Volkswagen Stock Plummets as CEO Apologizes for Emissions Cheat | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen Stock Plummets as CEO Apologizes for Emissions Cheat

npr.org

165 pointsr0h1n210 comments

I looked a bit into this and it seems strange that this happened only now.

Consider this [1] 2014 study (scroll to last page of executive summary, page 5). Basically they tested 15 vehicles from 6 manufacturers for emissions while on the road and NONE OF THEM passed the euro 6 average (!) limit. 1 was exactly on the limit, the worst one emitted on average 24 times more than the norm. They noted the vehicles emit more when driving uphill.

Then there is this article [2] from 2014 which says the emissions in city traffic are 3 times the norm.

In 2013 this study [3] was published which measured diesel NO2 emissions and found out that Euro 5 class vehicles have exactly the same emissions as Euro 2 (from 1992) cars.

[1] http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT...

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10862975/Emission-t...

[3] http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat05/13...

Would that mean emission limits are set lower than technically achievable?

Car manufacturers still provide more powerful cars every year. I always wondered, how they can claim their engines emit less while they get faster and faster. Everybody knows that a modern car does not consume so much less fuel than a car of then comparable standard 20 years ago. But lets face it, consumers require more power, less fuel consumption and less emission - in this order. Probably the development of on paper values has been disconnected from the real world for marketing reasons (that is no excuse, its an observation). Before everybody throws stones at Volkswagen only, please measure other cars (again, no excuse).

From time to time I rent cars of different brands and at the gas station I see proof that there has been little progress in fuel efficiency. That said, Volkswagen and Audi diesels seem to be the most fuel efficient engines around for the pure power they deliver. The only diesel I know that felt more advanced was a Volvo V60, but mostly because of a geniously constructed gear system and a perfectly rectangular torque (so I had to change gears at 3500 rpm).

In Europe (and that means in this case in Germany), car manufacturers invented the fleet consumption and emission. That means, the consumption and emission of a whole class of cars is averaged. This is to trick high powered engines on paper into an acceptable consumption and emission range. The goal is clearly not transparency and openness.

> Everybody knows that a modern car does not consume so much less fuel than a car of then comparable standard 20 years ago.

Actually a modern car does consume a lot less fuel than models from 20 years ago. CAFE standards have had a great effect.

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

For a new passenger car the average MPG in 1995 was 28.6 and in 2013 (latest available data for that report) was 36 MPG. That's a 25% increase which when multiplied across millions of vehicles is an enormous amount of fuel.

It's a 20.6% decrease in gallons per mile.

That is misleading. We should calculate percentage improvements against the better value. Fewer gallons per mile is better. For instance, if you cut in half the gallons per mile, it only looks like a 50% decrease. But it's actually a doubling of the mileage: you go twice as far on a tank of gas. The improvement in gallons per mile is 100%.

Using something other than mileage: suppose you optimize a program so it takes half the time to run. It's running twice as fast: it is 100% faster. Looking at it as a mere 50% reduction of time can be misleading. If you calculate the speedup using the running time, you have to divide the time difference by the smaller, better running time: 100 x (Tpoor - Timproved) / Timproved.

The main problem with the "percent reduction" is that arbitrarily good improvements only approach 100%. If we make a car go a million times longer on a gallon of gas, it's only around a 99.9999 reduction in gallons per mile, which looks only about twice as good as a 50% reduction. :)

Suppose you're going on a 100 mile trip and you want to know how much better off you are if you replace your 50 mpg car with a 100 mpg car. You now only need 1 gallon of gas instead of 2. Even if the car can run without gas, you aren't any better off than a savings of 2 gallons for the trip. You're not > million times better off.

I'm only not one million times better off because I have other costs to deal with which are completely unrelated to the gas.

If the gas were the only resource I have to worry about (whatsoever), then I would in fact be a million times better off.

So if the 50 mpg car cost $5,000, you would be willing to pay >$5,000,000,000 for the 100 mpg car?

In fact, I understand economics well enough to recognize that I've already put more time and effort than necessary into this thread.

... Which is a massive amount of saved fuel!

Do you ever get the feeling that everything is rigged and corrupt?

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

"Everybody Knows" - by Leonard Cohen:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died

I suspect "everybody" is doing this, and individual manufacturers can't opt out or they'll be producing slower, less fuel-efficient, more expensive cars that will fail in the market.

Without the proof and clout to stand up and accuse all your competition of cheating and win, it's easy to see how some might feel they have no choice.

Tesla is definitely not doing this.

Well, yes, electric cars are obviously a different game.

Test tuning seems to have a long history at VW. The VW subsidiary Porsche tuned the 918 spyder with a battery just large enough to pass fuel consumption test at ~78mpg, or 3l/100km which is ridiculously far from reality.

I am very curious, as to who wrote that patch. Afaik, almost all German manufacturers buy their common rail Diesel motor control units from Bosch. Stuff like pressure adjustment, valve control, or silly 'sports mode' buttons are all designed at Bosch. They ship a modular firmware which the manufacturers customize. Maybe VW were not the only customers of this special 'feature'.

The post from yread makes this seem very likely...

I have to hand it to them, it takes a huge pair to actually design, develop and ship something like this to customers. I'd always assumed if anything this crazy as going on at least one employee would have blown the whistle at some point.

I guess this answers my Bond-villain henchman recruiting problem. I'd always wondered how those super-villains recruited henchmen and grunts necessary to run their island fortresses. Turns out it may not be all that hard ^_^

I wonder how many people along the chain of command knew about this. It's evident that those at the top knew about it, and obviously those at the very bottom knew about it (as they were the ones fudging the numbers) but how many of the people in between were unaware of what was happening?

Not to excuse them if they did know, but this could have been a way to meet an engineering goal, and nobody at the top directed this action.

It isn't likely that ALL the test-tuning that's done in, for example, graphics card drivers and firmware, was ordered from the top down. It's possible this is a similar case.

When I worked at the now defunct Nortel, I was asked to implement a feature that would allow a large bank to spoof it's telephone numbers in long distance telephone calls. I was told that the feature was necessary to make a $60 million sale.

I looked at the spec and, of course, the change they were requesting was disallowed. Even worse, there was an actual law specifically forbidding running equipment with that ability in the country where the request was being made. I refused to implement it.

The B level manager came to my lowly cubicle (I was still pretty young back then, so didn't actually hobnob with people in that stratosphere often). I was told that it would cause a lot of people a lot of trouble if I didn't do the work. And besides, we weren't running the equipment, so we weren't breaking the law. I refused again.

