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Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

My personal suspicion goes way beyond VW in this case. Look at it this way. If someone in your domain of expertise would put out a feat, that according to your experience is just so far beyond the state of the art that it seems to realy violate the rules of what you think possible, and you work in a highly competitive field, then your competitive intelligence will be all over it. Every diesel engine R&D center at any auto maker would have inspected, measured, tested and dismantled these engines to the very last detail. And they would all have discovered the simple truth they suspected all along (benchmark cheating through test cycle detection and software manipulation is nothing new in the industry. Automakers have been caught en fined for this at least since 1998). Yet, none of these competitors spoke up about it. Why?

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Jacques, the previous date is based on this document from 1998 ( http://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/media/T&E... ), which states: "Car manufacturers can use modem electronic equipment to adapt the engine to any type of test cycle. They can even tell the computer of the car how to recognise when the car is being driven according to a specific test-cycle and adjust the combustion accordingly. It was this kind of software that six truck manufacturers, including two European firms (Volvo and Renault), recently used in the United States to defeat the EPA's pollution control. As a result emissions of nitrogen oxides from highway driving increased by 300 per cent. "

That takes this from 'damning' right into 'criminal' territory. Wow. That document should get a lot more visibility. I will update the article to include your link.

Not comfortable with this "don't blame the engineers" angle, which sounds like some developers are taking the fall for execs.

We are talking about engineers, yes, but, guys like the research and development chiefs of Audi and Porsche, Ulrich Hackenberg and Wolfgang Hatz, or Hanno Jelden, head of the company's powertrain electronics.

These guys are top execs. Likely substantial performance incentive packages.

Such execs, like any CTO anywhere, could run a "special project" like this off the radar, to hit projected metrics, and bonus targets.

Don't take VW's word for it, here is the German prosecutor's take:

> The number of Volkswagen employees that orchestrated the diesel-emissions scandal that's rocked the automotive industry was likely fewer than 10, according to the public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig, Germany.

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/10/23/fewer-than-10-vw-engineer...

Often we engineers know things the CEO doesn't. I'm confident that happens across industries.

Over the course of my career 3 times someone wanted me to do something illegal. All of those times I handed in my walking papers. In one case I was asked to directly do something that would cause me to be acting in an illegal way, in two of the cases it would result in a company doing something that was illegal.

Yes, CTO's can run a 'special project' but the engineers are quite aware of the situation with respect to emission targets in this specific case and must have been very much aware that they were doing something that was fraudulent. The people mentioned there certainly had incentives but did not have VW in their pocket to such an extent that they could interpret their mandate as carte-blanche to commit fraud. These are not stupid people, on the contrary. My interpretation is that they were told to do this 'in whatever way possible' and that they interpreted this possibly as 'and that includes illegal but don't tell me about it'. Plausible deniability are the key words.

Whether that's the case or not will come out in due time, it always does. See Oliver North, Watergate and countless other scandals where you can only throw so many people under the bus until someone does a tell-all.

I note that the prosecutor hedges his words carefully ('likely' and 'orchestrated') and I also note that on the VW org chart it would not take more than 10 people to go from the CEO level all the way to a single programmer to insert this code.

That would also still require someone to either cooperate with this scheme at the auditors side, especially given the nature of the Bosch memo and the document linked by user PeterStuer which you may take as common knowledge within the automotive industry. In such circumstances a source code level audit of the software that ends up in the shipping devices to make sure everything is above board would seem to be indicated at a minimum.

It might not be perfectly obvious to everybody working on implementation that something is illegal. 'Our American lawyers tell us this is legally in compliance with EPA standards. Go forth and implement'. What are you going to say? You might have misgivings but you're probably also not an expert in regulations and their enforcement.

pvg is not calling them dumb. He is saying that they lack an understanding of the laws, regulations, and regulatory environments of different countries. And faced with this lack of understanding relied on their company and boss' judgement.

I don't consider myself an idiot but there are many times I read about actions taken by companies and go "S&*t that's legal!?!?!?". Many times unscrupulous and gray areas in the law aren't technically illegal. In addition the the Milgram experiments shows that even very smart people feel enormous pressure when when confronted with an authority figure. These two effects and I can imagine how hard it would be when the V.P. comes in and has a talk with you about how he had talked with legal counsel and they had looked over the regulatory rules and decided this was allowed, and other automotive companies were doing it.

