VW engineers have admitted manipulating CO2 emissions data-paper | Hacker News Reader

VW engineers have admitted manipulating CO2 emissions data-paper

reuters.com

33 pointshappyscrappy56 comments

So was it the rogue employee, or the conspiracy of the evil management to find a scapegoat for the cheating they decided to do? I always read about these 2 explanations. Both quite entertaining, and a little to much Hollywood-like to be completely true.

Management by objective is the true problem here.

Step 1: Management, moved by market, shareholder and/or own ambition, sets unrealistic goals - probably even unknown to it.

Step 2: Employee, perhaps several levels of goal setting below, realises it can't be done, and cheats to save his career.

I suspect this kind of systemic evil is involved in a lot of corporate misbehaviour. Todays organisations are not ruled by command, but by goals. And since the means to achieve that goal are not written anywhere, the management can't be accused of unlawfulness. And the employee who is bound by such goals finds himself in an awkward dilemma.

This could only be the case if the engineer doing the development was the same person as the engineer doing the QA.

And not just the QA at the lower level, at all levels. The whole VW saga is an epic failure of process, the fact that any of these products could make it out the door without management knowing about it is so incredible that they're guilty simply because they let it happen even if they didn't know about it. It's a company that is totally out of control from a quality and compliance viewpoint.

Right, if the QA didn't catch this on emissions, then all sorts of other aspects of the vehicle quality are in question too. Are the vehicles as safe as claimed for example?

Exactly. I'd hate to find out my airbags would not have passed inspection but some QA dude figured that since I'd never find out until it was too late that it didn't matter anyway and nobody caught that. Contrived example but you get where I'm coming from, if the process is this broken anything could happen.

That's why I said before this will damage VW's brand on much more than just fuel consumption. So far (luckily) the other German brands seem to have escaped association by origin.

This indeed. You can't just have a 'rogue' engineer doing this. This would have had to be a team. Unless, of course, VW's software engineering practices are from the dark ages. In which case, this is clearly a managerial issue.

The QA is in the same boat. Because the goal is not set to an engineer as a person but to a department and team.

If the goal of QA is not to be a hassle to Development, the easiest and cheapest way is to axe the whole QA department. And maybe outsource the whole operation to a tiny third party that will be never able to manage the workload, for PR reasons.

One of the goals of QA is public relations - that is, to convince customers and insurance companies that "good engineering" is going on. You don't get good PR by axing your entire QA department.

That's why you outsource them to the cheapest bidder. You have plausible deniability (I do care about quality, it's just those bad apples that deceived me as much as you), but in truth you were aware from the very beginning that they would not be able to cope with the whole package.

Spot on. And horribly widespread in many industries.

The bigger issue here is that agencies like the EPA, FCC, FDA no longer run their own tests but instead rely on the industry to do the test for them.

How many cell phones don't adhere to set radiation safety standards?

It's also done by the FAA, via the DER program. But at least in this case, from all that I've seen, the DERs are deadly serious about safety and doing the right thing.

https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/designees_...

I have no idea. By your phrasing, it sounds like you might? I'd be interested in being enlightened as to the state of adherence to radiation safety standards by cell phones.

The point I am making is that we don't know if the phones we buy meet those standards or if just like in the VW case the tests are being manipulated.

Not an expert, but relatively sure that's not true. The verification of adherence to those standards is verified by the FCC, no?

What infuriates me about this is that the people who made that decision were responsible for at least 50 deaths due to increased pollution, and probably even more.

If a serial killer murdered 50 people, there would be a public outcry - instead, the most we can expect is that a few directors might retire to 'pursue different opportunities' or 'spend more time with family' and they will lead a very comfortable life with the millions they made from their illgotten profits.

White collar crime that results in deaths should be treated just as seriously as any other act that results in deaths. The executives that approved or turned a blind eye to these results should be treated as serial murderers. Moreso, most of those people had the luxury of a very expensive education and a nice and well paid lifestyle. They cheated because their greed told them that the millions they made were not enough.

The trouble with that calculus is that the deaths are caused by the pollution rather than the faking of data. If you want to blame someone for those deaths, you need to blame every driver who contributes to that pollution.

No, those are the deaths cause by the extra pollution due to the cheating.

In practice, as a society, we indirectly decide on pollution standards by voting in politicians who nominate people in regulatory roles. If we are unhappy with those standards, we can vote in other politicians who will alter them. The system is not perfectly responsive of course.