They never asked me again and I never knew if they found someone else to patch the code without my knowledge. I'm pretty sure they did. But how do you whistle-blow that? They just cut cut everyone who doesn't play ball out of the loop.

I can well imagine something like that happening here. It's pretty easy to find someone with kids, or someone who needs their job for keeping their work visa, or someone who just doesn't care. You can patch it in the load build in most large companies and nobody would ever know the difference.

Great story. Your refusal to do illegal, unethical work took courage. The B level manager should have gone to bat for you and put his job on the line, too.

'mikekchar was working for a salary. The manager might have received a bonus for making 60 million sale.

Any idea which bank it was? And what's the point of spoofing?

It seems like a number of people who got fired could pool funds together for a wrongful termination lawsuit.

See the sibling post.

Working a Nortel was an education for me. I demanded a move from that team to another team and landed in even a worse place. While there were some phenomenal people there and a few really good teams, that place was just rife with corruption from top to bottom. I eventually quit (my manager gave me the lowest possible rating in my review saying, "Ordinarily I would give someone who accomplished all these things a very good review, but I just don't like you" -- probably I had a case for constructive dismissal ;-) ). I spend 8 months writing free software and trying to figure out what I wanted in a job. It was actually an excellent thing for me in the end, so I don't really regret the time I spent at Nortel.

If you are referring to the Nortel Meridian One X11 platform, certainly as of X11 R24 (circa 2000/2001) you could spoof your ANI information on outbound calls if you had PRI cards installed in your cabinets. I was kind of amazed that you could just specify whatever information you wanted in the configuration, and that's what appeared on the caller ID of the person you were calling.

Bingo :-) It's the PRI code that does it. If it's any consolation, that code wasn't in the mainline as long as I was with PRI :-P

It's actually even worse than you describe. It allows you to set the bit that says that the calling number has been validated by the network. The justification for the change was to allow the bank to set a single outgoing number on the PBX. It may very well be true that this is what they intended to do. It also allows you to avoid paying long distance fees by spoofing the outgoing number as a local number. Numbers that are already validated avoid the billing code.

Edit: Just realized that I may be wrong. The code I work on was for the SL-100. I can't remember if Meridian shared that code or not. I think they did, but it's long enough ago that I just can't remember.

Maybe it's just something less evil: diesel engines have some filter which needs to be cleaned automatically. Usually it happens on a highway when driving fast. It increases the emissions a lot when the cleaning is going on. Maybe this software device just made sure that this only happens on highway so they would never measure it in a lab?

Thats the Particulate filter which needs periodic long distance drive for self cleaning. The VW cars in question have higher NOx emissions.

AFAIK the software doesn't decide when the DPF gets cleaned, it just happens as a natural consequence of driving fast -- "blowing the cobwebs out" so to speak.

Here is what the software did, according to the EPAs letter to VW:

    Specifically, VW manufactured and installed software
    in the electronic control module (ECM) of these
    vehicles that sensed when the vehicle was being
    tested for compliance with EPA emission standards.
    For ease of reference, the EPA is called this the
    "switch". The "switch" senses whether the vehicle is
    being tested or not based on various inputs
    including the position of the steering wheel,
    vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's
    operation, and barometric pressure. These inputs
    precisely track the parameters of the federal test
    procedure used for emission testing for EPA
    certification purposes. During EPA emission testing,
    the vehicles' ECM ran software which produced
    compliant emission results under an ECM calibration
    that VW referred to as the "dyno calibration"
    (referring to the equipment used in emissions
    tested, called a dynamometer). At all other times
    during normal vehicle operation, the "switch" was
    activated and the vehicle ECM software ran a
    separate "road calibration" which reduced the
    effectiveness of the emission control system
    (specifically the selective catalytic reduction or
    the lean NOx trap). As a result, emissions of NOx
    increased by a factor of 10 to 40 times above the
    EPA complian levels, depending on the type of drive
    cycles (e.g., city, highway).

http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15....

Meanwhile GM gets away with a laughable $900m settlement for knowingly using faulty parts that have caused the deaths of hundreds and many more severely injured.

Reason I'm saying this is I expect VW will end up paying magnitudes of this amount for their wrongdoing that did not result in anyone's death.

EDIT: Toyota had to settle for $1.2b in the unintended acceleration lawsuit that may have caused the death of 3 people where, up to this day, there is still no proof that there was something wrong with the cars, let alone that any employees were knowingly approving the installation of faulty parts.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-18/gm-s-cynici...

for their wrongdoing that did not result in anyone's death

It's well-established that fossil fuel emissions actually do cause many deaths due to increased cancer rates and other respiratory illnesses. Burning diesel without proper emission control systems will also create larger particulate pollution which is especially detrimental to the public health.

Unlike the GM case, it will be impossible to trace exactly how many premature deaths VW has contributed to, but that doesn't mean they should be punished any less harshly.

Don't forget the contribution to climate change. It's probably negligible, since the cheating VW cars make up a very small portion of cars worldwide, but it's still worth thinking about, in my opinion.

It might not be that negligible--in the US alone there are were half million or so diesel VWs sold since 2009--if they are really spewing 40x the limit, then we're talking emissions equivalent to almost 20 million cars that do meet the limit. This is around 1 to 2 years of total new cars sales, or roughly 10% of the active light-duty vehicle fleet in the US.

This is not about climate change. The main climate change contributor from emissions is CO2 - which relates 1:1 to fuel consumption (and how could it be otherwise). Fuel consumption is hard to fake and is tested independently all the time.

What this is about is particulates and NO and NO2 - which aren't a significant contributor to climate change, but have detrimental effects such as emphysema or bronchitis in humans, acid rain or creation of surface ozone that damages lungs.

but is NOx that harmfull?

Yes. NOx is quite bad for you.

Short-term NO2 exposure is, in and of itself, harmful. In as short as 30 minutes, even healthy people will have adverse respiratory effects like airway inflammation.

NOx reacts with ammonia and other compounds to form nitrate fine (PM2.5) particles that get lodged in the lungs which can cause everything from bronchitis to emphysema.

NOx reacts with hydrocarbons and sunlight to create ozone which is quite damaging to your respiratory system.

In the US, NOx is considered to cause upwards of 150,000 premature deaths per year - mostly from fine particles (PM2.5).

You really have no idea whether or not the additional pollution caused anyone's death. This is part of the problem with figuring out the true costs of things like oil.

Of course. This is protectionism. Simple as that. No need to ask questions why 3 people dead are fined more than hundreds dead.