The engineer could easily rationalize this away thinking "surely VW wouldn't do something illegal. They could get in so much trouble. I imagine I just misunderstood the laws."

The 'engineer' here is a C level exec, not some programmer stuck in a basement below VW's offices somewhere.

The best explanation so far of how this may have come to pass is that the compliance department and the engineers that actually wrote the code report to the same person but not the CEO. That would allow the CEO to claim he and the board didn't know anything about this. That still leaves you to wonder how they could have been duped so easily, after all 'tremendous problem solved by magic' normally does not pass the smell test.

> It might not be perfectly obvious to everybody working on implementation that something is illegal.

Now you're calling them dumb. That's probably even worse than malicious. This is one of the reasons why I am bothered with the VW explanation they actively picture themselves as incompetent because it looks better on your resume than 'criminal' and they are not at all worried about throwing VW as a brand under the bus.

I'm not calling them dumb, just trying to point out that a scenario in which there is a very small number of people with direct and explicit knowledge of the cheating (or at a minimum, with no plausible deniability) is at least possible. An ECU is a big, complicated thing, much of it closely-guarded trade secret. So it's at least conceivable that it's developed in a compartmentalized way and that the bits and pieces that when combined enable cheating can be developed legitimately and independently.

There can be a legitimate reason to develop test cycle detection. And obviously, any ECU has the capability to put the engine in different regimes. Combining these two specifically for the purpose of cheating on emissions tests is not some major engineering project, if the pieces exist. In fact, you can make a decent argument that if you wanted to be maximally sneaky and evil, that's exactly how you'd do it. You'd keep the number of people without plausible deniability very, very low.

It has been noted elsewhere in this thread that Martin Winterkorn was 'hands-on to the point of being a control-freak' and that there was no way in which he would not have been aware of this. Note the amount of technical knowledge present in the VW boards and at the C level is such that they could have cut through all the secrecy and other red tape if they had wanted to. It would have also been impossible to hide this from the auditors if they had simply been of the 'trust but verify' mentality that one would expect of seasoned auditors and I find it hard to believe that a company like VW (which apparently has been caught cheating before when it comes to emissions testing) would be so incompetent at this that it could have gone on for so long. All this besides the fact that 'miracles' simply don't exist and if there is one thing that sets an auditor off it is 'too good to be true'.

An ECU is not a 'big complicated thing', there is a ton of software in a car but the ECU itself happens to be one of the more easily understood parts where anything that does not have an obvious and direct function stands out like a sore tooth. There is also a very distinct point in time where the problems magically disappeared and of course it would be a simple thing to review the changes committed around and prior to that time. (Let's at least assume they have some kind of source code control system.)

If anything the auditors are more trusted than the programmers and they would definitely have had insight into the ECU code.

It is not conceivable that there is some kind of 'the cube' like conspiracy where the parts each individually look clean because one fairly large chunk of code was contributed by the Bosch company and contained a fairly explicit piece of code to detect the test cycle. If it's labeled 'process bananas' and an auditor is not able to figure out what it does it is their duty to actually dig until they understand that piece, that is what they are paid for.

So I believe that you are principally right that besides one exec and a bunch of people down from there in the org chart they kept the number of people as limited as they could but there is no way the compliance department was this incompetent unless a rookie was specifically tasked with auditing that particular engine to make sure the cheating stayed hidden. A seasoned auditor would spot this in a heartbeat and no rookie should have been able to sign off on these changes on their own.

And 'plausible deniability' is a very very thin fig leaf away from being culpable, all it takes is a single email or confession to pierce that veil and with the number of people VW is throwing under the bus (and at ever higher levels) it is a matter of time before someone decides to come clean about the whole thing.

Well... I imagine we are more in violent agreement than anything else - I might have some quibbles with the notion that ECUs are that simple and, having done a bit of work in that industry in that part of the world, I have some trouble following the notion that 'compliance departments' are so rigorous and independent.

To me, VW's story is at least somewhat plausible because it is not difficult to intentionally and specifically set it up to be that way. I don't have any trouble believing that they deliberately went to great lengths to ensure that and that outside of a small group of crooks (culturally and otherwise encouraged and enabled from above), it was borderline enough that nobody stood up and said 'this is illegal and effed up, I'm going home'.

Fair enough. Given time we'll know it all anyway. Thanks for the exchange!

If the engineers read the documentation of the code they were using it was explicitly spelled out what they were doing was a "bad idea". You're also arguing that automotive engineers don't have a basic idea on what emissions regulations exist.

