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Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

The funny thing is that the engineers that wrote the code don't actually work at VW. If I am not mistaken, their engine control sytems for their Diesel engines come from Bosch.

Also, if you talk to an engineer you will quickly hear that there is a connection between fuel efficiency, power, and emmissions. If you drive the engine with parameters tuned for low emissions, you'll get less efficiency etc.

But the engineers don't seem to care that the engine stats claimed by VW are not actually possible...

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The hardware and low level stuff comes from Bosch, but the higher level code would be VW. Source: Friend is EU car analyst and has spoken to engineers.

> ...but the higher level code would be VW

Wasn't it Bosch that recommended to VW that this is a bad idea. So Bosch is not all together innocent.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34373637

Bosch was being investigated as well.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/20/us-probes-bosch-in-vw-cheatin...

> So Bosch is not all together innocent.

The Bosch software was designed mainly for testing purpose not to be used on real cars. It's perfectly legitimate to build this sort of software and give it to your customers. When someone use a debug tool to crack a software you don't tell that people who have made the debugger are "not altogether innocent".

From your first link:

    Citing unidentified sources, Bild said Bosch had warned Volkswagen
    as early as 2007 that its software should only be used in company tests
    and not for normal driving.

Yeah, while not denying the possibility, at this point I don't see anything that points to Bosch as being complicit.

Unless there was a wink and a nudge to go along with Bosch's warning.

> Wasn't it Bosch that recommended to VW that this is a bad idea. So Bosch is not all together innocent.

Emissions are a function of the software configuration of the engine, and engines can be tuned based on the needs of the vehicle they're put in. Bosch having built in that flexibility is what'd be expected from them, I don't see why they'd be at fault for a manufacturer misusing it and misrepresenting the profile they've set up.

> If you drive the engine with parameters tuned for low emissions, you'll get less efficiency etc.

Can you explain that further? Given a specific power output, lower emission levels would to me indicate that the engine is doing more with a smaller amount of fuel, indicating better efficiency.

Your argument mainly applies to CO2. Generally, Diesel engine reach better efficiency at higher temperatures, but higher temperatures also lead to more NOX being created. So in the case of NOX, it really is a trade-off.

Unless you use ammonia (from heated urea solution) in a catalyzed reaction, to react with the NOx to produce N2 and H2O. In that case, the trade-off is that you need to add a separate urea tank to your vehicle, and distribution infrastructure at all diesel fueling stations.

NOx is produced by dissociating N2 (primary component of air) which then recombines with O2 (secondary component of air). The engine does do more with a smaller amount of fuel, but a side-effect is to crack N2 and have it recombined with the leftover O2. Furthermore, dissociating N2 occurs at high temperature and pressure (which is why that happens significantly more in diesel engines than in gasoline engines), and the higher a diesel engine's efficiency... the hotter it runs, increasing the dissociation rate of N2 and thus the production of NOx.

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