There's no defense for what they did. I mean it's so silly it's the sort of thing you expect to be part of the evil guy's plans to destroy the world in a Bond film... not something that a stupid corporation actually does.

Especially not something a German corporation does.

Care to elaborate what makes a German corporation so different?

Stereotypically speaking, Germans love rules.

That only applies to the average citizen, not executives of large corporations. They have more in common with foreign corporate executives than with their own citizens.

Taking shortcuts instead of delivering quality is usually very badly seen.

Taking shortcuts instead of delivering quality is usually very badly seen.

The repair bills on my BMW are in contradiction to "delivering quality". The car instead appears to have been optimized for "delivering ongoing repair business" to the local dealership.

Yes out of character. German public will not be happy with VW.

Especially when they see their investment statements!

Haha what? I.G. Farben, Chemie Grünenthal, these are not German companies? Siemens, Ferrostaal bribing Greek politicians. H&K arming Mexican drug cartels.

The modern German self-image is a lie.

> H&K arming Mexican drug cartels.

Huh? The cartels are using primarily AR and AK pattern rifles smuggled through the US or stolen from the Mexican government.

Now they are using H&K weapons. http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/waffenexport-er...

First off, the sales happened between 2003 and 2011, so nothing has happened in at least 4 years. Plus, the 9500 rifles sold are a drop in the bucket compared to the Colt and Century Arms weapons in common use.[1]

Second, the weapons in question were sold to local Mexican governments.[2] The investigation appears to stem from the German government not trusting all elements of the Mexican government to use the weapons responsibly.

It was an attempt to dump thousands of rifles the German Army didn't want any more. Some subset of the rifles got in the hands of dirty Mexican cops and were either used by said cops in support of the cartels or stolen on behalf of them. The impact is minimal and HK is not supplying the drug cartels.

[1] http://www.dw.com/en/german-arms-maker-heckler-koch-illegall...

[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/03/us-mexico-germany-...

Why the downvotes? There is some truth to the above. Germany is NOT int the top 10 when it comes to business transparency. While certainly not bad (the US is even lower), its relatively low position (12th in 2014) on the list is surprising and does not quite fit the "impeccably honest" image of Germany some people have.

https://www.transparency.org/country/#DEU

Totally agree. But I'm having a hard time believing anyone explicitely ordered to make such a device. It would get caught soon or later anyway, right?

I fail to see how a big corp like this could not see the impact. Why take such a stupid risk?

Looking at past scandals like this it's usually the result of someone promising results that they can't deliver until they are faced with the career-ending choice of admitting their mistakes or committing fraud.

But this was not done by one person. How can't someone who was developing that software report such an important issue to Wolfsburg?

People will go along with things for a lot of reasons. Threats, bribery, the "I do what I'm told" mentality etc.

This may sound crazy, but this reminds me the behavior of a self-optimizing system.

Too many people work on little parts of it, nobody sees the big picture. Everybody applies the 'spec' blindly. At the end you get something that becomes very good at explotiing loopholes by 'itself'. It's a side effect.

I mean, your sunday-afternoon genetic algorithm would do the same kind of things :)

If no one has the big picture, systems engineering is not doing its job. Systems engineering is supposed to flow the top-level specs down to the various teams, If those teams have issues with their requirements, they flow that back up.

That is, of course, easier said than done. I have had to deal with my share of unrealistic flow-downs and unsympathetic systems engineers. In this particular case at VW the most likely root cause was a team that had a flow-down they couldn't meet honestly and couldn't change, so they cheated their way around it.

I'd say it was made as a temporary fix, until they could get emissions to the target levels and it was just left there, forgotten.

well, if the original idea is that it would only be for this year's model, someone could have enough suspension of disbelief to feel it's safe

Humans are notoriously bad at risk judgement for this kind of thing. Basically the adult equivalent of "If I can't see you, you can't see me"

Typically this sort of corporate cheating is done by a single person or group of people acting on their own.

But this cheating seems surprisingly coordinated.

Sure there is.

"We consider this law illegitimate and do not consent to be bound by it."

You may not LIKE that defense, but it's a defense - pretty much the canonical anarchocapitalist one.

To which the EPA will answer:

"Your vehicles are no longer allowed to be sold in the US"

Very well stated, and I agree a defense exists for the accused.

Gaming tests and parameters doesn't seem too far fetched to me. In high school one class allowed for one 3x5" notecard to be brought to the final exam, and it could have notes written on it. Following the letter but not the spirit of the rule, I used a razor blade to gently split the notecard and was able to peel it open for about 70% more writing space. Though a technicality, I did manage to use my device with approval in that case.

I don't really agree. Air pollution isn't like test notes at all, it kills people.

If you had "Followed the letter but not the spirit of a rule" and wound up endangering people's health, do you honestly think there would be no repercussions other than a "haha, clever you! You can get away with it on a technicality this once" ?

Can you empirically show that Air Pollution in the US killed more people in 2015 than listeria in Blue Bell ice cream?

Being good stewards of the Eart is important, and as long as there are regulations and rules, there will be different attitudes to contend with. I consider air quality to be valuable, I genuinely do. I also think the entire annual production of all VW automobiles globally does less air quality "damage" than one season of wildfires in the western United States. Or a vocanic eruption.

> Can you empirically show that Air Pollution in the US killed more people in 2015 than listeria in Blue Bell ice cream?

"empirically show" is a stupefyingly high standard for a comments thread.

I assume that you are familiar with the scale of the problem for starter?

e.g. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollut... http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/study-air-pol... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26973783

It's a misdirection on your part anyway, comparing a knowingly harmful and deceptive like this to Some industrial accident is not valid: People die in accidents; this does stop murder being a thing.

If something really wants to be done about pollution from burning fossil fuels then bunker fuel may be a good place to start, that low grade crud burnt by shipping our wonderfully cheap crap from around the world... http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/

> "We consider this law illegitimate and do not consent to be bound by it."

Which would be an astonishing statement to actually make, considering that air pollution kills people. It's basically singing the praises of corporate manslaughter.

Even more so, given that anarchocapitalism isn't really popular in Germany any more.

Four days ago, GM was fined $900 million for a known defect that killed over 100 people. If the VW fine exceeds that, something is clearly out-of-line with corporate prosecutions in the US.

From another article:

> The maximum Clean Air Act violation is $37,500 per vehicle, meaning Volkswagen's fine could technically be as high as $18 billion.

Ha, that's more than some of the cars they sold. More than my Jetta TDI, at least.