As an aside, this same argument could also be used as justification for NSA programs that violate civil rights.

No.

That is the right way to handle the situation. These engineers work in such a specialized environment, I wonder how that would work out for them.

That's a good point, and it is likely that if they did not 'play ball' that they might have been thrown out. But in such a situation you could consider becoming a whistle blower. One thing is for sure, the moment you play along with a scheme like that when the chickens come home to roost you won't be able to deny you were involved and thus likely culpable. Some things are not worth any amount of compensation. Going to jail for some company or ending up holding the bag because everybody else pretends they have no idea why you did what you did would really suck.

Just imagine. Some German engineer was pressured into doing this. I guess it only counts when your decisions materially affect your own situation, in all other situations principles are free. Engineers should stick to their oath, and should use their fraternity to block stupid decisions such as these, even if that leads to individual hardship.

After all, what's next? Bridges that collapse? Buildings that you can't trust? Aicraft manufacturers? You have to draw the line somewhere and it is generally recognized that the engineering profession needs to be trusted by the rest of society if society is to continue to function. You can make mistakes as an engineer but you simply can not be caught even accessory to fraud, that's risking the reputation of the profession as a whole.

Sorry, but whistleblowers, at least in the US, get screwed. Playing along or quitting is the smarter play; there's at least a chance you won't be badly hurt.

Examples abound. Do you know who is the only person sent to prison for waterboarding prisoners (and to be clear, torture)? The guy who told the press about it [1]. Hell, just yesterday there was a JPMorgan whistleblower on here who got fucked out of his job; they made sure he had 3 complaints on his record then lied under oath about who wrote the complaints so he can't find a new employer.

The upshot is, at least in the US, only fools report on their employers because there's a very real chance you lose your ability to earn a living. The anti-retaliation laws may be very pretty but appear to have zero teeth.

I wouldn't be surprised if the situation in Germany is similar. I'm not saying engineers should do this sort of stuff, but imagine for a second the costs to telling various governments what they were busy not seeing. So if the price of being honest is you have to quit one of the largest employers in Germany, who is quite possibly the sole employer of what you do where you live, it may well require you and your family to move. At minimum! Not to mention a backchannel negative reference if your boss feels like hurting you.

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

Germany is not the US.

Yes, whistleblower is not an easy path but there are many ways in which this could have been done without direct danger to the people involved (too many people knew about it to figure out who sent that anonymous package to the top 10 German press outlets). There are also some pretty powerful unions that could have helped with this.

And on the other side is the local government concerned about the largest local employer and the national government concerned about a systemically-important employer and industry.

I think (but hope otherwise!) that you're totally wrong about how the power structures in Germany would have reacted to this very unwelcome news.

We also don't know how many, if any, engineers were asked to be a part of this, refused, and quit or were fired as a result. And possibly pressured in various ways to not say anything about what they were asked to do.

This happened in Germany. Believe me that no executive wants to fight with Bernd Osterloh and there isn't a single engineer who doesn't now how to fight back with the labour union as a backup.

> Engineers should stick to their oath

Um... what oath?

Germany has a professional society of engineers as well (the VDI).

When Kirk says "more power" and Scotty says "you cannot change the laws of physics", maybe Kirk should listen. But instead Scotty is forced to do something unsafe.

This is a metaphor for any engineering department given unrealistic performance targets. Engineers find solutions, so make sure they are targeted at the right problems.

Are you aware, that the german prosecutor you quote works across the hall of the biggest share owner of VW? Thats right, the ministry of the sub-state that owns most of the shares and which is not completely independent is what? Somebody here should be prosecuting his own boss.

It's not "don't blame the engineers", it's "don't shift all of the blame to the engineers". That doesn't mean some engineers weren't responsible, just that they don't deserve all the blame.

Just looked at it briefly, but it seems to be about the European test cycle not covering all driving conditions -- to my knowledge, this is something that has been the case for a LONG time, and all manufacturers as well as regulators are well aware of this. Vehicles are designed to conform to the specific standards, and the test procedure is just as much a part of the standard as the actual measurement at the pipe.

US VW scandal is about going way further than just designing the vehicle to satisfy a specific test -- it actively detects that it is being tested and adjusts operation. It's one thing to, say, not try to optimize emissions while towing another vehicle if the standard does not measure emissions during towing, and quite another to cheat on a test that does.

