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EPA Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including In a Porsche (nytimes.com)
schwit1 writes with this news from the Times that Volkswagen's emissions scandal just expanded to include more expensive vehicles with larger diesel engines, including Porsche, and Audi sport-utility vehicles. According to the article: "The Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that it had discovered emissions-cheating software on more Volkswagen and Audi cars than previously disclosed and, for the first time, also found the illegal software in one of the carmaker's high-end Porsche models. The German carmaker disputed the claims, however, saying it had not installed defeat software on the models in question that would 'alter emissions characteristics in a forbidden manner.' The company pledged in a short statement that it would cooperate with the E.P.A. 'to clarify the matter in its entirety.' The latest findings by environmental regulators put significant new pressure on Volkswagen and its new chief executive, Matthias Müller, who was previously the head of Volkswagen's Porsche division. E.P.A. officials indicated the latest violations were found during testing performed by federal regulators and their counterparts in California and Canada. The implication is that Volkswagen did not provide the information."
Evidently, those two or three cheating software designers had a buddy over at the Porsche complex.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
And how old is Ellen? 100!?
I wonder if the German dude (and I suspect there was only one) will eventually take advantage of his notoriety like Kevin Mitnick.
However VW denies the vehicles have software designed to cheat tests.
Instead the company says that cars with the 3.0 litre diesel V6 engines "had a software function which had not been adequately described in the application process".
If VW wants to get past this scandal, they really need to adopt a full-transparency, maximum mea culpa stance right now, and this kind of statement does not appear to be helping. If there's a software function that seems to the EPA to be cheating on emissions tests, well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
Oh no... it's the future.
There is a recall but
In the United States, consumers may have to wait more than a year. Many of the vehicles will require a hardware and software change, a major repair that may consume as many as 10 hours of work per car. The work might not get started until next year.
Anyone with these cars, what has been happening with your emissions tests and how's it affecting your tag?
Say the word!
I don't understand this whole controversy.
Consumer organisations warned from before these tests started that they would be falsified.
From testing by those consumer organisations we've know that the advertised numbers where bullshit.
What's the big difference between physical alterations to the car and software alterations?
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
TWO WORLD WARS!
"These guys learnt about the defeat device in VW models. Then, on their own, without any directives from HQ, without any incentives from us, completely on their own, unbeknowest to the top management, did I say completely on their own, yes on their own, they did it.
We top management are completely blameless. We get paid oodles of money because we are the smartest and best in leading a complex company through difficult markets. So we deserve every penny we get as pay and bonus.
But everytime something like this happens, you can't blame the management, not the incentive structure, not the pressure we apply to deliver new and exciting products to our esteemed customers.
BTW, can we cash all our stocks and options before the company goes bankrupt? Hate to see all those millions of shares and option be priced at zero"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's time to make America great again!
Up to this point, I suspect all car manufacturers to cheat on emissions, except Tesla, maybe.
It's like in some sports where all world-class athletes use performance enhancing drugs in order to meet some naturally unrealistic goal.
You should stop buying VW cars, and buy American made trucks instead, like these.
This is probably the easiest money the US Government has ever made - with the exception of course of stealing 50% of everyone's income right off the top.
Volkswagen have already denied the claims strongly. After they were notified of the findings for the EA189 engines six weeks ago, they admitted and then they also investigated all other engines. They even stated that they suspected there could be a defeat device in the EA288 engine, but the investigations have concluded that there isn't and the KBA (Federal Motor Vehicle Administration) have confirmed this.
Given the way they have handled the issue so far I would be highly surprised if they would deny the US EPA's claim if they would not be 100% certain that it is false.
Let's just bankrupt VW and bankrupt them now. Assess the maximum penalty per vehicle sold, don't allow vehicles to be registered unless they pass applicable emissions tests, and allow consumers to sue VW to recover damages in the event that VW can't deliver on its advertised performance specs while obeying the law.
Can we hold these big companies to the same standards you or I would be held to if we intentionally perpetrated millions of cases of fraud? I'm not even asking that the entire management and executive structure be sent to jail. I'm just asking that you take the toys away from the children who won't play nicely with them.
Is that really so much to fucking ask?
If(!OBDCII.isConnected) {
burnRubber(now);
}
To those of you who don't want to RTFA, the diesel engine was an option in only one of Porsche's models and without doing any research I would guess there probably isn't more than a thousand of them with the diesel option in the USA.