On a slightly unrelated note, I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what could have possible warranted a downvote there.

Sometimes comments will be downvoted if the downvoter doesn't think the comment adds much new info to the conversation.

Some people have a bit of an itchy trigger-finger with down votes. I wouldn't waste my time worrying about it.

Only if you assume that actual harm to human beings trumps harm to the 'environment'. I'd argue it doesn't, at least not as far as the EPA is concerned.

Harm to the environment is harm to humans. Especially when you are talking about carcinogenic diesal exhaust.

Sure. And in fact, such blanket environmental legislation ought to be supported by Objectivists like myself. Even Rand agreed that collective legislation is appropriate to collective problems.

But my point was that, for environmentalists, harm to 'the environment' actually outweighs measurable harm to humans. Hence activities that provably killed a bunch of people are likely to merit a less stringent penalty that those likely in this case.

I don't know where you live, but as for me I live in a house right next to the environment.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trump

"(transitive) To supersede.

    In this election, it would seem issues of national security trumped economic issues."

In other words, concerns about the environment trump concerns about actual human harm, at least according to mainstream environmentalists.

US loves prosecuting foreign companies. Not so much local companies. So sure they could go after Volkswagen, what do they have to lose?

If it perceived unfairness I'd imagine that VW would lobby the German government.

And it turns out, amazingly often, that the EU discovers that what's in Germany's interest is in its interest too!

We could end up with the EU crying foul and threatening retaliation against American companies here.

The EU is already going after US Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Uber etc.

What about VW going after the US through the TPP ?

From http://www.dailydot.com/politics/tpp-leaked-investment-chapt...

> Corporations may be granted through “Investor-State Dispute Settlement” (ISDS) tribunals the authority to demand taxpayer compensation for domestic energy, health, environment, land use, and other policies. With the exception of Australia, all of the countries involved in the TPP talks have agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of ISDS tribunals.

*edited to format the quote. Giving up.

Corporations bite back?

They did just finish getting a criminal settlement and $900,000,000 fine out of GM...

Air pollution kills people. Especially poor people who can't afford health care and can't afford to move to places where four thousand cars an hour pass under their window, day in, day out.

There have been zero reports, that I'm aware of, that any of these cars would have failed the emissions test without the "defeat device". Still waiting to hear.

Edit: Easy guys, in Canada there is no known impact yet as it is being investigated. I forgot I was on the internet where everyone keeps their pitchforks in their back pocket. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/volkswagen-emissions-rigging...

We do ACTUAL emissions tests in Canada (Ontario at least) - it sounds like USA is different in how it works (probably differs by state?), but we have machines to actually grade pollution. The 2009 model VWs will be emissiosn tested this year as they are 7 years old, so why this hasn't been news yet in Canada is very interesting, which is why I say I'm waiting to hear how all of these cars fair in upcoming tests. http://www.ontario.ca/page/drive-clean

Edit 2: I'm wrong, we don't do tailpipe emissions test on cars newer than 1998! So the defeat device is the exact reason why I hadn't heard about any vehicles actually failing emissions testing here.

What have you been drinking? Why have a 'defeat device' if it doesn't do anything? Of course they would fail, spectacularly, without the device. That's the entire point.

The estimate is, CO emissions are reduce 40X to pass the test. Meaning, the cars are 40 times too dirty to be on our roads.

In Canada, we used to only ever do tailpipe tests, meaning a defeat device wouldn't be able to fool the testing. Apparently I'm wrong though - turns out Canada doesn't do tailpipe tests on cars newer than 1998 (this is news to me), meaning the defeat device is the exact reason why I hadn't heard about any cases of cars failing the emissions test.

* In Canada, we used to only ever do tailpipe tests, meaning a defeat device wouldn't be able to fool the testing. *

I think you misunderstand both the testing and the defeat device. We do tailpipe testing here in the US, and the defeat device results in far cleaner tailpipe emissions during said tests. It's not just an OBD data-hiding thing, it actually changes the emissions.

edit - clarification, we may not do tailpipe tests on diesels here, didn't occur to me that gas tests would be different than diesel.

> CO emissions are reduce 40X to pass the test

NOx, not CO. And it's up to, not always.

> Meaning, the cars are 40 times too dirty to be on our roads.

No, it means the cars are up to 40 times too dirty in this one respect to be on our roads.

Not sure why you are equivocating in this instance. It's clearly an intentional breach of regulations, which the CEO has fessed up to. NOx emissions are a serious concern, whether they 'are' 40x too high, or 'up to' 40x too high is not a valid point of contention. Anything over the mandated limit is a health risk, and equivocating over how much is like asking whether you'd want 3 years, or 10 years shaved off your life expectancy.

There is no equivocation in my post whatsoever. I was responding to what I saw as a lazy "sound bite" post that was using incorrect information to make a stronger point than it had. There was no judgement about the actions of VW, no downplaying of the seriousness of NOx pollution. Those issues are not relevant to the question of whether the facts presented are materially correct, which they were not.

I will address one thing, though:

> Anything over the mandated limit is a health risk, and equivocating over how much is like asking whether you'd want 3 years, or 10 years shaved off your life expectancy.

That is not equivocating. Also, pollution exists on a continuous scale. Saying everything over the limit is equivalently "bad" and everything under the limit is equivalently "good" is ignoring that. There is a big difference in effect between, say, twice the limit and 40 times the limit.

Seriously?

"Then German received the results of the real-world tests. “We were astounded when we saw the numbers,” he said. On the open road, the Jetta exceeded the U.S. nitrogen oxide emissions standard by 15 to 35 times. The Passat was 5 to 20 times the standard." - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19/volkswagen...

"As described in the NOV, a sophisticated software algorithm on certain Volkswagen vehicles detects when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and turns full emissions controls on only during the test. The effectiveness of these vehicles’ pollution emissions control devices is greatly reduced during all normal driving situations. This results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory or testing station, but during normal operation, emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx, at up to 40 times the standard. The software produced by Volkswagen is a “defeat device,” as defined by the Clean Air Act." - http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/21b8983ffa5d0e46852...

Actually every single report about this story has noted the cars would have failed the emissions test without the software specially designed to cheat and pass (if not there would be no reason to have said software!).

I was speaking in terms of Canadian testing. Turns out, I was still wrong - I assumed Canada was strictly performing tailpipe tests, not ODB instrument testing. Turns out they don't do tailpipe tests on cars newer than 1998 (this is news to me), meaning the defeat device is the exact reason why I hadn't heard about any cases of cars failing the emissions test.