The article specifically addresses the 'test detection' and adjustment feature. See the quoted passage above.

That passage just refers to a well-known truck cheating incident (iirc a few US companies were caught doing this at one time too) -- it certainly does not imply that such cheating is an accepted practice at time of writing. It just makes a point that a better-designed test would be trickier to cheat in that way, in addition to being more representative of driving conditions.

No, but it is a published document that likely figures as required reading in the offices of those that are tasked with ensuring that such tricks don't pass out the manufacturing door given the possible penalties. In other words: actively look for defeat devices in software (that's real work but it is doable) and get the engineers involved to state very explicitly that no such devices have been implemented.

Deleted comment

It was a second reply to the OP, not meant to be reply to my own first remark.

You could very well be on to something there, see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10717216

9 Vehicles tested under driving conditions for NOx emissions.

I don't know enough German to follow, but Google Translate helps me out a bit. Here's my question: We know VW had a cheat device to specifically detect the test and switch to a different map.

These other tests that show the cars pollute more in the "real world", is there any evidence that they actually detect the test and cheat like VW did? Or are they merely optimized for the speeds used in the test? These are two entirely different things. There's a huge difference between gaming the test and outright cheating. In one case, if you drive very very gently in the real world, you will get the test results. In the other case (VW) you could never hit those pollution numbers no matter how gently you drive (or how perfectly you replicate the testing drive cycle).

The second, from the evidence available to date.

In particular, this summary graphic is telling:

http://img3.auto-motor-und-sport.de/Abgastest-Wertung-fotosh... (blurry, sorry)

At the top of the NOx scale we have a VW TDI engine (albeit in an Audi Quatro application).

Near the bottom of the NOx scale we have... a VW TDI engine.

In other words, VW already had the capability to eliminate the emissions through design, but chose to cheat the tests instead. That is rather damning evidence, and serves as a rebuttal for those who think that VW is somehow being unfairly targeted.

Clearly, many other companies also need to lower their emissions, and regulators need to adopt meaningful tests. But to cheat the tests that do exist, and for no clear need (except possibly profit margins) is inexcusable.

What was at stake was to be able to sell into the US at all. For VW that may have been 'worth the risk', I think retrospectively they're happy to agree that it probably wasn't.

Indeed. And it is troubling to see only VW being targetted here, and with extremely high potential fines shown in the media.

If it turns out that other competitors did the same, VW – and even other German companies, due to the hit the brand "Made in Germany" got from this – might be able to sue the US via ISDS for lost sales in hundreds of billions.

That's not how it works, what will happen instead is that those other manufacturers will also be hit hard by the US regulatory entities.

That does not matter.

The media focus has been solely on VW, despite others doing the same.

This is enough that VW can show to be unfairly targeted, as it’s standard market practice.

If VW can show that others did the same, but did not get the same media resonance, then VW can sue for the lost sales based on an estimation of the difference in reputation loss.

Hell, even other companies in Germany have reported lost sales due to the "German engineering = pollution" that US media have pushed recently.

> The media focus has been solely on VW, despite others doing the same.

That's because there is evidence about VW.

> This is enough that VW can show to be unfairly targeted, as it’s standard market practice.

No, it really is not.

> If VW can show that others did the same, but did not get the same media resonance, then VW can sue for the lost sales based on an estimation of the difference in reputation loss.

It's an interesting theory about how the law could work but unfortunately somewhat detached from what I know about how the law actually works. VW does not get to claim any 'lost sales' directly attributable to their own conduct, regardless of who reported on it and how frequently even if all their competitors did it too. If VW has evidence that other manufacturers cheat as well they're probably more than welcome to present it. (And if they had such evidence they probably would.)

> Hell, even other companies in Germany have reported lost sales due to the "German engineering = pollution" that US media have pushed recently.

Yes, and VW is to blame for that. Not the US media.

The original report that caused this whole thing presented evidence for 9 companies.

VW is not the only one in this whole situation.

The report shown that results from the tests did not match the actual usage. It raised questions that those companies most likely are tampering with tests, but nothing incriminating. It was speculated that possibly that the tests were not reliable.

In case of VW, in addition to that report an actual device to fool the tests was discovered.

Who specifically do you imagine they could sue?

You should go and read the report.

kuschku's comments only make sense if you assume the US media is a direct arm of the US government.

Or if you assume that you can just sue both separately.

(And, in reality, I’d say the US government is more influenced by the media than the other way around – as can be seen in the situation with Comcast, TWC, etc)

TWC?

