What Effect Will VW's Scandal Have On Robocars?

pRobotika writes: It's looking bad for Volkswagen, German car manufacturers and possibly even car manufacturers as a whole. But the revelations that VW put software in their cars to deliberately cheat on emissions tests could have even greater repercussions. Robocars' Brad Templeton looks at the effect for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. From the Robohub article: "There may be more risk from suppliers of technology for robocars. Sensor manufacturers, for instance, may be untruthful about their abilities or, more likely, reliability. While the integrators will be inherently distrustful, as they will take the liability, one can see smaller vendors telling lies if they see it as the only way to get a big sale for their business."

Comments

Re:Emissions testing needs to be fool proof

[Noah Haders]

This is absolutely false, posted by a well-known troll. Vdub cut engine power during car tests to meet emissions standards, then cranked it up to 11 to make it "fun to drive". The real-world emissions were 10-40x above epa standards. This is the unethical, because it relies on fraud to make money sacrificing the environment.

Passenger car emission standards are g/mi and are the same for all fuel types. Epa is exploring ways to combat this type of fraud. But any test they make needs to be objective and reproducible for all vehicles, so it may be hard to eliminate this cheat vector.

My biggest fear is that the rep of all diesel vehicles will be tarnished. This isn't fair; both Mercedes and BMW make diesels that meet all emissions requirements and are fun to drive. Diesel vehicles are more fuel-efficient than gasoline vehicles and are definitely part of the fuel mix for a low carbon future.

Re:Emissions testing needs to be fool proof

[TWX]

Cars from the sixties and seventies that were fun to drive were horribly wasteful on fuel when driven hard. Carburetors are like that. The point now, is that we have technology to sample the air pressure, air temperature, and exhaust mixture to try to achieve the most thorough burn possible, which is why the cars of today are more fun and more powerful than they were in the sixties and seventies. And I say this as someone that is mid-restoration on a seventies Mopar.

The tradeoff is complexity and cost. The cars are much more complicated because the systems that regulate fuel pressure, nozzle duration, spark duration and timing, and valve timing are much more complicated than an accelerator pump, a venturi, and a simple vacuum-advance distributor.