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VW Admits Audi Automatic Transmission Software Can Change Test Behavior (cnet.com)
In response to a report via Bild am Sonntag last week, which found a new type of defeat device hidden inside an Audi automatic transmission, Volkswagen finally came around to admitting the findings. "Adaptive shift programs can lead to incorrect and non-reproducible results" in emissions tests, VW told Reuters on Sunday. CNET reports: Software in the AL 551 automatic transmission may detect testing conditions and shift in a way that minimizes emissions, only to act "normally" out on the road. Much like Dieselgate's defeat device, that leads to higher-than-imagined pollution, which could be in excess of legal limits. Audi's AL 551 can be found in both gas and diesel vehicles, including the A6, A8 and Q5. Volkswagen isn't going full mea culpa here, though. The automaker also told Reuters that its adaptive transmission software is meant to change shift points in order to improve on-road performance. Many automatic transmissions these days learn from driver input and tailor shifting to match a driver's style, which leads to a smoother drive. VW Group did not immediately return a request for comment.
Hey, the Hay Sniffer is a legitimate hack. This is the software routine that "sniffs the hay" to determine if you are out on a country road and not driving one of the Federal Cycles.
My criterion is if you drive a Federal Cycle for real out on a highway, a test track, or a high school parking lot, it should give the same control coefficients as on the chassis rollers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. None of this "oh, only the back wheels are turning, I must be in Ann Arbor."
But if it only gives Federal Cycle performance if you actually drive that way, good. If it gives you different performance for driving "off cycle", so much better.
For $deity$ sake. Is this the final word ?
Or tomorrow we will find that in test conditions it transform also in a unicycle ?
This just keeps on getting better and better. VW Group have simply not owned up to the depth of their cheating and been forthright with their cooperation.
Our regulators should slap increasing penalties on each successive cheat they find, to penalize for the hiding of evidence over and above the violation itself.
"can lead to incorrect and non-reproducible results". I'd be bloody rich. I'd have just said: "Yeah, you got us again. How much you want this time?"
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I have a Landcruiser that has 'adaptive' shifting. A button I press in for power and out for economy. Want to hear something worse? Everything else I own is a stick. So I shift when I damned well please.
Have gnu, will travel.
This is BS. There are so many variables in emission testing that almost anything will affect the results. I's sure altitude, humidity, gas octane, maybe even oil could affect things to name a few. Give it up!!
The only question I want answered is "did it pass the test as written by the government?". If yes, what's the problem. If you don't like the results, fix the test.
The Dutch don't make cars, did you mean 'Deutsch'?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
The sooner we as a society can move to electric, the better.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It's not impossible to build a vehicle which meets emissions standards and is affordable and is something people want to buy. It's just that it's not possible to do all that and make it a diesel.
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but there are no such thing as defaults in a car that even gets driven to the test place. how hard you jam down on the pedal affects the "sportiness" and thus shifting points, all kinds of things affect it.
the problem is that they do the tests like this: stick it on a dyno and run a pre made program, without even fucking moving.
they should just make a tester small enough to fit in the boot or passenger area, and drive around a test track - vw's "cheating" would have had to be of different kind in that case.
also non-aerodynamic SUV's would be paying their fair share of the taxes.
now here's a test to test if this was malicious from vw or not: drive around using the pedal same way the test does. having an adaptive gearbox isn't cheating the emissions any more than having a manual and driving really slow is.
and why the tests cannot be changed in most countries easily nowadays: THEY AFFECT CAR VALUES DIRECTLY, ever since they started to move to co2 based taxing based on the test - changing it to an actual test could disrupt car prices 30-50% UP AND DOWN.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That must be why around half of all passenger cars, almost all vans, trucks and buses have diesel engines.
Which is why this cheap appears on gas cars too then?
Please go back to /g/.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Given the latest revelations, I doubt there a product they make that we can definitely say is actually compliant.
At this point, it's a plateful of lies smothered in bullshit sauce.
The only penalty regulators should be considering at this point is shutting them down.
Say it ain't so!
From the description, this doesn't sound like cheating. It simply sounds like the transmission shifting algorithm can vary shift points, which in turn can affect emissions. There's nothing surprising or revelatory about that. The real problem seems to be that the EPA is using a static test for a dynamic system.
It is possible, but it will be about 65HP, which is the average European car. Do murican's really want to drive 65hp cars and trucks?
The point was that the software is adaptive. If you stomp throttle (like God intended) the slushbox gives you RPM, if you pussy foot (like when on an emissions dyno) to get a consistent RPM, the transmission will shift quickly to top gear. Intended behavior for a transmission being called cheating.
Old school slushboxes did basically the same thing with analog computers. Engine manifold vacuum, modulator and springs in the transmission valve body.
Digital computers just adjust shift points based on past driving. I bet the computer doesn't produce 'smoother shifts' when someone like me is driving it, I bet it shifts more like it had an old school shift kit...I bet that would annoy the slushbox owner, once I get back into my car with a real transmission.
