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Volkswagen Diesel Scandal Spreads To Porsche and Audi
New submitter sumanareddyraval writes: The fallout from the Volkswagen diesel scandal is spreading fast to the company's other famous brands, including Porsche and Audi, and across the Atlantic to the U.S. The scandal reached down into the company's engineering corps as the CEO of Volkswagen's US business, the research and development chief from Audi and the engine chief from Porsche, which are part of the Volkswagen Group, are said to be following Volkswagen's CEO out the door of the company, according to multiple reports Thursday. The impending departures are a sign that the Volkswagen scandal is ready to grow to much larger proportions.
Hiding car emissions was not done by a couple of people. A large number in the people inside these companies were involved in pulling it off.
BMW engines were emitting nitrogen oxide levels that were 11 times more than the current limit set by the European Union. However, it later reported that there was no indication of tampering with the vehicles. Citing road tests by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), it said that a model of the BMW X3 was emitting more poisonous gases than the Volkswagen car that is currently at the center of the emissions scandal. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/24...
Fuck you.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
when the suits don't listen to the nerds, I'll bet. I'm sure at some point someone in engineering said that this was wrong, that they shouldn't cheat like this. I'm sure he/she was quickly told to drop it or start looking for a new job.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
My guess is that what happened is that Engineering was told to do something that turned out to be impossible. They built a diesel engine and determined what was the maximum performance and efficiency they could achieve. Then management told them they needed to hit those numbers while still passing emissions requirements. Eventually they realized that the only solution to meet the requirements was to game the tests.
The really sad thing is that I have seen a lot of people, in a lot of places, suggest punishments in the extreme.
"Ban them from selling cars here for 5 years"
"Require them to buy back every car at the full sales price"
And so on. At some point you just bankrupt the company, which is stupid, it'll put millions of people out of work, destroy a lot of wealth, and then when it files for bankruptcy, it won't be able to fix the cars in the first place.
Do you want vengeance (against millions of people who didn't do anything), or do you want solutions?
Volkswagen own Audi and Porsche? Do we get another article tomorrow telling us that Seat and Skoda have been dragged into it? Any other crazy Volkswagen 'news' from the last 15 years? ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
There is a reason Consumer Reports does most of its car tests on the road and the track -- it's more realistic. So I expect that the rules will change to de-emphasize lab testing on dynomometers and emphasize road testing using several different modes (in-town, highway, and off-road where applicable).
It's not an American company, so of course they want it destroyed. VW make better cars than American companies. NSA really needs to step up its efforts on that front.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Give them a slap on the wrist. Do we really stand to gain more by dragging these guys over the coals.
I suppose it depends on how you feel about car emissions. If VW gets little more than a slap on the wrist, then why wouldn't every other automotive company do the exact same thing? AFAIK, this is just for their diesel engines, what Toyota decided to do this with their gasoline engines? That would be a hell of a lot of cars. I would guess that would start a domino effect, and all manufacturers would do the same.
Martin Winterkorn is that you...
At some point you just bankrupt the company, which is stupid, it'll put millions of people out of work, destroy a lot of wealth, and then when it files for bankruptcy, it won't be able to fix the cars in the first place.
Do you want vengeance (against millions of people who didn't do anything), or do you want solutions?
The fines need to cost the company more than they made/saved by implementing this scam OR the people who perpetrated this scam need to be held personally responsible, especially the executives overseeing the operation. Nothing else will deter companies from repeating this kind of behavior. Otherwise they will just make some lowly engineer the scapegoat and write off whatever symbolic fine that gets handed down as the cost of doing business.
Since the higher ups are usually able to use the corporate veil to protect themselves from the latter option, we're left with he former: punitive fines that force shareholders/boards to police themselves.
Audi is owned by Volkswagen and was part of the original compliant against Volkswagen from the EPA.
From a car maker that's easier to spell?