Time Warner Cable

"Everybody else was breaking the law too" is not a valid excuse for breaking the law.

Obviously, no.

But if everybody else isn’t equally punished, or equally investigated, than that is against the constitution, too.

hello Janne,

You keep making these grand claims about the constitution and the law and this whole VW affair that have absolutely no basis in fact. Please stop that it is just throwing up a huge smokescreen and it measurably devalues the discussion.

I'm sure that it fits your worldview but fwiw no matter how hard and how often you write this stuff it does not make it true. The constitution has absolutely nothing to do with this, VW was not 'singled out' and you are actively harming your reputation on HN. As a German student I understand that you feel that VW has been treated 'unfair' but they brought this on themselves, BMW was tested as well and passed the test even though they too emitted more NOx than they should have depending on the circumstances, they did not use a 'test defeat device'.

From what we have in terms of evidence to date no other company has engaged in such blatant fraud in this respect as VW has. If you have evidence (as in hard evidence, not just hunches) that another manufacturer also employs a cheating device then you could make headlines the world over by sharing that proof and I for one would be very supportive of you.

But all these statements that defend VW and even suggest that VW could recover their losses because they've been treated unfairly are not based in fact and make it seem like you are of good intentions but other than that do not appear to have much knowledge of how these things work. So a word to the wise: you have but one reputation, you build it up slowly over the years and you can lose and/or damage that reputation quickly.

Please don't let your sense of indignation get the better of you and hurt your interests in the longer term.

Have a citation or reference for that? Because I don't think it's true. Equal protection, adhered to or not, doesn't relieve you of criminal culpability.

Media in the US is independent and not controlled by the government.

The amount of media VW gets over this issue is irrelevant to any damages you may try to conjure up.

People may say whatever they like.

Media Is independent in words but all the mainstream media outlets are controlled by handful of corporates (during 1990s, most of these outlets bought by few corporate houses). These houses have interests related to military-industrial complex. Victory of policies layed out since over 5 decades [0] for dividing and conquering middle east for greater profits can't be let to fail just because Russia decided to save Syria and Germany/France started pondering supporting Russia [1] upon confronting the enormous wave of refugees.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580490 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10718312

So we now have links between Syria, refugees, the MIC, Russia, Germany, France and somehow in the middle of that poor VW the victim of being used as the stick to push Germany back into compliance?

What do you think they would have used if VW had not conveniently committed fraud?

I just saw a comment by Noam Chompsky, "Americans don't know what's going on. But they don't even know that they don't know."

I think "Americans" can be replaced with "people in general" (including Europeans and Asians as well)

It's 'Chomsky' and I can't find a reference for that quote, where did you find that comment?

It's on here http://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/chomsky/rab/r...

Simple searching on google showed me on the first page (third result).

The amount of truth we see is relative to the intension we're having. The rest just seems invisible to us.

Few more thoughts from Chomsky related to the theme of our discussion regarding truth:

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.” (Exactly fit for responses I got re my geo-political remark)

“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.” (Yay, so true. But we're more concerned about how perfect and moral our regulation structure is, that it punishes the right people with right evidence... but evidence can be shown when it's the most convenient time to show them)

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” (Who likes truth anyway?)

“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”

("Hey, Germany ministers are towing the line and aren't repeating our propaganda, how can we show them their place?" "Well, let's call our regulatory depts., we must be having some violation reports waiting to be show light of the day at this opportune moment. Find the one with biggest potential impact, and, and we'll have the compliance of Germany without shotting a single bullet." "Yeah, this will also set example for other European vassals, who lately tries to have independent voice. They must be shown their right place before it's too late.")

That's only half an assertion. Can you say with certainty that the US government is not controlled by the media corporations either? Judging by the political "activism" regularly displayed by Fox and CNN, I think it's fair to say that the media exerts a lot of control over the executive and legislative branches.

For two entities to be independent, there needs to be little control in both directions.

>Can you say with certainty that the US government is not controlled by the media corporations either?

With certainty? No.

US Government is a collection of individuals theoretically bound by a (very-large) shared text, or program, if you will. Do media corporations have some measure of influence on some of those individuals? Undoubtedly.

I am fairly certain that the individuals who make up the US Government are not all on media corporation payrolls.

>Judging by the political "activism" regularly displayed by Fox and CNN, I think it's fair to say that the media exerts a lot of control over the executive and legislative branches.

