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Germany Detects Emissions Cheat Software In Audi Models (reuters.com)
The German government has accused Audi of cheating emissions tests with its top-end models, marking the first time the company has been accused of such wrongdoing in its home country. Reuters reports: The German Transport Ministry said it has asked Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) luxury division to recall around 24,000 A7 and A8 models built between 2009 and 2013, about half of which were sold in Germany. The affected Audi models with so-called Euro-5 emission standards emit about twice the legal limit of nitrogen oxides when the steering wheel is turned more than 15 degrees, the ministry said. It is also the first time that Audi's top-of-the-line A8 saloon has been implicated in emissions cheating. VW has said to date that the emissions-control software found in its rigged EA 189 diesel engine does not violate European law. The 80,000 3.0-liter vehicles affected by VW's emissions cheating scandal in the United States included Audi A6, A7 and Q7 models as well as Porsche and VW brand cars. The ministry said it has issued a June 12 deadline for Audi to come up with a comprehensive plan to refit the cars. Ingolstadt-based Audi issued a recall for the 24,000 affected models late on Thursday, some 14,000 of which are registered in Germany, and said software updates will start in July. It will continue to cooperate with Germany's KBA motor vehicle authority, Audi said.
as they say on Top Gear.
But to be fair, we know that everybody does it.
What's the name of the car where they just push fresh air into the exhaust to lower the numbers? Think it's an American one. I forget.
If only regulators would mandate Open Source firmware for any vehicles traveling on public roads. We could catch emission cheats and self-driving flaws. Puts me out of work, but whatever, it's probably the right thing to do.
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Going forward all emissions testing should be done with the car at maximum weight rating, driving up a steep mountain road. I'm sure they can make these devices small enough to put in a trunk. They could also do a lightweight test with just a driver.
The trigger for the violation was when the steering wheel was turned more than 15 degrees. That seems an odd trigger. It's not like the position of the steering wheel should affect the combustion in any way, nor would it be something a reasonable person would use to start a secret 'less pollution for the testing mode'.
It seems more like a major coding flaw rather than an intentional cheat. Like someone assumed that a set of values would be inside a range but when the wheel was turned, it gave an out of range reading that confused a computer, resulting in poor pollution control.
Very different than a 'test mode', that VW clearly used just to intentionally fool government agencies.
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I'm starting to wonder what cars don't have software/firmware designed to cheat on emissions tests.
must as I love open source doing this would expose tons of trade secrets wouldn't it? I suppose patents might render that moot. But then again in a lot of countries software isn't patent-able.
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So, Audi "cheats" emissions when the wheel is turned more than 15 degrees. So bad emissions when parking. Maybe some turns on the road. Almost all driving is done with the wheel nearly straight. You don't do a drag race with the wheel turned, so it wouldn't have improved the feel or numbers in reviews or test drives.
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First, it makes ZERO SENSE that the car would only "cheat" when the wheel is turned that much. Emissions tests are performed with the car on a test rig with the wheels STRAIGHT.
This is just senseless extremism from the torch-and-pitchfork crowd. I swear, everyone just jumps to wild-ass conclusions anymore, just looking for the worst possible outcomes to be outraged about.
Occam's Razor says this is a firmware bug and nothing more. There is no perceivable benefit to "cheating" in this way.
So long as there are no economic incentives to make cars emissions' cleaner (coming from consumers preferably) and there are only negative economic incentives to meet the emission regulations (lots of design $$ spent up front to make a truly more efficient engine, but then perceived as 'under powered' by the consumers when you go to market) this problem will continue to happen.
honestly, instead of using the heavy hand of government to force motor companies to meet higher and higher emission standards, why not just offer tax incentives/cuts/deductibles to consumers for buying the most 'clean' cars. That way you incentivize consumers to reward companies for buying greener vehicles, and companies feel the need to compete and build the best product.
If you're driving "properly", you're breaking before you turn and properly accelerating coming out of it. So steering input can be a good indicator for when a driver is about to do with the throttle. However this is clearly a cheat. As you described, the engine is being set into a different state/mode and then staying there.
German schools are obviously so bad that cheaters did a really bad job here. I work in Germany for 20y now and I can only confirm that Germans cannot count properly and only move stuff from place to place. This seems to be a common practice at least in SW domain.OC some Germans can count. These run away because of taxes and other disastrous policies of their government. These are not the only feats of engineering Germany can be proud of. I was driving over Rhine recently and was surprised to see a set of signs and special traffic arrangements to remove heavy lorries from bridge traffic. I investigated this a bit and found out that the bridge was in a such a bad shape that the heavy vehicles could not be safely allowed on it. Instead of fixing it the highway on the bridge got (sophisticated) weight restrictions. Few years back an archive of old manuscripts was ruined in Cologne because subway works were messed up and caused collapse of many buildings - something that did not happen decades before when other line of subway were built. A street in front of my house has a section farther away that is closed for ore than a year because its surface fell apart - this happened after they tried to fix it 3 times in a row. Now they gave up. I suspect the roads that Romans built 2kya were a little bit more robust. The art of engineering went up and down and up again since. Now we observe significant decline and in many different areas. But we have soft science to hold us right and state run media to tell us the truths here. Why do you think I am not surprised at all about these developments? Because I had an occasion to see the schools and their pupils at work. There are good ones everywhere but as one can see - not that many of them anymore...
This is not the work of some Rogue Programmer. The specs for this comes from a Project Manager, who talked to upper management and to hardware engineers. Then the specs were given to the programmer. Then QA had to test the system in both "Test Mode" and on the open road. Testing for pollution and acceleration. Executives at the highest level knew about it. That is how big companies work.
Every engineer who should have known about this should lose the right to practice engineering.
One: tell automakers to come clean and fix it now and pay damages, and have those responsible agree to plead guilty to charges of fraud and conspiracy, or if they refuse and their vehicles are CAUGHT cheating, all the executives and engineers go to jail for life, and the company is shut down by the government, or...
Two: phase-out gasoline and diesel and mandate all vehicles be zero emissions. Force automakers under penalty of prison (for executives) to design and pay to install electric systems in every car they've ever put on the road that still functions. (Cars in junk yards excluded naturally.)