Theoretically possible perhaps, but what incentive would "lone wolf" coders have for making the mechanical engineers look good? Even if the mechanical engineers who designed the engine and pollution control systems didn't know about the code changes, they should have had a good idea of what the approximate test results should have been, and if they were way better than expected it should have raised major red flags. Same goes for QA. Even if the change wasn't caught in a code review, the too-good-to-be-true results alone should have raised questions. I bet lots of people knew about this and either didn't want to risk their jobs by asking about it or were told "don't worry about it, it's a decision made above your pay grade". Unfortunately, we live in a world that demonizes whistle-blowers.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I think it would be a lot easier to keep a list of companies *not* doing this. It'll be a very short list.
Do you also react that way to things like "2 + 2 = 4" and other basic stuff?
2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Buy a Harley! Their emissions are terrible too. But nobody cares enough to lie about it
Are you suggesting we allow corporations to exhibit epic levels of malfeasance and NOT have any punishment?
No, and I didn't say that either...
But you also shouldn't destroy a company that employs millions of people because 20 of them were stupid/evil/criminals...
There has to be a middle ground...
The fines need to cost the company more than they made/saved by implementing this scam OR the people who perpetrated this scam need to be held personally responsible, especially the executives overseeing the operation. Nothing else will deter companies from repeating this kind of behavior. Otherwise they will just make some lowly engineer the scapegoat and write off whatever symbolic fine that gets handed down as the cost of doing business.
I'm not at all convinced that even the above will deter companies from doing this.
Why? Because the people who profited from this don't care if the company is fined into nothing in 5 years, they got theirs today.
The CEO is leaving, he has his money from the past X years. What difference does it make to him what happens in the next X years?
You need to find the people who actually did this, and punish them, not the millions of employees of a huge corporation who had no idea it was going on.
Its not just VW. Its not just the auto industry. It's all over the corporate world and our governments. Everywhere there is closed source software, your stuff that uses that software is being used in anti-consumer ways. I wish people would wise up and say enough is enough. If 99% of the source code for the stuff we use every day were suddenly made public, there would be nothing short of riots in the streets. I'm not advocating that people and companies who write firmware or software should not be compensated, but I am absolutely advocating that the public be allowed to see and change the software for the stuff we purchase.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
"Ban them from selling cars here for 5 years"
"Require them to buy back every car at the full sales price"
Don't equivocate these two. Banning them from selling cars here for 5 years would harm the public, auto dealers create a lot of jobs. Requiring them to buy back every car at the full sales price if the customer isn't satisfied with a reflash is only reasonable. Anyone should have to do this if they defraud the customer. Anyone. A person, a corporation, a co-op, anyone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since the higher ups are usually able to use the corporate veil to protect themselves from the latter option, we're left with he former: punitive fines that force shareholders/boards to police themselves.
^ That is the part that needs to stop, actual specific people who profit from/make decisions to profit from such things, need to go to prison.
Punishing the employees and shareholders does nothing, the vast majority of them had no idea this was happening.
Never punish the innocent, it is worse than letting guilty people go free.
Do they? Frankly I have found the quality of Ford vehicles to have jumped leaps and bounds over 10 years ago. Their decision to start bringing in their European designs shows.
GM isn't there yet, but they are making progress. The stuff they build today is also better than it used to be.
The irony is the real fall off in quality is Japan. Toyota and Honda aren't what they used to be.
According to one article I read, the heuristic was "did the emissions testing technician put the car into emissions testing mode." Apparently, the cars need a separate setting for that to prevent the electronic stability control from going haywire when it starts reading the front wheels going 50 MPH while the back wheels are stationary.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
How much money is the Volkswagen CEO going to walk away with? How much money did GM's executives make off with? Do we really expect to discourage this sort of stuff if it just comes down to cost benefit analysis?
Exactly...
Fining VW a billion, 10 billion, or even everything they've got, does nothing.
The CEO got his money, what difference does it make to him what happens to VW in the future?