Air pollution is also killing people when it is within legal limits. If killing via pollution is ok when within regulatory thresholds, but not ok when outside of them, then this is about breaking rules, not about ending lives.

That's not how pollution works. Exposure limits are based on relatively safe values; exceeding those values can seriously affect people in the area. 40x legal limits is a serious issue, not a case of 'a bit more of a bad thing'.

Diesel exhaust is known to cause cancer. I have one of these cars in my driveway that they lied about.

Curious, are you going to return the vehicle for any recall notices? You realize once they "fix" the emissions issue, the performance of the car is probably going to tank. I have to imagine you will no longer realize the ratings as advertised on the Monroney sticker?

I was thinking to myself, I would avoid the recall but then I think there is fine print that states the OEM must be able to service your vehicle to maintain said warranty.

Interesting pickle. How stupid VW is.

In California it will be unavoidable due to CARB-DMV coordination. If your vehicle hasn't been fixed they won't allow you to register it.

I imagine a lot of customers will avoid getting the "fix" in order to maintain the performance of their cars. There's not much that they can do to force these people to bring their cars back.

tend to agree. In Michigan, there are no laws requiring owners to pass an emissions test. There use to be in the 80s but they were dissolved in the late 80s. I believe states like California still have them and I know, at least, Illinois has them. In Illinois, it's a simple matter of a test center pulling data from the ODB2 port.

> There's not much that they can do to force these people to bring their cars back.

Uh. In any place with emissions tests I presume these things will instantly fail without the upgrade, so you won't be able to preserve your registration without it.

Are you expecting places to implement specific exceptions for these cars? Because presumably they've been passing so far. So, jurisdictions would have to put in specific blocks for these cars, and then have some way to test for the fix. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

FWIW, my county doesn't do emissions tests on diesels.

The whole point of this discussion is that the car detects it's being tested, then specifically alters the engine's behavior to pass the test. So, no, they won't fail the test without the fix.

You would have to assume that by 'automatically failing', the test would involve checking the software version, and if it's not updated, the car instantly fails the test.

I can't imagine a test centre knowingly passing a car which has been shown to cheat on tests.

The impact of flashing the fix to the ECU remains to be seen - my instinct is the loss would be in the 10% - 20% range (I have an older TDI VW, with a different engine). Given that these vehicles are typically getting 50 - 55mpg, that still wouldn't make them useless. Obviously disappointing though. I wish we could get Toyota diesels in the US...

41MPG is the rated highway MPG that is shown on the sticker for the VW Jetta in the year range from the article. I have a 2011 and I would average between 40-45 on the highway and 30-35 in town. 50-55 is not typical for these specific cars.

I average 51mpg in an unmodified 2013 Jetta TDI on the highway, usually at exactly 65mph.

I have a Golf TDI and I get 38 mpg average. I'm skeptical that any of these cars are typically getting 50-55 mpg.

My old 2009 VW Jetta TDI averaged over 50MPG highway on a cross-country road trip, 38MPG in combined highway/city driving in the Canadian winter. If you're keeping it to highway driving, it's totally doable.

But definitely not typical.

A lot of fuel efficiency is due to how one drives their car.[0]

[0]http://www.wikihow.com/Hypermile

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/volkswagen/golf-vii-2013 (A site where people submit their MPGs)

The Golf VII 1.6 TDI can easily achieve 55 MPG for combined. The 2.0 TDI, obviously worse, around 47-52 MPG.

These are obviously UK/Euro models. I'm not sure if/how they differ from any other markets.

Honestly flashing the ECU would likely reduce driving dynamics (horsepower and torque) but it might push fuel economy up. I'm excited to find out.

There are already aftermarket firmware flashes you can get for a TDI that improve performance and efficiency at the expense of increased emissions--basically an extreme version of the VW cheat mode.

Well Toyota got fined 1.2 billion for something that turned out to be user error if that. As in, they were penalized for not cooperating fast enough for the government. I do think GM got off way too lightly. The VW issue here in no way compares, trying to claim that air pollution from these cars might have caused deaths is absurd when looking at what GM did and continue to do so after their rescue.

that being said, having owned both a 2010 TDI Golf and 2013 TDI Beetle that I enjoyed for the duration and returned very good mileage numbers I still want VW to be fined a substantial amount and forced to keep a stop sale until they can prove the code is no longer in a car waiting delivery to a dealer.

"NOx pollution contributes to nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, and fine particulate matter. Exposure to these pollutants has been linked with a range of serious health effects, including increased asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses that can be serious enough to send people to the hospital. Exposure to ozone and particulate matter have also been associated with premature death due to respiratory-related or cardiovascular-related effects. Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing respiratory disease are particularly at risk for health effects of these pollutants.

VW may be liable for civil penalties and injunctive relief for the violations alleged in the NOV."

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/21b8983ffa5d0e46852...

More about health effects of NO2 exposure: http://www3.epa.gov/airquality/nitrogenoxides/health.html

Not quite, GM was fined $35 million in 2014 by the NHTSA for the ignition defect, which was the maximum fine allowed. They recently settled a federal criminal complaint for $900 million. They also had a thousand civil suits which are estimated to cost around $1.2 billion to settle.

So, the real moral here is that Volkswagen took advantage of the fact that our emission standards basically trust the cars own on board diagnostics to determine if they pass emissions...

CA, at least, uses the BAR-OIS inspection for diesel cars, coupled with a "visual inspection" to make sure that the car does not produce visual pollutants. Effectively, this means that the software reads whether the car is passing from the OBD-II port in the car, and then, as long as the car has the necessary parts (Exhaust recirculator, catalytic convertor, etc) then it passes.

It would not surprise me to find out that more than just VW have these kind of issues. Effectively, we don't actually verify with any instrumentation whether the emissions are within spec.

Sure, VW may have duped the system on purpose, but, the fact that this has gone on for years has to weigh in a bit on a critical mind. Our tests don't work very well if this stuff can go on this long.

___

Of course, it is also trivial to find an inspection location that will pass almost any diesel vehicle, if you know where to look. For any interested parties, try googling "diesel exhaust delete" or some similar query for any number of Ford f-350s, Ram 2500s or any other large turbo diesels. This basically consists of taking a saw, and cutting out the EGR, and some other flow restricting parts of the exhaust to increase exhaust flow, typically done in combination with a chip/turbo map.