In this case, those 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the decisions made by a director that wanted a flashier career, a bigger bonus, or higher social status. Those 50 deaths are on his conscience, and I hope when he goes on to retire in his expensive villa paid by his ill-gotten bonuses his conscience reminds him of this every single instant. It's not likely to happen.. but hey, I can hope.

It doesn't really work that way with responsibility. Whether or not the number is 50 is moot, it could be 1 it could be 500. The fact is that driving causes deaths, directly and indirectly and that we as a society have placed a cap on the number of deaths that we find acceptable. The total number of deaths we're ok with is staggeringly high, those 50 are a statistic derived with some math that I'm not comfortable with based on assumptions that I'm even less comfortable with.

If you want to have that discussion you'd have to look at the bigger picture of the toll of traffic in general. Because if it was ok for VW to kill let's say 50000 people per year but not 50050 then I'm not sure what the fuss is about but if the alternative is 0 or 50 then you may have a point depending on how solid those numbers really are.

As it is that number is very handwavy.

I know of folks that have gone to prison for illegally passing non-streetlegal cars with modifications for california's mandatory smog testing. I'm not a legal expert, but does this sort of thing allow them to get a new trial since - intent aside - there seem to be problems with the system?

Meanwhile, shifting context back to the bigger picture:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/climate-pl...

http://climateactiontracker.org/

How's your country doing with regard to its greenhouse gas emission pledges? Consider hassling your political representatives in the lead up to the Paris talks. Hassle your friends to participate in political action.

Does anyone know how putting diesel into the motor oil causes the engine to "[run] more smoothly and [use] less fuel"?

It thins the oil, so there are less frictional losses, at least until the bearing surfaces get damaged.

So why isn't oil like this normally? Are the downsides to doing this?

Yes, it shortens engine life.

There is a general trend towards specifying lower viscosity oils:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2012/09/fuel-economy...

The whole auto industry needs a checkup.

They have, and the bodies responsible for that decided "It's cool guys, we'll just raise the emissions levels in our tests so you can 'meet' them". Problem solved.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/09/mercedes-...

Thy have, it's called e-car

To VW mgmt re setting unrealistic goals with huge consequences to employee careers/progression/etc: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

It's not just VW that set internal, unrealistic goals - it was the politicians setting said unrealistic goals as laws.

A 2-ton SUV will always gulp more fuel than a 800kg Smart, but it is NOT the job of the carmakers to get people to buy fuel efficient vehicles (as politicians intended to do by imposing "fleet CO2 limits"), it is the job of the politicians.

So instead of e.g. taxing cars with much CO2 emissions, which would be hated by the population because they want to drive SUVs, the politicians went to the carmakers instead and now everyone wonders how this could happen.

The car makers had the option not to offer 2 ton vehicles if they can't make them obey the emission laws. In fact, I think fleet emission standards are too weak and we should just put a steadily decreasing upper limit on the emissions.

How about politicians listen to and communicate properly with the population? If the target of the politicians is to reduce CO2 emissions, they should say so. If the target is to get rid of huge, ugly, oversized SUVs in cities, they should say so.

Secretly embedding stuff in unrelated other stuff is bad politics, yet the trend to do this is rising :/

I don't follow your arguments. Is there an actual move of trying to ban SUV's in cities or is this something you've concluded yourself?

Why shouldn't the industry be able to produce a huge oversized SUV if it can maintain emissions under the limits dictated by the law?

This discussion should not even touch the type of car. The emission hack was originally discovered in the smaller end of VW models like the Jetta and Golf with a small (<=2.0) TDi engine and now seems to span the entire range of models the concern produces. My guess is that the fuel consumption and CO2 emission manipulation also affects the entire range of models.

The problem here is that it seems to be _really_ hard to come up with a marketable engine that can meet the requirements. I guess that's why VW will be moving towards electric in the future. I hope the requirements for emission control will get stricter in the future.

VW claimed they could meet the requirements. When they could not they decided not to man up and license BlueTEC[1] or say publicly the requirements were too hard. Instead they cheated.

No politicians at fault here. This is an engineering fail, plain and simple.

[1] http://www.livescience.com/52284-volkswagen-scandal-clean-di...

Agreed, I was being overly glib -- industry regulations should have scientific/engineering input, but are often outweighed by political input.

So much for engineers and their morals. People indirectly died because of their tampering.

Seems money can buy you all.

> People indirectly died because of their tampering.

How?

59 premature deaths estimated according to a study:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/29/vw-emissi...

In the USA. So far.

There should be a lot more in Europe but.

