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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Are any other manufacturers under suspicion? You'd think the incentives are similar for the large players, and they are certainly all able to do this kind of trick.

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It depends on how much they donated to the political process. If you donate enough to the system you can have a directly killing feature on a vehicle only cost you $900 million to go away, but it will cost you $157 million in political contributions. Another company has a feature that possibly could kill users who misapply brakes get fined $1.2 billion, but it will cost you $62 million. Volkswagen's $17 million contribution leads to a $18 billion fine for an item that may have an impact on deaths.

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...

Personally, I won't be the least bit surprised when we find out all the major American and Asian manufacturers do/did this same stuff and worse.

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

Most manufacturers aren't all-in on diesel, which was VW's strategy. They fudged the tests to have low-consumption during road tests but still pass NOx lab testing (NOx being a side-effect of good combustion in a diesel engine, which you want for better fuel efficiency and to limit particulate matter)

The the underlying technique used to fudge the test was that the ECU firmware behaved differently during testing than it would in the real world.

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.

Yep, google Chrysler Lean Burn (which made sense back when they did it, allowed to avoid catalyst for a few more years) and more egregious GM Lean Cruise (which is now not permitted in US models).

Sure but I don't know that there's as much a need to tweak it to both pass emission tests and have good efficiency.

Some Audis use the same engine, and Autoblog says that some BMWs, Opals, and Mercedes may use the same engine/software.

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...

The only other car tested, by this group anyway, was a BMW that "performed very nicely – at, or below, the certification emission levels."

That was a very different car - a heavy, 7 passenger SUV (X5) vs the comparatively modest VW sedans. What's going on there? Was it held to a different standard? Does its bigger engine not have to work as hard?

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.

I can't think of any other manufacturer with such a diesel-heavy lineup (in the United States, at least). Most of the other manufacturers seem to be using hybrids and other techniques to meat higher fuel economy standards.

Other players, like Catapillar, have been caught and fined in the past for cheating on large trucks.

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