This makes sense. US Government is structured such that it arises from the people it is governing. If that structure is to be used, it requires public communication (ie. media).

Undoubtedly there are ties. But you'd have to extrapolate to all media in all countries being in on this for this purpose. The VW scandal has been published widely outside the US. Even if the US government had simply fined VW and left it at that the thing would have been newsworthy.

You don't need to bribe all the media, just blow the whistle in one major outlet and rest will follow the shues for maximum coverage.

There is no plausible legal theory under which VW or other German brands could successfully sue ISDS.

Eh, yes?

If a US company does the same, but does not get the same media exposure, reputation loss, and fees, then it is unfair targeting.

VW can then directly sue, because they, as foreign company, were targeted, but another US manufacturer was not.

This is silly. It's like a burglar suing the police for catching him while other burglars got lucky and did not get caught.

There's an actual evidence they that VW was cheating so they deserved it. What would be great is that if they could spill the beans on other manufacturers so others would be punished as well.

That is simply not how it works in the US civil court system. Ask an attorney.

You might want to look a bit more into ISDS.. it's an international court which is agreed to in various trade treaties and allows corporations to sue foreign governments where that governments policies negatively affect the corporation.

One of the big concerns with TTP/TTIP is that they will expand the use and applicability of ISDS processes and this could impact things like environmental legislation.

Part of the concern about the use of ISDS is that the hearings are generally held in secret.

In this case I guess if it could be proven that the US government disadvantaged VW by applying fines to them whilst not prosecuting other companies who have done similar things, then if ISDS applies to this trade, it may be possible for VW to sue...

Only in those situations where the US government can be proven to have access to the same level of proof that fraud is being committed compared to the information they had on VW. Chances of success of such an operation: 0. Effect on the PR situation: -10000. Likelihood of engaging in such an action by VW: 0.

Anybody except for VW would be in a position to make a move regarding other manufacturers, according to a document linked elsewhere from a German auto magazine there is plenty of reason to suspect that other manufacturers are engaging in similar practices but nobody to date has proof.

Eh, the original document from WVU which the EPA used to go against VW also names evidence for several (I think 6) other manufacturers, by now, 9 are known to have done the same.

So, yes, it’s trivial to show that the EPA had the same amount of knowledge against others as they had against VW, because the original document already had that.

The original document from WVU detailed 3 vehicles, two by VW an one by BMW.

If you want an easy to digest article on the subject please read:

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/09/23/researcher-how-vw-got-cau...

And if you want less easy to digest material go read the actual study pdfs (they're linked in the wikipedia article on 'dieselgate' and are very interesting reading but it will take some time there are 100+ pages there).

So you are way off base with the claims in this comment.

Note that the WVU report does not state that evidence of a cheating device has been found. It was merely the catalyst (pun intended) in the whole affair causing the EPA to put a much bigger effort into the VW engine than they had up to that point and this is where the cheating device was uncovered.

The I in ISDS is for "not in the US civil court system", so the big unknown is how it will work there. I'd still bet a lot on nothing in that direction happen in the current VW case, but some uncertainty remains.

There's a geo-political angle to this targeting. You'd find that the VW emition scandle and fine announcement came just during the time when Germany leaders were starting to get a bit cozy with Russia over sanctions ETC (I remember it was latter half of September, you can check these facts by searching Google.)

Bollocks, the whole thing was initiated by a European non-profit that contracted the WVU.

(couldn't reply to your other comments as it seems the comment depth is reached.)

Let me make one thing clear: I've not defended VW for the cheating they've done, not even once. I've just drawn attention toward the bigger picture within these events have unfolded and because commenters have raised questions as to why VW has been targeted so swiftly despite it's apparent that other manufacturers are having similar issues (more or less).

These are common ways of how back-door negotiations and arm-twistings occur. Neither Obama nore Merkle would publically admit to you in your face of these things. But we the public remain foolish to dismiss such an evident corelation as conspiracy. Or do you think we live in a utopian world where every official action is guided by altruistic motive? Well if yes, you may very well see what's happening in Syria, the whole of world's major power are flighting their airforces, just to defeat bunch of terrorist? who are anyway financed by oil smuggling to countries part of the coalition .... give me a break.

You should read my earlier comment on US policy of wars in Middle East https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580490

Well if you doubt that politics cannot plan and execute such policies for decades then you're fooling yourself. Evidence are right there just need to open our eyes.