Air pollution leads to increases in various diseases of the respiratory tract (and other kinds too). Some of those are deadly. The difference is measured in thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people per year (unverified stat, but I think it's in the right ballpark).

Not to let VW off the hook but this specific revelation is related to increased CO2 emissions.

That would surely be more related to global warming issues than respiratory desease wouldn't it?

To the best of my knowledge, no-one has ever had an asthma attack from breathing in the fumes from a glass of Coca-cola.

So are people who work on huge V8 engines morally responsible for people dying due to air pollution?

If they declare that those V8 engines have been manufactured to meet emissions standards set by governments to try and reduce the health and environmental toll of emissions, and therefore allow those V8 engines to be mass-manufactured and included in hundreds of thousands of new cars that would otherwise have contained less polluting engines, then obviously yes?

It's not working on the V8 engines that's the problem, it's lying about their emissions.

I'm not sure how you don't see this? Based on your tone you seem to think you're making some sort of sarcastically clever point, but I'm not sure what it is? (or maybe I'm misreading this)

Your're saying that higher pollution causes more deaths and is therefore morally wrong, so have a look at Mercedes C-Class - you can have it with a relatively small 2.0L petrol(or even 1.8L if I remember correctly) or a massive 6.3L V8 petrol engine. The V8 will always pollute more. So why would it matter, if the V8 is "meeting emissions standards" - it's still poluting more than the 2.0L engine. So my question is - if lying about emissions of the 2.0L engine is "being morally responsible for people dying due to pollution", how is that not true for their 6.3L V8 engines(which are fully compliant, but pollute more nevertheless)?

The difference is that the government has put in place systems to deal with these higher polluting vehicles. It taxes them more, to discourage people from owning them. By lying about the pollution levels, the engineers are encouraging people to own more polluting engines. Not only is this obviously unethical since it involves lying with the purpose of breaking a law, but this law also happens to be designed to try and reduce the deadly effects of pollution. So such behaviour is, I say again, obviously indirectly linked to more people dying.

Interesting question. Depends how you working on it. If you are working on improving the efficiency then I would say its ok. If you are tampering with the actual values because your engines are bad to environment then yes, you are directly responsible. Are those workers who put the engine together responsible? Absolutely not. Unless they are aware of such shady actions.

But a 6.0L V8 engine will always release more pollutants than a 1.0 3-cylinder engine. One could argue that unless you actively need so much power(drive a truck, tow caravans/boats/trailers), having a huge engine serves no purpose apart form personal pleasure, and it pollutes a lot. So with this logic in mind....is working on production of such engines morally wrong? If you are working for Mercedes and design their 6.3L V8 that goes into AMG63 cars, it that morally wrong?

If you would think of all humankind + planet as one entity, then you would deduce that it does not make sense to create such redundant engines because for you as a one cell it can be enjoyable and cool but for the cell next to you its actually damaging. So its a zero sum game. You should think of others and always ask yourself if your actions does not harm others or at least try to reduce the harm if possible. So yes, I would say the more power, the greater moral responsibility for the future of our species. For sure.

Once you are great mind and able to design modern engines for super cars then I would say you could do many other 'jobs' which would probably benefit us all more than making strong cars.

BTW I like fast cars myself. My conclusion is rather utopian. If you feel like you should do something more beneficial in position of such person who makes engines, maybe you could consider finding another job. But can you generalize that to all? Probably not..

Yes, if said engines put out enough pollution to statistically kill people and the designers foresaw it.

But how do you define it then? A 1.0L 3-cylinder engine that emits 90g of CO2/1km that goes into 1 million cars is still more harmful statistically than a 7.0L V12 which emits 600g of CO2/km engine but only goes into 300 limited-edition ferraris. So maybe all engine engineers are "morally responsible" for air pollution, no matter what engines they build, or whether they lie or not?

It doesn't have to be that difficult, you can just think about these separately.

Is the V8 designer responsible? Yes if people die as result of pollution from his engines.

Is the 1L designer responsible? Same thing.

What about the scenario where the designer did nothing and people still bought engines by other makers? But this is a moral fallacy, "I'm relieved of the responsibility of doing <bad thing x> because another morally irresponsible person would seize the opportunity if I didn't".

What if the 1L engine displaces another engine product in the market that would result in more people dying. It's similar to tobacco companies introducing "light" cigarettes to market. "Lesser evil".

NO2 is pretty nasty. I don't know about NOx

The x in NOx is a variable, it can be one, it can be two.

All?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com