The results can be significant. A person I know got a fairly significant bump in both power and MPG at the expense of needing to carefully plan how to pass emissions tests. The main question that weighs in is whether it is better to pass emissions and get 13-15mpg, or to fail emissions technically, but get 24-26Mpg with diesel. Those are real numbers with a 2008 Ram 2500.

I think this VW thing should spark a larger conversation about how we measure emissions in the first place, and what cost the emissions passing imposes.

Replying to my own post to clarify my position: I'm not defending VW's actions. I'm questioning whereto our emissions testing regimen is good enough if this kind of stuff gets by for so long.

I think you mean the Diesel Particulate Filter delete. http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2013/01/epa-says-dont-touch-pat...

That is certainly one part of it, though many people go significantly further. frequently, this involves simply sawing off the whole exhaust system and having a local muffler shop fab a new set of pipes and mufflers for you.

The truck that my friend has is a ram 2500, with a chip/tune and the exhaust removed, it dynos at about 490HP/1100 ft-lbs of torque, and still achieves ~25mpg highway. The downside is that there is an unknown emissions toll for doing that modification.

Again, I have to wonder though, at almost 10mpg better, is the reduced emissions actually logical? i.e. do the emissions reduction systems really make up for needing to burn additional fuel to do the same work?

Whether it's "logical" depends on your goals.

If you value public health more than fuel efficiency, then yes, emissions controls are a logical choice.

abakker was questioning how much the increased emissions per unit fuel was offset by the reduction in fuel required for a given distance. When calculating vehicle emissions per distance traveled, those counteract each other.

well, thats what I'm getting at. By getting 10mpg better, do you produce fewer total emissions than if you had the emissions controls in place, but burned more fuel?

I imagine than there are many possible solutions where it makes sense to use strict emissions controls at the cost of fuel consumption, but there are also others where the increase in mileage would reduce total emissions further than the emissions controls would.

rough estimate. on a 25 gallon tank of diesel, with emissions controls in place, the truck goes 350 miles. on that same tank, the truck goes 625 miles with the emissions removed. so, to go 625 miles with the exhaust controls in place would use ~44 gallons of fuel vs 25. Is that actually a net environmental benefit? My gut tells me that the environmental costs of refining, transporting and burning the extra fuel are higher than the marginally higher emissions in the unrestricted truck. I don't expect those numbers would work out the same in all vehicles or cases though.

I think public health and fuel economy go hand in hand. the total environmental costs of petroleum are much higher than the emissions that come out of cars. reducing demand through greater fuel economy should be factored in to the overall emissions equations.

EPA emissions limits are based on grams of pollutant per horsepower-hour. In order to reach compliance, your emissions control equipment needs to reduce pollution much faster than it reduces efficiency.

It's not uncommon for illegally chipped/straight-piped trucks to see 50% improvements in fuel efficiency, but they're belching out tens or hundreds of times the volume of common pollutants (depending on the pollutant)

Thanks for that info. Out of curiosity, is there any accounting for the other emissions involved in making the fuel, though? Full transport and refining is energy intensive. on-vehicle emissions controls are also costly, and also use energy to make. Finally, petroleum is a finite resource.

I am all for emissions controls on vehicles if they genuinely reduce net emissions. If the reduced fuel economy doesn't equal out though, then at best, we're simply moving the emissions out of cars and into refineries/shipping/factories instead.

I have a hard time believing that we're moving the emissions.

1. The efficiency/emissions tradeoff is almost entirely a diesel problem. For intrinsic reasons, gasoline engines suffer much less from emissions controls. The relevant systems are both much less complicated and much less intrusive. There is very little efficiency gain available by e.g. removing your catalytic converter.

(The vapor reclamation requirements can be very complicated, but those parts do not intrude on the function of the engine, so they are not making the system less efficient)

2. The math doesn't work out on the back of a napkin. Emissions controls can reduce total tailpipe pollutants by as much as 99%. Even if it caused 2x the fuel consumption, how on earth would that result in a 100-fold increase in emissions in the distribution chain?

The VW cheat did not merely lie about what the car reported via the diagnostics port. It detected dynamometer testing for EPA certification and altered the engine calibration to produce compliant emissions.

They should try the bank line:

* hey we are just playing the game, it's the regulators who set the rules

* it's business, if we didn't get innovative with the rules we'd loose customers and go out of business

* it was one rogue guy, the culture here is fine!

If all these fail then just make sure the fine is less than the profit you make from the "transgression".

"We have a legal obligation to our shareholders to maximise our profits."

Presumably VW had a project (either in-house, or through one of their tier-1 suppliers) to develop this technology.

A crime was committed, so who is criminally liable?

The sales-people who agreed the deal? The project manager who was given the project to manage? The release manager who signed-off the release? The systems test manager who tested the vehicle? How about all the software developers and other engineers who were assigned to work on the project?

I'd particularly like to know what people think the extent of criminal liability for individual software developers in the automotive industry is and should be?

Convicting someone of a crime requires proving all of the elements. Most crimes require a culpable state of mind (or mens rea). So the issue would be whether an individual has the requisite mens rea (recklessly, knowingly, etc.) These are very fact-intensive inquiries.

Having worked in the antitrust world, I saw lots of cases where mid-level managers and employees were engaged in anticompetitive conduct. The fact that their bosses demanded that behavior as part of their job function didn't absolve criminal liability.

What would the appropriate actions on the part of those mid-level managers and employees have been to avoid criminal liability?

Refuse to participate in the scheme. Yes, it is possible (or likely) that you will be fired. But going to federal prison is a very real possibility. I visited several witnesses in prison. They are "normal" guys - the kind you see standing on the sideline of a kids' soccer game. They have kids, two car payments, a mortgage, etc. It's a tough situation to walk away from (especially because the crime is often just a phone call or a few emails with a competitor).

Keeping a conspiracy going year after year is difficult. There is "cheating" by conspirators, turnover of personnel, etc. The DOJ also has an immunity program that protects whistleblowers from criminal liability (and sometimes the company from treble damage civil liability). The immunity program makes it much more likely that someone quits the conspiracy and turns themselves in.

So while losing your job sucks, if your company is violating federal antitrust law, chances are your job is not secure or desirable anyways.

The EU announced earlier this year that they were changing the test procedures and certification rules for diesel cars to more accurately assess and control NOx output and to prevent gaming of the tests by manufacturers. Defeat devices were explicitly called out:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/03/car-maker...

Even with the looming threat of billions of dollars of fines, big co's STILL try to cheat the system.

In a deregulated market, how can we ever expect these co's to act honestly? We can't.

It is regulated... They just didn't follow the regulations.

