VW Tries to Blame Engine Emissions Fraud on LowLevel “Engineers and Technicians” | Hacker News Reader

VW Tries to Blame Engine Emissions Fraud on LowLevel “Engineers and Technicians”

motherjones.com

17 pointsjacquesm20 comments

There's a lesson in here somewhere.

If you're an engineer and your boss gives you an order that will cause the company to engage in unlawful behavior you should probably (1) refuse the order, (2) find another job as soon as you can and (3) if you feel the situation is serious enough that the cost to your career is outweighed by the benefits to society consider to become a whistle-blower.

On another note, that independent research was the trigger that caused this whole scandal to blow up is a very bad mark on the ledger of the EPA who should have caught this right out of the gate and not 1M+ vehicles later.

Interesting statements by VW indicate that some believe there is no way their cars would have passed inspection without cheating. With one diesel engine not being that technologically different from the next how are the independently verified figures of the various other brands working out.

As of last Thursday I no longer have a VW diesel since a bunch of crooks decided to steal my camper. I'd very much like it back, emission problems or not.

If anybody spots a silver grey long wheel base VW T5 with dark windows and a camper roof that opens at the rear then I'd very much like to know about it and I'll make sure there is a generous reward. Dutch registration 16-GGG-6, picture is here:

http://camarades.com/DSC_5237.JPG

Very mad about this :(

> With one diesel engine not being that technologically different from the next how are the independently verified figures of the various other brands working out.

A few months back I heard that VW was pushing for new legislation further lowering diesel emissions to start to remove all its competition from markets. Back then it was rumored that VW had invested in and patented a slightly different direction that worked. Really, you just have to pretend to have succeeded and then cheat to create a monopoly.

Thanks to IP law, there was little incentive for their competition to investigate a system they couldn't use or wager on developing alternative designs given how impossible the claimed results were.

I think VW should be on the hook to meet their current claims while their competitors should not be.

> I think VW should be on the hook to meet their current claims while their competitors should not be.

That would be a very nice form of justice. And for an encore, make them deliver on their promised mileage across the whole line-up.

They'd just file for bankruptcy unless you prohibited that as well. Actually, bankruptcy is still an option for VW if things get too far out of control.

> If you're an engineer and your boss gives you an order that will cause the company to engage in unlawful behavior you should probably (1) refuse the order, (2) find another job as soon as you can and (3) if you feel the situation is serious enough that the cost to your career is outweighed by the benefits to society consider to become a whistle-blower.

Professional engineers should definitely be obligated to uphold the public interest above all else, including the interest of their employers, and this includes the government.

Of course, in real life, it takes great courage to actually stand up to your employer and risk suffering the potential personal and professional consequences, which is why I hold so much respect for Snowden and the actions he took.

In Canada, graduating engineering students need to attend a ritual to receive their Iron Rings, and in it, they must make the engineering equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath that aims to cement this notion in their minds. [1]

In my opinion, something like this should be part of mandatory education. The lack of regard for professional ethics is what causes these decisions to be made higher up in the chain of command in the first place.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_En...

With everyone dependent on a recurring income for food and shelter, you'll always see conflicts of interest develop between the public good, the employee, and the employer.

The only way for this to change is to level the playing field between the employee and the employer. Basic income is one way to do this as the employee could walk if the employer becomes ethically challenged and decides to implement something which breaks the law.

Not everyone has kilobucks of "F.U." money in the bank, in fact, most Americans have no savings at all which is part of the thing driving this. The whole economy in America has no margin of safety. The employee lives paycheck-to-paycheck, the small business owner is constantly worrying about making payroll, the large corporations are draining away the opportunities by offshoring, and the banks and Private Equity are conjuring up ways to rip the small business owner and common folk off.

This will continue to happen, just at other companies. All things I discussed above need to be fixed before this type of problem goes away.

Hmm..

Didn't mean to read too much into it, but i wonder if your vehicle was stolen for cross-border smuggling (possibly of refugees?)

It's only a 6 seater in the current configuration so unlikely.

it has a camper, smuggled refugees doesnt care if they go confortable enough.

At this point the entire engineering staff at VW should be looking for new jobs. Any executive who is willing throw their lower level staff under a bus rather than accept the fault lies in their management failure for not catching this (or their active participation if they actually sanctioned it) is not someone you want to work for.

Yes examples are about to be made of them unless they act soon. The real question is whether they can all find new jobs before they are "fired for cause" and can't collect unemployment.

It's already proven that those who implemented the circumvention acted on orders from managers.

Link (Ger) http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/vw-skandal-nicht-nur-k...

Translation (Goog) https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...

The only plausible explanation of a non-criminal nature is that day to day engineers having to hunch over the exhaust of a running VW to debug quirky CAM bus stuff did it as debug mode code and it shipped with the feature toggle on.

Here's another semi-plausible explanation: they used machine learning to optimize engine parameters to fit the objective "maximize engine performance" subject to the condition "pass the emissions test".

If the optimization is able to access parameters such as steering wheel position, altitude, whatever, then this would overfit to the test in the manner described. (The fix is to optimize for "have good emissions" instead of "pass the test". Or depending on your point of view, maybe the fix is just to add another optimization constraint "comply with the law" … if you can figure out exactly what is compliant.)

That is probably what happened since a corporation is a blind organism for optimizing things, absent a moral compass. Just change 'they' to 'corporate management', and 'machine learning' to 'the engineering staff'.

Nah. Watch the video where they put it on a 2 wheel vs 4 wheel dyno. Lots of quirky stuff going on that is visible with lights on the dash. Proof will be in the source code and the version control history.

Also, http://www.quviq.com did a lot of CAM bus testing for EU car makers. Betting John Hughes is going to be somebody's star expert witness.

"The unlawful behaviour of engineers and technicians involved in engine development shocked Volkswagen"

Trace the source all the way to the top. There is no way in an engineering culture like VW this was an isolated rouge operation.

Yup, there's probably also some primer, foundation, concealer, lipstick end eye-liner involved! :)

And a very generous application of whitewash and stain remover.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com