So tempest in a teapot and all that.....
love is just extroverted narcissism
The VW touareg and Porsche Cayenne share the same platform, albeit with different a few different parts and tuning (and being built in a different factory). So, why is this a surprise to anyone?
So is it still just a few nefarious software developers/Engineers fault and not anyone higher up the ladder?
I'm not even asking that the entire management and executive structure be sent to jail.
But that's exactly what would help prevent these kinds of things.
The mindset of senior management is that there is no consequence for their actions. There will only be dollar/euro costs and these will be borne by the company, to be extracted from shareholders and future customers.
I'd advocate for two things. One, the real likelihood of jail time. After that, some kind of law that requires executives to be personally financially liable for these crimes, up to and including auctioning off their personal property to pay the fines, even with some kind of clawback provision that allows the courts to go back 12 or 24 months to reclaim money from other people or institutions to help prevent asset hiding.
Once these people have personal skin in the game, either their liberty or perpetual penury, I think their cost/benefit calculus will change drastically.
It's not Carbon pollution that they are spewing, which is the numero uno cause of climate change. I was worried there for a minute.
One assumes that the US government has run through the billions extracted from BP over the Gulf oil "scandal" (whilst going remarkably lightly on the US companies involved) and as elections are looming on the horizon, are looking for some more foreign piggy banks to raid to enable electoral friendly tax cuts, etc.
What they NEED to do is to learn to write laws and design regulations and testing regimes that don't have such silly loopholes that encourage businesses to optimise their products to meet the tests alone.
Americans couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery....
Only VW is doing this? Seems pretty unlikely, and here's why I think that's so: http://geekcrumbs.com/2015/10/...
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
The engine's computer uses stem cells from fetal tissue bought from Planned Parenthood.
Hausfrauenpanzer.. I like it.. But I like mine better
Someone posted elsewhere that now would be an ideal time for VW to make sure that _all_ its dirty laundry is aired. (aka "please take these other offences into consideration")
It's fairly clear that all makers have been gaming the system (various ones have been caught: EG, caterpilar/cummins a couple of years back, Ford about a decade ago and VW 40 years ago) to some degree or another and by stepping forward with everything now VW puts the onus on the others to also step forward or face a major ass-kicking if it's found later on that they kept quiet.
That said: NOX control is a very blunt instrument on the "sledgehammer to crack a nut" scale. Unlike CO, NOX emissions are only a problem in limited geographical areas and the tradeoff is higher CO2 emissions/poorer milage and more PM2 fine soot output (even on gasoline engines). Rather than mandating blanket emissions controls to cater to worst case conditions and given that sensing technology is far better now than it was a decade ago (let alone 40 years ago), perhaps cars should be allowed to sniff the air and work out what actual pollution levels are, where they are (maybe even shutting down the IC engine and moving to all-electric mode in extreme situations).
This (of course) can only be allowed if the EPA and other regulators are able to randomly test production samples to ensure they're complying (if you really want to not let the makers know which car's being tested, buy it off a dealer lot, etc) and come down like a Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch on any maker found to be cheating.
It's worth noting that in London UK, vehicles only account for about 1/2 of the NOX emissions within the "north/south circular" ring roads (a decade ago it was 2/3), with the rest being contributed almost entirely by natural gas/oil-fired household heating systems. Those same stationary sources are also big offenders in the particulate emission department. The UK imposed NOX limits on stationary heating/boiler systems in 2003 but it's worth noting that almost all the NOX being emitted is from installations older than that (condensing boilers emit essentially zero and post-2003 non-condensing designs only 10% of unregulated levels.)
Even with that, NOX levels are only "of concern" inside the inner London ring road (this is a zone about 5 miles across) and effectively non-existent outside the North/South Circular routes (this is a zone about 20 miles across).
On really bad days, NOX controls on automobiles are "not enough" and on not-so-bad days, the sub-PM10s emitted by both diesels and ever-more restricted gasoline engines are a much bigger worry - to the point where some of the worst roads are sprayed with "glue" every night to try and make get as much "stuck down" as possible during peak traffic periods.
At some point the authorities are going to have to mandate replacement of old stationary heating sources but most of the people using these old systems either can't afford to replace them or have enough political clout to make life hard.