That is why punishing VW to the point of bankruptcy is pointless. Find and punish those people who made this decision, find a reasonable compromise for VW to provide solutions that are affordable, and move on.
Hurting a million employees who did nothing wrong, hurting shareholders who did nothing wrong, doesn't help anyone.
Hmm... how about, a big message telling the rest of the free market to not fuck around with regulation and try to cheat the system. Someone, somewhere, probably many times, will say to themselves 'Well.. I could shortcut x,z,y... not legal but...' And then 'well... then again, remember what happened to VW'
I blame the long history of governments 'letting it slide' with the banks, Intel, Microsoft, and numerous other big companies for a lot of the major corporate abuses we are seeing today.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Putting aside the debate about global warming, this it completely off-topic.
The WV scandal is not about global warming. Global warming is mostly about CO2 and CO2 is mostly about fuel economy.
Here the problem is that they cheated on NOx emissions, which are toxic (known to cause acid rains) but do not contribute to global warming. If anything, NOx cause global cooling.
I think that "fuck you" is a totally valid reaction to highly loaded and off-topic "information".
It won't. The VW group has plenty of money, and they can re-sell those cars in other markets.
You think this is limited only to the US?
VW made 11 million vehicles with this defeat system in it.
The US cars are US vin'ed, they can't just be exported to other nations and they may well not be able to get permission to do it, even if they wanted to.
Finally, it isn't just the cost of buy backs, it is fines, legal costs, state lawsuits, etc.
This may well end up needing a political solution, rather than a legal one. Given the size of VW, the number of people employed around the world by VW and their child companies (and dealers and parts suppliers, etc.), this quickly becomes a jobs/economy issue as much as a legal one.
Yes, VW did something stupid, but there are limits to what you can do before you start hurting people who did nothing wrong.
VW make better cars than American companies.
Umm, JD Powers disagrees:
http://www.jdpower.com/press-r...
Anecdotally, everyone I know with VWs have had plenty of annoying problems. Ford & GM, not so many. I am surprised that VW comes in even worse than Chrysler, though.
My theory is that a lot of European manufacturers just don't fully understand just how much Americans drive. In addition to having almost twice as many vehicles per capita than the EU (any statistics that say otherwise are probably excluding light trucks in the US numbers), each of those vehicles gets driven almost twice as many miles in a year. Basically, American drive 3-4 times as much as Europeans.
My other theory is that the fact that their home markets are protected from the Japanese manufacturers has allowed them to rest on their laurels a bit. US manufacturers suffered vs the quality of the Japanese cars for years, but they eventually upped their game.
VW makes hundreds of thousands of cars right here in the US. VW dealerships employ a lot of people and are owned by some wealthy people.
Give it some time for the headlines to pass, then the lobbying to limit the damage will start.
VW is not just a German company, they have a lot of roots in the US as well, you'll hurt American workers if you kick them too hard.
The issues in 2008 were not of the car companies making, thus the help. Same reason, you can't let GM go bankrupt, you just can't.
Of course, that also means they have become "too big to fail", but that is another topic that hasn't been addressed either.
I suppose it depends on how you feel about car emissions.
No it depends on how you feel about fraud. The reason this is a big deal isn't the pollution though that is not a trivial part of it. No the big deal is that this company intentionally defrauded millions of customers. They promised their technology worked in a way that it didn't.
In my opinion the people who ordered and the people who carried out this fraud should see some time behind bars. They committed a crime that cost customers and taxpayers many millions of dollars.
VW make better cars than American companies.
Not according to any of the industry quality surveys. VW is perennially near the bottom of the quality rankings, almost always lower than the US makers.
oh the U.S. companies who actually abide by the emissions law should somehow roll over for the poor foreign competition who didn't. go fuck yourself
Yes, behave yourself unless you are a bank. Banks get slaps on the wrist.
love is just extroverted narcissism
On the flip side, Arthur Andersen was put out of business because of a court ruling that was eventually overturned. A lot of people who never had anything to do with Enron lost their jobs as a result. In VW's case, the number of managers and engineers who had anything to do with the emissions testing of diesel vehicles for export to the US is probably dwarfed by the number of people would could be hurt by an overreaction.