> I've just drawn attention toward the bigger picture within these events have unfolded and because commenters have raised questions as to why VW has been targeted so swiftly despite it's apparent that other manufacturers are having similar issues (more or less).

But that isn't the case. There is 0 evidence that other manufacturers also included a defeat-the-test device, there is evidence that other manufacturers diesels exceed their permitted level of NOx in various circumstances but they do not employ a device that detects the tests and then re-programs the engine to comply with the test. It just so happens that under test conditions those engines more or less perform as advertised, there is no 'mode switch' based on the detection of a test in progress to reprogram the engine parameters. That's a totally different kettle of fish, the one is a narrow set of parameters where the engine will pass the test, the other means the engine will never perform as advertised except when under test.

Evidence will be shown when the right moment is.

HSBC was participating kneck to kneck with drug smugglers and making billions a week from that illegal and immoral trade. eventually they were fined only a few billion which they make from that same business within 2/3 weeks. Noone got jailed.

But what happened to the individuals who happened to run digital currency based platform for the same?

My point is that both were involved in similar illegal practices, but justice delivered to each was not equal. Surely justice was decided based on several interests, of which the law was mere one of the parameters (often an insignificant one when the convict is a powerful entity.)

Please read my other comments with facts supporting it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10718312

actions of this magnitude are generally guided by multiple and often hidden interests/agenda. Only if we able to perceive the bigger picture by analyzing from different angles.

Sorry, but that's just a smokescreen (pun not intended, hard to avoid).

Yes, VW got hit hard, but there is only one party that could have taken action to avoid this: VW itself. If they cheated that's entirely their choice. If other manufacturers have in fact cheated (and the evidence seems to be mounting that they did but maybe not quite as blatantly) then their turn will surely come.

Eh, the non-profit thing happened in 2013/2014.

The EPA ignored the results for a full year.

The VW CEO already resigned in April, several months before the EPA went crazy, due to it.

The reason a year passed is because the report does not indeed contain the sentence 'VW committed fraud', it simply notes some exceptional real-world performance issues for a specific vehicle under test and left it at that. The EPA then had to do a whole pile of work to figure out what exactly was going on and this led to the discovery of the defeat-the-test device.

    "Would you believe it if you received a letter from
     Mercedes Benz informing you that you had won a lucky draw 
    and your gift was a “FREE INSPECTION!!” but in actual fact 
    they intended to replace your turbocharger without 
    informing you? These and many more shocking practices were 
    carried out in absolute arrogance and with a view to keep 
    the third rate quality of Mercedes Benz Cars a secret."[0]

>My personal suspicion goes way beyond VW in this case.

You're right. Automotive companies are pretty notorious for these kinds of things.

Edit: Formatting, typo

[0]http://www.thetruthaboutmercedes.com/home.html

That site does not exactly instill confidence (and I don't mean in Mercedes). Now, 'don't shoot the messenger' is good practice and it is easy to slide into an ad-hominem attack on that website when not intending to but the language ('the shocking truth about 'x''), claims that the evil media are ingoring them and such make me feel that there is a bit of an agenda at work here.

I also wonder why you post this anonymously, it's just another link.

My wife has a 2002 Mercedes vehicle. It has 82000 miles on it now but fewer than 65000 miles when it needed $5,000 worth of work to replace a stretched timing belt. Something that should never be a problem but especially on a low mileage vehicle that was driven gently. Her driver side seat heater also started to short, a known issue, never recalled. I consider Mercedes to be overpriced garbage.

Some people in this thread rightfully raising a valid question that this cheating would be present in models of other manufacturers so why VW was only targeted and that with such a big fine announced in media which toppled VW's stocks by 20% (effectively losing $100B of market value) and also causing irreparable harm to German auto industry.

SO, you need to see the bigger picture here. There's a geo-political angle to it. On sept12 [0] reported: >>> Germany is surprisingly quitting the anti-Putin Alliance created by the United States: Germany now officially welcomes Moscow’s readiness to engage with Syria and launches an initiative to end the war with the Russians and the French. Thus, the stream of refugees is to be stopped. Germany put thousands of soldiers on standby.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen told der Spiegel, they Welcome Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the fight against the extremist Islamic State. It is in the common interest, to combat the IS, she said. A spokesman of the Foreign Ministry also said Germany would welcome a greater engagement of Russia in the fight against the IS. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even announced, with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and the French colleague Laurent Fabius, a push to start to end the civil war in Syria. Lavrov and Fabius are expected in Berlin on Saturday. <<<

Then within a week, this VW scandal suddenly comes into public thrashing Germany major auto industry. On 22Sept [1] reported: >>> What you need to know about the Volkswagen scandal

Now you see the results: Germany France etc have now joined US coalition in the name of fighting ISIS. but there's more to it, which you can read in my comment [2].