They are basically bitching that their test doesn't reproduce real world driving. No full throttle testing to yellow line.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
My Nissan Leaf does not cheat on emissions tests because it has no exhaust. It also does not have a transmission, so it can't cheat that way either. The closest that it is capable of cheating is the Guess-O-Meter, which determines the remaining drivable mileage based on various factors.
(IIRC) ZF also is one of two manufactures of automotive DCTs worldwide.
Similar software will be in the those for auto mode.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And as we're finding out those cars aren't as clean as advertised. I have friends who bought a diesel VW car, and they were over the moon about it. It had great mileage, more than good enough performance, and it didn't pollute any more than a gasoline car.
Turns out only two of three of those were correct.
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Sure, if by "recent" you mean "after VW got caught in 2014". By cheating VW saved over two thousand dollars on their diesel car, which is a lot when you're selling cars for around $20,000. BMW didn't cheat, but they're selling cars for over $60,000.
So it's simply the case VW could not make a competitive diesel that met US NOx emissions standards as well as consumer expectations. Not in the affordable transportation market segment.
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The point is that modern cars have computers in them running proprietary software which control how the car behaves. Implementing the same limits with mechanical apparatus means exposing how the apparatus works and allowing the car owner to remove or adapt the apparatus. Proprietary software hides the rules and makes it much harder for the car's owner to remove or adapt how the software works. Apparently a variety of car manufacturers use this secrecy to deceive consumers into buying a car that didn't behave the same in testing as it does in regular use. The consequences of this are vast and hardly limited to cars. But the only real solution is the same: pass on the code to the good being sold under a free software license right along side selling the good so the owner of the good can truly make their object their own.
"Bitching that their test doesn't reproduce real world driving" is very much the problem here because the same thing happened in environmental tests with a very large variety of makes and models running software designed to cheat testing. It hardly matters whether the feature that exposes the problem is compliance with emissions regulations, getting the RPMs one expects out of a car, or anything else because the underlying issue is controlling the user through proprietary software and therefore one has to understand the inherent untrustworthiness of proprietary software as the root of the problem.
If you see the commonality between this story and so many other stories on /. it's because you understand that /. points readers to a lot of stories where proprietary software is to blame. Every DRM story, every story where the good the owner purchased isn't behaving reasonably comes down to proprietary software isn't giving the owner full control over the device they own. Anyone who owns anything running on proprietary software has good reason to be concerned about this. Everyone should use the presence of proprietary software in a device as a reason to not buy that device. The only way to fix that problem is free software. As I said in another thread, software freedom is the only thing that will keep proprietors from taking advantage of computer users because when the proprietors don't know who is inspecting the code, improving the code, or distributing improved versions they know they can be caught.
Digital Citizen
The point is what I claimed it was all along: to achieve a balance of performance, economy and price while meeting emissions standards. It's a matter of meeting all constraints, which couldn't be done in a low cost diesel car.
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It's quite possible that there is an alternate coding for your transmission that will alter its behavior to be more suitable. The unreliable ZF slushbox (ZF5HP42A) in my Audi (1997 A8 Quattro) became much nicer after I re-coded it from USA with DSP to rest of the world, DSP disable. It actually enables gear-holding behavior which is normally disabled, but unlike whatever it is you're driving it actually works really well. If you don't look at the rev counter the only hint it's doing it is the noise, and as you might imagine there's not much of it inside an A8. And, of course, you will also notice the responsiveness. Then when you ease off the pedal (it only does it to begin with when you nail the pedal rapidly, and not just push it all the way down) if makes an elegant downshift.
These fancy slush boxes are absolute joys until the fail and cost you thousands upon thousands of dollars. Tiptronic is cool, though. Although, I just rented a Ram 1500 from U-Haul to make a firewood run because years later my Ford is still out of commission, and whether Tiptronic is cool is entirely up to the implementation. It sucked eggs in that thing. Really looking forward to getting the transmission out of my 1997 A8 and putting it in my 1998 A8 so that I can have it there. The 1998's trans is limp, as in limp mode.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
US is a little fuzzier. The laws are written to take intent into consideration. In other words, if you follow the letter of the law and violate the spirit you get nailed. It's banking, which hurts people that matter though, so take that as you will.
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My BMW M3 does much the same thing with automatic mode in it's SMG gearbox which is basically a manual double clutch transmission with the option of allowing a computer to shift for you. It will change and adapt over time the more you drive it. Gearheads have known about this for over a decade now.
Whatever they're paying these people to inspect these cars, they're paying them too much if they don't know about stuff like this.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
If you want to continue the debate go back to the original conversation where I replied to your post. There's no need to stalk me and reply to completely unrelated threads. Grow the fuck up and learn how to handle some criticism like a big boy.
VW was the topic here, so I still guess he meant 'Deutsch' (German).
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.