And in many cases they get away with it as DOJ often doesn't want to prosecute the "too big too fail", so they start finding the risk of breaking the law acceptable, especially if "everyone does it". I assume there are other car manufacturers who do this, but haven't been found yet, or at least were considering doing it in the future with more stealthy technology.

The point was that if they don't follow regulations, how can we expect corporations to act ethically if they're deregulated?

Pretty sure we have seen this worked well with banking /s

If there aren't any regulations, they won't be breaking any regulations. Problem solved - right? :)

Regulations ARE in place, but until someone goes to jail, these things will keep happening. The cost of fines will be passed on to the shareholders (and ultimately, the customers). Even if the executives get fired, you can be sure they get golden parachutes.

Rinse and repeat.

The people making the decisions don't play with their own money. You make a lot of bonus while the cheat is going on and when it blows up you walk away with the money. Either the shareholders or the regular employees (through layoffs) pay the bills.

Now if the decision makers had to pay back their bonuses that would be different.

Environmental impact aside, this is the same practice employed by Samsung and HTC with regards to performance benchmarks:

http://bgr.com/2013/11/27/samsung-benchmark-cheating-banned-...

I saw a documentary about other manufactures removing seats and using different tires for tests. I expect this is rife with any industry imposed tests :(

This is why I believe in corporate death sentences.

You ship millions of cars that don't actually slowly poison the drivers but the people on the side of the road instead, you should have more than a little justice coming your way.

Yeah, it's actually plausible that this kind of white-collar crimes cause more death than a single homicide.

It certainly smells like impunity. Big corps are actually very good at making sure that there's no one to complain and no one to blame (from customer service to this kind of executive maneuver).

Heres how you test emissions for a car. Lock the executives in an unventilated room with the engine running for half an hour. If they survuve it is ok to release to the public. Obviously I am joking, but it should be the goal to have no dirty emmissions at all.

They'll just make it so their cars run cleaner when executives are around.

Maybe you could trick the car to run in low emissions mode by having a scarecrow in an expensive suit and a pillow under the shirt. You would have to place these every hundred meters in a neighborhood.

It would be a bad idea to shut the company down totally, but if you wanted to enact a death sentence, just cease the shares and auction them off again.

The company still operates--which allows employees to keep their jobs and the economy doesn't take a huge GDP hit--but the owners pay the price.

How would this proposal solve any problems? The executives of the firm are the ones who, ahem, actually decided to break the law. Why should they keep their freedom, to say nothing of their jobs? The various index funds and pension plans that you want to penalize were never informed of the scheme.

New ownership would presumably clean house.

And this wouldn't prevent those who were involved from being charged as well for their individual role.

>The various index funds and pension plans that you want to penalize were never informed of the scheme.

I only meant this how you'd carry out a corporate death penalty without hurting third parties. Any corporate death penalty would wipe these share holders out anyway.

It is strange that he is apoligfising for misleading people. The damage is the excessive toxic gas that was released into our communities.

A better apology would be one where he also promised that all of VW's vehicles will be fully electric within 10 years, just like BMW did (well, with gas-powered range extenders but close enough, I guess).

He's apologising for being caught.

Nobody cares about the actual damage, it's the reputational damage that is important. "If they cheated on this, how do we know they followed all other safety/environmental regulations and their cars won't just blow up? How do we know their published accounts are truthful?" etc etc.

The apology is basically "sorry we lied in this case, usually we don't lie, please keep trusting us."

Actual damage is relatively nonimportant. You can always donate to this or that green group, develop a magic air-cleaning machine or something... but only if you keep getting money out of customers trusting you.

I worked with them and know that before they release software they do a risk calculation. They do it even for small mobile apps and if the risk is too high because they would need to regain public trust they don't release that app / software. So how in the world can it be that they released this? Normal employees there are not allowed to make such decisions.

IMO, EPA should seize the cars till there is a legal solution. Let the consumers sue for being sold a vehicle on false pretenses. Being a car enthusiast, I already see posts on the forums from car guys stating they will refuse to allow VW to fix the problem on their cars, because they know the fix will sacrifice performance and economy.

How likely is it that other manufacturers are doing the same thing?

I've heard something similar for freezers or some other kitchen equipment but can't find it right now.

Since it can be done through software and those red to green sheets are all over cars and electrical equipment inventing new levels of A+++++...well, I'd guess: very likely.

This should be testable - I mean, it's not practical to review every car while it's running; but if we have a suspicion that such 'defeat devices' are installed by default, then it should be feasible to simply rent a few random cars of each manufacturer, ducttape some sensors on them, and take them for a loop on a normal highway - if the indications are suddenly significantly different from what you measured in normal testing, then the expected fines will pay for a detailed investigation.

All of them optimize for those well defined regulatory test cases. It's all shades of gray as long as they are just tuning parameters to yield favorable results in the test scenarios without bothering with possible drawbacks in other situations. But things suddenly turn solid black when a method of optimization is employed that is explicitly disallowed in the rules.

It's not unlikely that this infraction was enabled by "motivated disbelief" questioning that software alone can be a "defeat device". And without court-actionable "defeat device" this thing would clearly be in the gray range, even if the "up to forty times" that are being talked about would probably make it one of the darker shades.

They might have even checked this with some lawyers, who can sometimes be very eager to look at the law in the way most favorable to the client: "Yes, it may hold in court" (and if not I will still get my money, also, the negative PR caused by the lawsuit even if you wirll will be your problem, not mine)

Ford & Honda were find in 2008 for doing this: http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents...

I can say so much: many VW employees in my "vicinity" are baffled, too.

Really? I've heard those rumors (that many car makers build cars that try to detect whether they are tested) years ago. The reasoning back then was that hybrid cars could cheat the results, by completely emptying their batteries during the 20 minute test...

[Edit: Clarifications after reading the replies]

Well, it's not R&D I work with. And it is possible, that this "feature" was not even developed by VW itself, but by a supplier. However, someone must have known this within the company. And since the CEO is also head of the R&D department.....

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I have not been talking about VW in particular. I've heared the rumor that "many car makers" do this...

Hey, VW could always come to my county. We don't even bother requiring emissions testing here.

In my cursory search, I've not found any numbers for just how badly they cheated. Anyone know what the test vs defeated emission numbers were?

I imagine there's gonna be a huge class action suit on top of everything.

Edit: 10-40x the EPA limit of NOx according to the EPA letter to VW (pdf: http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15....)

I don't understand this "defeat device". What's the incentive for VW to do this? If the car can emit in the target range during a test, why not do it all time?