0: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/09/12/syria-germany-breaks... 1L http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/22/what-you-need-to-know-about-t... 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580490

I acknowledge that these geopolitical events are occurring at the same time as the VW scandal. But I find your (unsupported) assertion that the two are linked to be entirely and completely unbelievable. It seems to me like a baseless conspiracy theory.

>>> the whole thing was initiated by a European non-profit that contracted the WVU back in 2013/2014. The EPA ignored the results for a full year. The VW CEO already resigned in April, several months before the EPA went crazy, due to it.

You can join the dots now. These are back-door negotiations and arms-twistings, Neither Obama nore Merkle would publically admit to you in your face of these things. But we the public remain foolish to dismiss such an evident corelation as conspiracy. Or do you think we live in a utopian world where every official action is guided by altruistic motive? Well if yes, you may ver well see what's happening in Syria, the whole of world's major power are flighting their airforces, just to defeat bunch of terrorist? who are anyway financed by oil smuggling to countries part of the coalition .... give me a break.

Other manufacturers (e.g. BMW -- pretty sure the same is true for Audi) do not have the same issue; in fact, the original report is very clear on that matter: the issue is specific to VW.

The reason is that other manufacturers rely on injecting a pollution-neutralizing compound at exhaust time (there is a separate tank for that stuff), whereas VW claimed that they have been able to design engines that do not require this (obviously costly and undesirable) step, and are clean all by themselves.

Audi is part of the Volkswagen group. Some Audi models are implicated in the same scandal.

Because they did not want to. Because they were doing the same thing themselves, albeit to varying degrees. The same can be said about the 1990s baseball scandal. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there were dozens of players bulking up and hitting 60-70 home runs regularly. No one (except maybe Pete Rose) spoke up about this.

"The first rule of Fight Club is : You don't talk about Fight Club." -Tyler

You get into the gang by sharing an existential threat to the group. Be it killing someone to get into a gang, be it telling your life's secrets while lying naked in a coffin ( http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol... ), attaining seat at the MAD ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction ) table by stocking nuclear weapons, or signing on to a hot new scrappy startup for just enough to live paycheck to paycheck and keep frozen burritos on the breakfast table.

When the sharks circle, they tend to go after the weaker pray spices rather than those able to draw serious repercussions. The consumer as chum. Line employees are next. Then maybe a scape goat or two.

Lots of managers use the phrases 'by whatever means necessary', 'it must be done', 'just ship it', "we'll fix it later", and M.V.P. . The naive will say that "management just doesn't understand!". To someone who is paying attention this is building a cut out of responsibility.

In the Kabuki theater of corporate politics this often suffices for blame shedding. Remember the goal is to accept garner credit for good things and blame shed the bad things, helping things get done a product to be made or whatever is ancillary to the individuals goals in the modern company due to the average length of employment being so very low.

"All this has happened before, and will happen again." -cylon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

If you assigned engineers to disassemble your competitor's product to figure out how it worked, you would put yourself at grave risk of patent suits if you let them use that knowledge in any way in developing your own products. There's a reason clean room design is used. With something mechanical like an engine, that means reverse engineering is probably not helpful enough to be worth doing.

One of my relatives worked for decades in the cost estimation department of a major auto manufacturer. They disassembled every competing vehicle to obtain competitive intelligence on profit margins and assembly techniques. Everyone does this.

If anybody is interested in this kind of thing, here is an hour-long talk with a freelance analyst who disassembled the BMW i3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8&feature=youtu.be

His agency is selling that report for $500,000. I found the whole thing quite fascinating.

I'd love to read that report. There are a few close ups of pages in the video. That guy has one of the most interesting jobs!

Wouldn't a report like this have a limited shelf life?

Maybe we get lucky and they decide to release it some time when it's not marketable anymore…

No?

The ECJ (European Court of Justice) even referred to the "Standard practice of disassembling competitors cars and using the gained knowledge in your own cars" while making a landmark decision that declared the right for decompiling non-negotiable.

While I understand your point, this does still happen with competitors products.

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