This doesn't mean don't punish the wrongdoers, but saying that you want to "hurt" VW means that you are going to hurt a lot of people who didn't benefit from the original wrongdoing.
If you don't you create a moral hazard though. Its just another from of To Big To Fail. Its not worth breaking to entire economy to protect a few unfortunate victims. If anything they should be made to qualify for unemployment insurance or something like in the case of a traditional layoff.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Right, so the moral hazard should be finding those who ACTUALLY did this and putting them in prison.
Punishing everyone else and letting the people who ACTUALLY did it go free is the real moral hazard.
---
Right now, if I was a CEO of a huge company, I'd be thinking, "gosh, I can do something illegal, make millions personally, then resign and retire scott free while the world cuts up the company I don't really care about anyway".
THAT is the moral hazard.
Except it's not because of the ludicrous amount of fuel you burn to move that hunk of steel a mile.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
One thing I'm convinced of, based on my experience working with German companies, is that the audit trail *will* eventually lead one of two places -- the actual person who wrote the "benchmark mode" code and checked it in, or a black hole where records have mysteriously disappeared. German companies are fastidious record keepers, especially engineering companies. The CEO leaving is just to appease the shareholders -- the other departures are more telling, and if it got up to the VP of engineering level, there could be a lot more heads rolling.
Honestly, without trying to sound like a finger wagging do-gooder, this is going to be a really good case study in engineering ethics, or the lack of them. Especially in the software world, this is seriously lacking. Over-stressed corporate managers or crazy inexperienced 23-year-old Silicon Valley startup CEOs have software engineers over a barrel when it comes to ethical behavior. Without PE-style personal liability, every engineer is subject to the uncomfortable conversation that goes like, "Look, we need this feature in or the product can't ship/won't pass regulation tests/won't let us do something nefarious with customer data. And if you don't want to put it in, I have 500 H-1Bs and other hungry engineers who will be happy to."
It's too bad - most people can't afford to take a stand, and a lot just don't care enough to even if they could. They have families to feed, or debts to pay, or are worried about being blacklisted from the industry. I see a lot of posts saying the EPA was too strict with their limits -- VW has less than 3% of the US car market; they could have easily just expanded sales to China where emissions controls just don't exist at the same level. Unfortunately, the temptation is always there, and corrupt corporate executives always get away with these things, so I can see how some people think that if they just act like these guys they can join the party too.
The bike part.
It's probably not possible to add the emissions control equipment necessary to make these cars pass, or at least not cost-effectively. These are generally small cars, so it comes down to a physical space/packaging problem, and they're probably not going to be allowed to just cobble something together and hope that the dealerships can install it correctly.
There are three reasons a product is recalled. The first reason is user-error that's so widespread that the company cannot afford the liability even though the product, if used properly, is safe. The second reason is for a defect that's not fatal to the function of the product but is too expensive/difficult to field correct. Third reason is a fatal flaw in a product that poses a significant danger and for all practical purposes, cannot be corrected.
We had received a recall notice for a barbecue grille several years ago. We really liked the grille, so we researched the nature of the recall, expecting the first or second reasons (ie, widespread incorrect unsafe use or a flaw that could be remedied but was too expensive for the manufacturer to have field-fixed), figuring we were smart enough to not use it wrongly or could field-fix a simple problem, and we instead discovered that it was a fundamental flaw in the product, the grille housing was made out of magnesium . The outer layers of magnesium would oxidize, leaving a protective coating between raw metal and the flames and grease and other flammables, but if one was studious about cleaning one's grille one would scrape-off that layer of oxide and expose raw magnesium to the fire, which would then ignite the grille itself, over the propane tank, and could not be readily extinguished.