Probably lowers efficiency

Performances. The engine's efficiency is much lower under restricted emissions conditions.

Quoting from https://np.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/3lhhjk/have_you...

> They were caught cheating on NOx emissions primarily although all emissions are in a way connected.

> NOx is created when temperatures and pressures are very high during combustion. Sadly NOx emission is generally higher when your combustion is nice and hot and rapid, which gives higher efficiency (closer to the ideal thermodynamic cycle).

> […] [A lying] car will produce a lot more NOx in normal driving, and have better fuel economy.

> […] If VW correct this via recall the car will be required to run on the "clean" calibration all the time. This will mean poorer fuel economy, I would be speculating to say by how much but VW wouldnt have bothered cheating if it wasnt a significant gain. It may even have implications on durability if certain parameters (like exhaust gas temps, turbocharger RPMs or oil life) are affected as they often are.

Previous discussion; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240001

Nice discount on VW stock

Probably a great time to buy some VLKAY:

http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=VLKAY

It looks like the stock is pricing in an enormous fine, because otherwise a 500k recall would not do anything like this to the price. Even adjusting for VW's disgraceful wrongdoing, do I smell veiled protectionism? Payback for Europe's hounding of GOOG in there somewhere?

At the moment $17B is wiped out -- the fine could be even bigger than that, and then there's the backslash of the damaged reputation...

right. I guess I haven't factored the reputational damage enough, in a country where Tesla and the Prius are so highly regarded.

I don't read annual reports, but it would be interesting to see next year's paragraph on "good will."

Down the tinfoil, dude. It's just that it's such an egregious breach of trust, from a company priding itself on reliability and green credentials, that it will clearly impact them deeply, even more so in a situation where they were already struggling to compete in the US market.

The notion that the US protects its car industry is totally uncontroversial, for one.

The notion it may increase the fine to help do so, slightly above and beyond what they're fully justified to fine, is not a stretch of imagination.

It's controversial and not to be assumed that they would hike the fine out of protectionism, but it's a possibility that is way more likely and a much less far fetched than someone claiming last month that VW may be scamming the emissions system in the US to improve their sales, which would be met with tinfoil comments, and guess what just happened.

Not saying it's true but it's far from tinfoil.

I thought vegabook was referring more to the extent of stockmarket reactions than of the actual fine; I was just pointing out that the market routinely overreacts when egregious misbehaviour is in play.

I can see your point about a possibly outrageous fine out of simple protectionism, but the link to GOOG is total tinfoilery IMHO. The US car market has always been protectionist and well-connected, they don't care about "the country", they just protect their profits.

Part of it will be investors who have previously expected some amount of future earnings from an apparently great product. This product has been shown to be a lie. They don't have one to replace it so those future earnings are now no longer there.

How does the recall cost structure work?

The naive approach has them paying the car owners back for the full market value of the cars (which is probably higher than is warranted). Assuming $20k per vehicle (which, for the models in question, is lower than the actual prices), that's $10B on the cars alone. Add to that the cost of the recall itself, plus whatever fines, and losing $17B market cap doesn't seem out of proportion.

> which is probably higher than is warranted

Why is it higher than warranted? They sold customers something that wasn't there, a diesel marketed as clean tech, when in reality it was 40 times dirtier than the law allows.

And it wasn't a design defect, like for example the GM ignition switch, it was designed and engineered to do exactly what it does, and exactly the opposite of what was sold, and exactly the opposite of what the law requires.

Full refund is entirely appropriate (IMO), in addition to fines and jail that may (or may not) result.

Honestly it looks like all they have to do is enable full emission-control all the time, so a quick software update should have all the cars back on the road right? Clearly the cars can pass EPA emissions requirements.

They'll be allowed back on the road; but you can bet that there will be backlash about them losing performance because of it.

Backlash, as I will never buy another car from Volkswagen Group. I own one of the affected models and if all they do is a software update that turns it in to a gutless wonder with mediocre mileage they will lose quite a few otherwise devoted customers, possibly permanently. Lots of owners love their TDIs. Mine has been a great car. I think this goes beyond cynical corporate profits. A beloved technological possession is likely to be taken away or neutered. Once they go beyond disappointment and approach heartbreak, spurn kicks in.

Do you mean to imply that reduced performance will upset you more than causing 25x the smog that the law allowed?

I would say the one who automatically tosses out the highest number in a possible range is the one doing the implying...

Edit: Heh. Changing the 40X to a 10X, eh? Nice...

Edit2: Now 25X. Really, dude?

Are you now implying that there is some "smog multiplier" below which you are more upset about reduced performance? What is that multiplier? How many asthmatic children are required for your driving satisfaction?

I have no explanation for your reading difficulties.

I'm implying you are asking a leading question and pulling some serious sleaze editing your posts to make sure my reply does not match up.

For the record, I can be motivated by multiple parameters at the same time as it is in this case. I'm looking for the performance/mileage/emissions/cost sweet spot that I thought this car held when I bought it. I'm not hung up on the binary opposition that you seem to be accusing me. As for the hysterical save the children crap and ad hominem, I'm sure you are quite proud of yourself for coming up with it...

For the record, this is the post I am responding to should this poster continue his questionable editing habits:

"Are you now implying that there is some "smog multiplier" below which you are more upset about reduced performance? What is that multiplier? How many asthmatic children are required for your driving satisfaction?

I have no explanation for your reading difficulties."

> Clearly the cars can pass EPA emissions requirements.

Yeah, going slower though...

It's not the recall or the fine, it's the fact that VW (and other german brands) tried to build up "clean diesel" in the american market for ages and that's now all ruined.

This was one thing, if I was evaluating the stock I would price in an increased risk of them having other skeletons in the closet.

This is Volkswagen we're talking about...

Could the markets be pricing in the fact that they can no longer trust what VW says?

Hint: Buy VW stock now.

Did VW have to do this in Europe as well or are their air standards more lax?

Current european standards are laxer, especially when it comes to diesel. In fact, the whole thing was busted because a european supporter of cleaner diesel thought "look they've got much cleaner figures in the US market so they know how to do it and we can way tighten emission standards".

Then they went to road-test US-market cars, and found out the real-world emission profile was more or less identical to the EU one, and completely out of spec for the US regulations.

See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19/volkswagen... for a timeline and a rundown with names and all.

Huh, this was days in the coming. I am surprised it just happens today. I should have bet on it...

The market was closed on the weekend.

Ah, I did not know that. Thanks!

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