Volkswagen 'Dieselgate' Software Developed At Audi In 1999, Says Report (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader cites a report on Reuters: German carmaker Audi created so-called defeat devices which cut emissions in 1999, years before parent company Volkswagen used them to cheat diesel emissions tests, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Tuesday. VW, Europe's largest automaker, admitted in September it had manipulated the engines of around 11 million diesel cars, including its VW, Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat brands. Engineers at Audi developed software capable of turning off certain engine functions in 1999, but it was never used by the VW luxury division, the newspaper said in an advance release of an article due to be published on Wednesday, which cited industry and company sources. Six years later, when VW engineers at the firm's Wolfsburg headquarters were unable to bring nitrogen oxide emissions below legal thresholds, they started to install the software developed by Audi, Handelsblatt said.

Comments

It was intentional fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

They knew exactly what they were doing. For a technical explanation of how the controller was reverse-engineered see the 32c3 conference lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZSU1FPDiao

If you're in a hurry you can skip the first 30 minutes, but a good engineer gets the background info.

Re: Test mode

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fraud. You can whitewash it all you want, but here in reality land, it's called fraud and we prosecute. Wait till be has to pay back the owners.