day in Paradise
It would be like letting the air out of the footballs so that the ball was more grippable and throwable for only one team in a championship game. And we know how that turned out. Oh, wait...that's a bad example.
But, but, everybody else does it. But, but, we would have won anyway. But, but, you're all just jealous of NE, ha8ers!
No! You break the rules, and get caught, you should get punished, period.
Just another day in Paradise
There are also serious military reasons to subsidize light trucks. It turns out that if you are ever in a sustained conventional war, manufacturing is really, really important.
Well, I guess you enjoy pissing into pools as well.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It only makes sense for heavy vehicles to have more powerful engines. You need that power to tow trailers and other large cargo... things a little car is NEVER going to do, however polluting the engine might be.
You make it sound like normal cars cannot tow anything. Well you're wrong. Practical caravan has pretty positive reviews regarding the towing capability of Golfs, Passats, but also Ford Mondeos.
Why don't you go complain that those 16-wheel semi-trucks are allowed to pollute more than small cars, too? It doesn't make sense.
The parent only mentioned 'light trucks'. So yes, bringing 16-wheelers into the discussion really would be a show of bad faith.
Paris even banned pre-2011 diesel vehicles to deal with the problem.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Re-read the article. They have not banned pre-2011 diesel cars, they will do it by the end of the decade. It's not quite the same now, is it?
It puts the lie to the claims of their advantages, that most people were doubting without evidence, even while their other unremarked problems have been made undeniably obvious.
Oh. So it's enough for one manufacturer to cheat for you to conclude that any diesel cars of any brand is bad has none of the claimed advantages like lower fuel consumption, higher torque, etc? Biased much?
No question in hindsight that Europe made the wrong decision promoting diesel over gasoline, and now it looks like they're bound to continue declining in popularity there, too.
May I remind you that there is no such thing as a unified Europe government? Any policy promoting the use of diesel has been at the initiative of individual countries, not of Europe. In France it was not even a real decision to promote diesel cars like the Bloomberg claims. Rather whenever the government tried to raise the taxes on diesel the truckers (yes, 16-wheeler kind) and taxis just blocked all traffic and the government caved in every time. Since diesel is cheaper, and that diesel cars get higher miles per gallon and have seen their price drop to little above gasoline cars, it only made economic sense to buy these cars which many have done.
If you are a professional engineer who is part of the association yes. From my understanding this was a software issue. There is a thing called a "Software Engineer" however they are not part of the association, pay no dues, have no oath. I'm kind of surprised that they simply didn't outsource it to India, and blame some poor Indian coder for the whole mess claiming ignorance.
Subject line says it all.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Why nobody within VW disclosed this fraud?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism