West Virginia Engineer Proves to Be a David to VW's Goliath
reuters.com
reuters.com
>"They saw what had happened and called to say: 'Good job, you guys,'" Carder said. "Some folks said: 'How did they not learn from our mistakes 15 years ago?'"
Neither VW nor these companies made a "mistake", though they all use that term. This was deliberate deceit, fraud, trickery. If there was a mistake it was thinking they could get away with it and come out with more money. Each time they talk about their "mistake" they reveal how deeply attached they are to a culture of denying responsibility.
The meaninglessness of the term "software engineer" and celebrated industry practices are why I am not optimistic about the safety of self-driving cars. Volkswagen presumably can attract as good and ethical a software engineering cadre as anyone in the business.
However, my suspicion is that VW allowed this to come out now in order to again pull diesels out of the US market for business reasons. I think it's a bet on low gasoline prices in the short term and fuel efficiency via electric motors in the long term with a little P.T. Barnum the-newspapers-can-write-whatever-they-want-so-long-as-they-spell-my-name-correctly thrown in. This will blow over faster than you can say "I don't care if I pay a nickle more per gallon, I won't fill up there because of Deepwater Horizon". It's not like Martin Winterkom shot an elephant or anything.
With regard to engineering titling, this was done in Germany, I don't think any more rigidity would have had an effect on countering fraud. We have fraudulent physicians -having the distinction doesn't prevent that.
2. Suzuki closed the deal to buy out Volkswagen's stake amid claims that Volkswagen was withholding information that effected their partnership in regard to fuel efficient technology, immediately [for some definition of "immediately"] before the revelations in regard to the TDD practices for TDI software: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34275917
There's a matryoshka of foundations and policy groups behind the research funding for the project that uncovered the software design. VW has been in and out of the US diesel car market with every change in the price of gasoline since the first diesel Rabbits in the 1970's when famously, they had to remove the assertion that diesel fuel was less expensive than gasoline from their television commercials.
This way, Volkswagen Passenger Cars [a wholly owned subsidiary of Volkswagen Group] does not have to negotiate with its US car dealers regarding a lineup change that removes high profit options and models that bring customers onto the lot who often drive off with some other VW instead of a TDI. If history is a guide, with gasoline down around $2.00/gallon it won't be long until Americans lose most of their rather limited interest in diesels.
The worst case fine of $16 billion is highly unlikely and even were such a fine politically feasible in the US it almost certainly wouldn't send Volkswagen AG under.
The timing is no more likely to be accidental than the way in which the software is configured. The study was completed in 2013.
It was their aim to become the world auto sales leader, I don't think tarnishing their reputation in any way aids that aim.
Yes, GM has recently suffered a fiasco due to using an inferior part for cost savings, and I believe they dodged ( no pun) dire consequences in no small part due to its handling by their savvy CEO.
Today VW is in a position to expose the loss they were going to take anyway, dump the problematic technology, blame everything on Winterkorn, and go through a jumbo box of come-to-Jesus motions. And just as diesel-gate broke VW happened to announce their bet on electric: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/84995/20150915/volkswagen-...
It's not like the people at VW are stupid or naive in regards to PR. Diesel was not going to propel VW past GM in a sustainable way. This story makes that obvious.
I'm not sure that necessarily applies to most large companies.
Not to get in the way of someone getting to make an angry comment, but considering that the article is referring to companies similarly trying to fraudulently pass EPA tests and being punished for it, it's pretty obvious that's exactly what they're referring to.
I don't think anybody called that a mistake, it's just straight cheating.
If anything, they've probably seen that and thought it was a great idea!
http://techreport.com/review/3089/how-ati-drivers-optimize-q...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/live-memory-test,1241-10...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-andr...
There's a huge difference between "Game XYZ uses these inputs and shaders, let's make sure our driver works as well as possible when we see this pattern" and "When we detect the user is running Benchmark ABC, make everything look like shit so we come out with a high benchmark score that we can use in our marketing materials!"
I'll admit, however, the line gets fuzzy when the game itself is used as a benchmark.
Trying to buy airline or cruise tickets? Some kind of shenanigans are bound to happen. The system is trying to infer if you might be willing to pay a lot.
Though, in the old times this haggling was done by real people.
That seems pretty upfront.
Well you really got that opposite from what I saw. It wasn't slurping any data that was protected behind a wall of privacy that Google climbed over but was public broadcast. I have always tried to let friends know that if they have WiFi they need to have an understanding what they are broadcasting. One time my friend had no passwords on his wifi and his Documents were being shared. I got the last three years of tax records sitting next to me. I did ask want me to look at downloads, videos or pictures. He blushed said no and we put up a password on his wifi and stopped sharing his data.
Only in the exact way described by the parent: deceit couched as mistakes.
Do you really honestly believe that they "accidentally" implemented a feature to associate with open wifi networks, grab any and all data they could, and store that data in their archive?
Google is a big place. One or more people designed that feature, multiple people implemented it, probably dozens of others tested it, and managers signed off on it before it was deployed on their StreetView cars.
It's not like "Whoops, someone left out a null check and it accidentally grabbed all your data!"
http://allthingsd.com/20120501/google-releases-fuller-fcc-wi...
If Google hadn't made that blog post, I don't think anyone would have known about it in the first place.
Oh, you're funny!
"It can simply be a change in the fuel injection strategy. What might be realized is a penalty in fuel economy in order to get these systems more active, to lower the emissions levels."
Fix is likely not that big of a deal... but what about the impact on the consumers who paid for a car with a certain performance level and are now left with a diminished product?
I have several colleagues who have VW TDIs that are distraught. Many of them are very well informed consumers who took pride in purchasing a more environmentally friendly car at a higher premium. The car might be able to meet those environmental standards but the price tag no longer seems justifiable.
Almost every manufacturer have 2 liter disel models that (just) barely come in under 120g/km, including several VW models such as the Passat. So while a slight increase in fuel consumption might not be much, it could be a huge blow to european sales: if a Passat jumps just a tiny bit in consumptions, CO2 emissions are likely to stray above 120g/km meaning sales will effectively be cut in half (assuming half the buyers of new cars are those who need to get under 120g/km)
To illustrate how tight the margins are, the current model of Volvo V70 with the 2 liter "D4" diesel has offer a special 120g version with 16" wheels in because the standard 17" wheels would be an inch wider, and the resulting increase in drag makes the CO2 emission value 121g/km!
My naturally-aspirated gasoline engine has a third-party flash that lets the throttle plate open much more quickly when you step on the gas. It feels much snappier, but opening the throttle plate too quickly allows excess oxygen to burn the extra fuel, not leaving any for heat reduction, which means there are steep increases in NOx and temperatures during acceleration.
I feel complicit in tax fraud for taking the credit these vehicles got, and I'm pretty sure the patch is going to result in "loss of enjoyment", with worse performance and/or fuel economy.
I'm honestly wondering if I have any realistic legal recourse, beyond sitting around and waiting for the "$500 off your next VW" class action fiasco.
As long as you opt-out of the class (or don't opt-in?), you could probably sue them yourself. Maybe you could do small claims in the jurisdiction of your local dealer and have simple headlines and these papers as the evidence.
My warranty was extended out 100K miles, any repairs I had paid related prior were to be reimbursed, if I could not find sufficiently detailed records like receipts about $700 would be paid back to me (a repair that typically was around $1200) instead. This was for gearbox.
My warranty was extended out 200K miles, any repairs I had paid related prior were to be reimbursed, I did need to provide records like receipts, but the repairs were much less in this case. This was for electronic throttle.
Additionally I have had a car bought back - which ended-up being a replacement. I honestly had more hassle with the bank switching the collateral on the loan than with the car company in the process.
There is likely to be some loss of MPG but all that will mean is the cars will be closer to their EPA estimates. Yet EPA estimates don't take into account how many people drive and mileage conscious people tend to drive differently. I have had only one car in the last dozen years where I could not consistently beat the EPA (my current, a 2012 Z4 averages 32 and hit peaks of 40 on long interstate runs by far exceeding the EPA numbers of that four cylinder)
Now would I buy another one? Likely not a VW but a diesel isn't out of the question. Similar to how I really don't plan on buying any GM products because of their purposeful deceit with the ignition switches. I really would love to buy the upcoming Bolt but I don't see either company as honest and that is a requirement for me to do business.
But to feel guilt for something you have no possibility of knowing is just ridiculous. You bought their product in good faith, should people who buy Subway sandwiches feel dirty because the company spokesman got busted for kiddie porn?
a. Diesel engines get 33% better fuel economy. [1] b. Have a lower total cost of ownership. [2] c. They are better than petrol gasoline on three out of five emission items, the one that is noticeable to the naked eye, particulates, is what causes concern. [3]The caveat is that petrol gas emits particulates at a smaller micron level, unnoticeable to the naked eye, and may actually be of greater concern to the general public.
1. http://www.carsdirect.com/car-buying/diesel-fuel-vs-unleaded... 2. http://www.dieselforum.org/files/dmfile/20130311_CD_UMTRITCO... 3. https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200609260829...
Also on that list are 'Alcoholic beverages', 'Salted fish (Chinese-style)', and 'Wood dust'.
The amount needs to be identified, because it could be similar to the radiation levels in bananas... There is some, but it may not be enough to be deadly.
[3]The caveat is that petrol gas emits particulates at a smaller micron level, unnoticeable to the naked eye, and may actually be of greater concern to the general public.
The diesel exhaust fumes are proven to be worse than the petrol engines in at least one respect - health.
Maybe if every truck on the road and a lot of the cars ran on bananas and not on diesel, then I would be concerned about the radiation levels in bananas.
Moreover in the place where I live people are allowed to remove their car DPFs which makes things even worse.
To the actual question - yeah, diesels running on biodiesel actually produce less GHG emissions than even hybrids. Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel is pretty close but just a bit above hybrids. The National Academy of Sciences published a study back in 2010 on the topic. The report itself is paywalled but there's a copy on the Arkansas state website. I snapped an image of the chart for ease of viewing.
Note that ULSD was only introduced in the US in 2010 (2006 for Cali). The Euros have had it for quite a bit longer. So when you're reading studies, if it predates 2010 and it doesn't specifically say ULSD or Biodiesel then you should disregard it, because the new fuels are vastly cleaner and the playing field has shifted dramatically as a result. Biodiesel is often notated as something like B100, B85, or BD20 denoting the percentage of biodiesel in a mixture with fossil diesel. Pure B100 has a fairly high gel point and can cause problems starting in cold areas, so these mixtures include a fraction of ULSD to lower the gel point.
"Jacobson (2002, 2005) suggested that, despite their lower fuel efficiency, gasoline cars were better for climate than BC-emitting diesel cars. However, Jacobson’s analysis relied on radiative forcing (RF) and climate equilibrium calculations, which is artificial and possibly misleading because any policy or technology will only be implemented for a finite period of time"
You then have to send that sample off to a lab, since DYI-ing an elementary carbon analysis looks bloody complicated and expensive.
Yes (legal) diesel passenger vehicles and light trucks sold in the US since [edit: 2007] are significantly cleaner in all respects than their gasoline equivalents, although that difference goes away soon as the gas regulations catch up.
It's very unlikely you could detect whether the vehicle in front of you is gas or diesel just by looking at it or smelling the exhaust.
That said, there are a lot of pre-2005s out there, showing smoke and smelling bad. Also the heavy trucks are just now getting the emissions requirements that lighter vehicles have had for the last 10 years.
I have a 2012 heavy-duty diesel pickup. Except for the logo on it and maybe the sound of the engine, you'd never know it was diesel.
But a big diesel will always sound a bit beefy I think. The smaller 4-cylinders shouldn't be discernable from gas at all.
Laws that favor the use of diesel, rather than gasoline, engines in cars may actually encourage global warming, according to a new study. Although diesel cars obtain 25 to 35 percent better mileage and emit less carbon dioxide than similar gasoline cars, they can emit 25 to 400 times more mass of particulate black carbon and associated organic matter ("soot") per kilometer [mile]. The warming due to soot may more than offset the cooling due to reduced carbon dioxide emissions over several decades, according to Mark Z. Jacobson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University."
The diesel we were running back then was garbage. It really had more in common with something like heating oil than the diesel the rest of the world uses, and is the reason why the US has a perception of diesel engines being dirty. It also created huge problems for porting small diesels over from Europe - they run at a much higher compression, but at those pressures the particulates in the fuel become abrasive and eat away the fuel injectors. Now we can use the same engine designs they are. It's win-win for everyone (except the oil companies I guess).
Also, biodiesel reduces soot and other emissions even further. The only downside is that it has a higher gel point than fossil diesel. In southern states you can get away with running straight B100, in more northerly states you need to mix in 15% fossil diesel to get the gel point back down (B85 fuel).
The EPA mandated ULSD for all vehicle model years 2007 forward. By 2006 essentially all over-the-road diesel sold in the US was ULSD. Otherwise all those catalytic converters would have been toast.
It's not an ironclad rule, just a guideline of where you should apply a little extra scrutiny. There were studies of what ULSD could do that predate even 2006. But until 2010 I would look carefully at methodology, anything that just says "diesel" without elaborating may be looking at ULSD, No.1/No.2, or perhaps the vehicle fleet (which consisted of a mixture of both).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/11878435/E...
> The impact of diesel fuel sulfur reduction on directly-emitted and secondary atmospheric particulate is evaluated by experiment and analysis. Experimental evidence shows that fuel sulfur conversion rate to particulate sulfate is linear down to zero sulfur level.
> Analysis shows that sulfur-derived particulate accounts for the vast majority of atmospheric particulate from diesel engines. Consequently, fuel sulfur reduction would have a far greater impact in reducing atmospheric particulate burden than any other diesel engine particulate control strategy.
Sorry, this one's paywalled, but it's a finding that has been repeatedly reproduced in the literature.
I completely agree about biodiesel. ULSD is a big step forward but biodiesel is even better in terms of emissions profile. It's also got a number of other things going for it - it can be run in conventional un-modified diesel engines that don't produce high-tech waste, and there's several factors that make its production more desirable than other biofuels.
I scanned the literature real quick, and it's pretty mixed. I think stuff before the ULSD switchover pretty clearly favored the biodiesel, because No.1/No.2 were nasty. After the switchover, with a properly tuned engine, it seems to be pretty close with the ULSD having perhaps a slight edge. Without retuning the ULSD seems to be somewhat better. However all of this varies pretty broadly - some people found improved NOx levels just from switching biodiesel. I didn't find a good, modern paper that quantifies the increase, a few looked promising but were paywalled.
http://umexpert.um.edu.my/file/publication/00003184_92278.pd...
I thought this was a good summary of the effects of biodiesel and tuning strategies on various engines. Like ethanol vs gasoline, biodiesel contains more oxygen than its fossil counterpart. It's also not as fully saturated. As such it just tends to run leaner and hotter, and that's why there's a change in average levels. There seems to be a huge variance in the data. Some possible explanations: every manufacturer tunes their engine a little differently, air conditions like humidity and altitude may play a part, and the composition of the biodiesel may not be constant (eg percentage of fossil mixed in, level of saturation in the feedstock, different additive mixtures, etc).
I think manufacturers probably tune their engines primarily for fossil, and to improve mileage they tend to run them as lean as emissions standards will let them get away with. So they may be fairly sensitive to small changes. It would probably be best to add biodiesel to the emissions tests as well, to get them to pay some attention to tuning for it. Maybe there's a happy medium that will work acceptably with both. If not - flex-fuel ethanol vehicles are capable of automatically detecting the level of ethanol and adjusting their tuning to match, we should have something like that for biodiesel. Perhaps a property like acidity or density, levels of particulates, or presence of a taggant in the fuel.
Anyway, hadn't looked at that stuff since before ULSD was out and didn't realize it had changed the picture a little bit. I don't mean to minimize the problem, acid rain sucks and we should absolutely do what we can to address it. But there's no zero-harm solution, if the increase can be mitigated or kept minor with proper tuning there are some compelling benefits to biodiesel over fossil diesel.
One problem in Europe is that sales of diesel cars have become so high that we are not making good use of all the distillation fractions of the oil.
People that take pride in this are really irritating. If they have that much money to blow they would do orders of magnitude better for the environment if they just relocated closer to their place of employment and walked or biked. Or instead they should figure out how to carpool or take public transit.
It's like a billionaire bragging about his new eco-friendly private jet that uses 5% less fuel.
People bought a car they thought was relatively clean (it wasn't), that got a certain MPG and performed at a certain level. Now they know it's NOT clean and the software fix will probably lower the MPG and performance to hit the correct emissions levels.
Would you like to have your car nerfed, or not be able to legally drive it? That's the choice these people may get stuck with.
If you are a social care worker for people in rural areas, or you have a job in the city (roving IT support for schools, private house appraiser, Meals on Wheels volunteer, etc.) then you cannot relocate closer, you cannot walk, and cannot easily do any of the other options you suggested.
The infrastructure is such that buying a more efficient vehicle is an affordable stop-gap remedy, and doable now. Changing to another way of living is much harder, and takes a lot longer.
A Jetta is 'money to blow?'
-the case of the Kansas mathematician investigating election fraud
-the case of the banking expert pointing out that CalPERS and other large pension funds are being suckered by private equity
make me hopeful that we'll see a new trend of academics and specialists pointing out the fraud in the systems we take for granted.
http://cjonline.com/news/2015-04-01/wichita-state-mathematic...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/09/the-larger-implicatio...
Additionally, modern ECUs in vehicles are modifiable at run time through something called XCP/CCP programming. You can think of of this as calibrating the ECU. ECU = Electronic Control Unit.
The thing that really bothers me about all this is from the article
"Carder said he's surprised to see such a hullabaloo now, because his team's findings were made public nearly a year and a half ago."
It seems nothing was done until the media outlets got a hold of the story?
Why didn't this blow up happen a year and a half ago before all these additional vehicles were put on the road?
And great insights on the software side of this.
The initial investigation 18 months ago kicked off an investigation by the EPA. VW denied any wrongdoing but admitted to a "glitch" and started issuing ECU updates. This is why some people think there is already an ECU fix for this out there. There is a "fix" from last year that says it's an ECU upgrade for emissions, but it was a stalling tactic / red herring while VW continued to cover up the extent of the deception.
http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15....
But someone with managerial skin in the game decided, and it's hard to see someone up high enough to have that skin in the game being able to push their goals down to the developer. Which means there's at least a chain of people, and at each level there's probably a small number of peers who know what's going on.
Someone decided, and needed help to get it pushed down to implementation.
People who spec'd power requirements had a very good understanding of what's possible with power vs economy vs emission control. If they got the power they wanted, they must have known how they got it.
There must have been a lot of people who either conspired or looked the other way.
The whole industry has been getting away with similar schemes for decades, why shouldn't they get away with one more?
Cars in Germany have to undergo emission tests every two years, and even older gasoline cars with rudimentary engine computers will perform vastly different when subjected to its standardized testing interval – and if they don't, it's all sorts of trouble for the owner and mechanic responsible. My dad is a car mechanic, and he has been complaining about engine computers occasionally not going into emission test mode for as long as I can think. It's an open secret and the testing agencies are actively helping their mechanics to make sure the cars pass.
From the article: Carder said he's surprised to see such a hullabaloo now, because his team's findings were made public nearly a year and a half ago.
"We actually presented this data in a public forum and were actually questioned by Volkswagen," said Carder.
So, ok, it will perform during the test to the standard. End of thought process. Not really cheating; just conforming as written.
You think that's too easy an answer? Let me tell you about our phone module on the old Unisys NGen series. It was a programmable answering machine, plug a phone line into it, then a handset (remember those?). All worked fine.
Then we tried to sell it in Germany. They had a regulation: phone handsets had to be connected directly to the wall. The idea was, presumably, they didn't want any other equipment failure to compromise phone service, which was arguably part of safety/emergency equipment.
But our answer was, build a special cable, runs from the wall to the handset. There's a dongle on the end there, that splits the signal to run on another wire to the computer. But internally, the wire connection ran from wall to dongle to computer, then back to the handset. Electrically, same as in USA.
This wasn't a subterfuge. Heck, the German qualifying agency helped us put it together. It was how you got things done in a highly regulated society.
I could easily see people at VW resenting these tests, and actively working to thwart them.
I know there have been several occasions (especially when it comes to banks) I've heard about a fine and mentally reckoned that it would be too low to make the behavior unprofitable.
It's still an open question whether the actual fine they end up paying will wipe out the benefit.
I wonder if any of the Politicians and bureaucrats who made that decision will get asked hard Q's.
Apparently Mrs Thatcher Questioned this approach at the time.
I was talking about the underlying cause of the rise of Diesel and the health effects being ignored and the Technocrats and politicians avoiding any questioning
Was their research limited to observing the effects on cars as they were driven around (something they did), or were they able to dump and analyze the firmware as well? The EFF wrote a story talking about how the DMCA made it hard for researchers, but didn't actually mention the barriers (if any) in this case.
If anyone has links to the written research or an understanding of how hard it is to get at the firmware controlling these emissions, I'd love to read it.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/adva...
They were sponsored by the ICCT to observe in-use emission, AFAIK it's not an IT lab.
Based on this, you can develop Agustus' Contribution to Fine Equation:
Fine = 2E+20*(Political Contribution)^(-1.398)
Charted: http://i.imgur.com/6tPySYs.jpg
Open Secret:
1. Volkswagen: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000042113&c...
2. Toyota: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000030495&c...
3. General Motors: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000155&c...
Ultimately I can't place total blame on the manufacturers, consumers demand emissions standards from their legislatures and then turn around and nearly bankrupt themselves buying 5000lbs extended cab trucks that says 24MPG on the sticker but realistically won't get more than 12 in real world conditions.
If you demand magic and are willing to pay $30k to get it, don't act the least bit surprised when someone lies to you
I imagine the performance / efficiency curve can be similarly tweaked in a gasoline engine, allowing the OEMs to both pass the mandated emissions standards testing and still sell the kind of big boy truck consumers demand.
It's possible it's not an issue on them due to different exhaust system design or other changes made to the software.
http://www.autoblog.com/2015/09/23/german-automakers-us-dies...
Edit: I read the relevant bit of the paper. 6 cylinder engine vs. the 4 pots in the VWs, and probably more importantly it had a urea NOx reduction system so perhaps that made the difference.
Report (pdf):
http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/WVU_...
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/in-praise-of-sh...
http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15....