This emissions control problem, assuming that the goal is to maintain performance, will probably cost more to correct in the field than buying-back the cars would cost. It's not fatal to the product, but if it can't be corrected properly then it's going to be subject to recall.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
really, WTF are you saying? corporations should be able to cheat the system for as long as they can hide it, and when found out, their only punishment is that they need to find a new way to cheat?
everyone gets what you are saying about the economic ramifications, but simply letting them get away with it isn't something that society should let happen. there's a greater good to be had beyond the immediate hardships to VW stockholders and employees. you nip this on the bud, and show to VW and the greater industry that cheating doesn't pay. and yes, corporations do respond to fines. they exist to maximize profits and they simply won't participate in cheating if it doesn't maximize their profits.
Yeah. Magnesium, for its weight-saving properties, has been used for automobile engine blocks and wheels ("mag" wheels were literally magnesium wheels originally) but there's some form of isolation between the magnesium part and that which is likely to cause the friction or other ignition to light it. Engine blocks have steel or iron sleeves and the cylinder heads aren't magnesium, and the wheels have tires that keep them separated from the road. On top of that these are usually performance or aftermarket applications only, so random customer isn't going to end up with these magnesium parts and not understand the risks involved.
That grille had wonderful even heat distribution. It was literally the best performing grille we've ever had. Unfortunately as a very casual griller using propane, I could not justify the risks associated with keeping it, even knowing what its flaw was. We got the recall notice right after I had thoroughly cleaned it for the first time, and as we were loading it into the truck to take back to the store I saw where I had gouged through the oxide layer to the fresh magnesium underneath. Not a guarantee that we would have had a fire next time we used it, but the coincidental timing was a little chilling.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Uh no.
First off, when VW makes the change, it wil not change the mileage. What it WILL drop the performance. The standards are fine (if not tight enough), What is wrong is that VW and these car companies simply have no morals esp. since they are the ones pushing for tighter regulations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Much of the stuff that breaks on VW's breaks independent of mileage. For example: a Dual Mass Flywheel should NOT break after 30000 (mostly highway) miles. (compare that to a single-mass flywheel; which will basically last forever, because it's a solid hunk of steel or aluminum; there are clutch breakdown scenarios that will DAMAGE a flywheel to the point where it has to be resurfaced like a brake rotor, but single mass flywheels never had these sorts of problems - VW added moving parts to a component that didn't need to have moving parts, for what many car enthusiasts would consider to be no damn good reason).
A lot of the vacuum tubes, electrical relays, harness cables, and etc, break from age, and in VW's case, we're talking about 2-3 years.
IMO: the worst "reliability problem" VW's have, in the US, is their dealer network. They refuse to stand by their warranties, and they refuse to stand by their product. They charge outrageous rates. They inflate the prices of their parts. They void the warranty if you do your own oil change, because of "oil grade" issues: but their own service department sells oil NOT of the required 505.01 grade; and then the clerk would tell me "that's what we use in the shop" (to do dealer-service oil changes). In some diesel models, if you're not using the correct oil grade (or even if you are), your cams will wear in as little as 30,000 miles. That's not a cheap repair. I've read countless stories online of people with TDI VW's where they may still have $10k left on their car loan, then something breaks like the injection pump ($2000), or in particular, the particulate filter, where it grenades, and sends contamination up into the fuel system (because they burnout the filter by periodically injecting fuel), and this contamination will cause ongoing problems with operation of the engine until the ENTIRE fuel system is replaced, at an average cost of about $7000. They don't cover this repair under their shitty warranty. Then there's issues with ice buildup in the intercooler, which sends chunks through the inlet blades of the turbocharger. If you're lucky, those don't find their way into the cylinders and snap valves. But that's usually what happens. I've heard this happening to BRAND NEW cars, and at least those poor folks get warranty coverage.
This emissions fakery just seals the deal.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.