'Dieselgate' trial opens in Germany without ex-VW boss | Hacker News Reader

'Dieselgate' trial opens in Germany without ex-VW boss

rfi.fr

170 pointsbelter151 comments

How is it that, in a country which values precision and 'doing things right' to the extent that you will be told off by bystanders for crossing an empty road at night on a red light, there could be such brazen, unethical and scaled corruption at a corporate level.

Like, at a community level, the average German citizen takes it upon themselves to speak out when they feel anyone is acting anti-socially. Which I admire!

But then Dieselgate, the Wirecard scandal, and a bunch of other non-nonsensical activities (immense coal energy industry, buying gas from Russia and general lack of large scale green policy) just seem so far removed from the Germany I know.

I really don't understand how something like Dieselgate can happen at the scale that it did. And Wirecard too - with BaFin even stepping in to harass the investigative journalists from the FT.

Is there something I am missing here?

Power corrupts? And Germans aren't immune to it.

Deutsche Bank have repeatedly been caught doing highly questionable things. I don’t think German capital considers itself subject to those same cultural constraints — quite the opposite in fact.

Which doesn't mean other banks didn't. Just haven't been caught that much. (For now)

Also, since 2008 the point is mostly moot. See Bad Banks.

And there we have politics. Let them crash and burn, or try for another turn, in the game of boom and bust?

What is to earn, who is to trust?

Nobody knows anymore. It's all yearn and lore.

I bet you not one of those model citizens would say a word if you slip a few hundred euro in their pocket before crossing that road on red.

Easy answer. Three things: * Money * Lobbyism * Job security

We party of Merkel is great for "stability". But this stability also means everything bad will stay bad and stuff like policing lobbyism is not a priority for those politicians, because they are good enough to hide it and profit from it so much, that they don't want it to change at all. Worse, we even have one party FDP which is really small, but openly pushes against policing lobbyism and they are the second or third largest benefactor of huge lobby donations.

The powerful want to stay powerful. If you ask the normal citizen they would want things to change at least to make everything more right.

The third point is also quite critical. The biggest industry in Germany is car manufacturing. And because of this every change here might disrupt millions of people, potential voters, and harm the industry. The reason germany did not come up with a great Tesla competitor or even Tesla itself is because of that. Everything moves so slow in these companies, they depend on so many other companies to get you some part of your car and then in the end assemble it all, that any change will disrupt too much and gets killed before it can bud.

What makes Germany so different than Canada? Sheer population?

In both countries there is a marked willingness to do the right thing, but I'm struggling to remember corruption anywhere close to the size of what goes on there.

Greater ability to detect corruption? I always presume that for every case that makes headlines there are dozens that don't get reported, that ratio may be higher in Canada.

Cause telling someone off when "crossing an empty road at night on a red light" does not imply no corruption. It is just someone petty feeling good about little power or irritated over minor rule breaking.

That being said, in fact in Germany, pedestrians cross an empty road at night on a red light fairly regularly. Or they just cross at random place, not through the pedestrian crossing despite that one being fairly close and being red. I have seen that both. And I have done both, no one told me anything.

Yeah, that's what worries me. Every time there's a story like this, and someone asks "what, why did the employees buckle over and implement this evil scheme?" you get a torrent of answers about:

"Well obviously they cared about losing their job, we need strong worker protections and unions."

"We just need a culture of calling people out on anti-social behavior, whether or not that specific transgression is already codified."

"We need strong regulations that penalize corner cutting."

But ... Germany is really good on all those points! So, if this kind of thing slips through there...

There needs to be law enforcement against the company itself. Penalties should take away the same proportion of income as they would be for a median citizen. If a crime is severe enough for a person to do 1 year in prison for, that's about 2% of their lifetime income taken from them plus loss of freedom. A crime of comparable severity should cost a company 2% in perpetuity. If they are outcompeted or forced into restructuring so be it. The threat of non-negligible financial consequences is the only thing that will compel change.

The individual low level employees are about as culpable for the emissions cheating as the muscle cells of a serial killer are for murdering someone. They hold no meaningful decision making power within the organization and operate according to the local incentive structure. The executives responsible for shaping the incentive structure are the ones who should be individually penalized. Market forces would help with this if illegal practices were appropriately costly.

Well it is quite easy actually. Your biggest customer request a bunch of features, some for test purposes. You find something fishy, you ask your boss and he tells you orally to just do it because this customer is the most important, or he takes the matter seriously and gives the feature directly to your colleague in India who doesn't raise an eyebrow.

The SW is done and millions of vehicles have the feature. Don't count on other engineer to spot the cheat because everyone has a specific area of expertise, and the software is closely related to the engine hardware. It is very difficult to understand the purpose of each piece of code.

Remember that at that time, noone was ever tried for cheating the exhaust norms and the compliance team only cared about financial fraud.

> Is there something I am missing here?

Yes: the fact that many other automakers all over the world were caught as well, but you only remember VW. And my guess is that for the ones that weren't caught it was just that: they weren't caught.

Basically, European politicians had created every tighter fuel and emissions standards that really couldn't be met (the leaner you burn the more NOx and other nasties, if you want to burn cleaner, you need a richer mixture). So enforcement of those standards was "wink wink, nudge, nudge", and everyone was in on it.

Except the pesky Americans.

Buying gas from Russia is sensible, see "Ostpolitik".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostpolitik

Phasing out nuclear and increasing coal is just nuts. Nuclear should, if anything, be expanded, but it's the third rail of German politics. The populace has been so brainwashed on this topic that logic just doesn't apply. Kinda like guns in the US.

The financial class in most countries sees itself as above the law. Cumex was worse in many ways, but what the banks have been doing in the US, Japan or the UK is hardly better. In fact, the US legal system officially declined to pursue HSBC's brazen money laundering, because going after the bank might lead to financial instability. Carte Blanche. And don't get me started on Goldman Sachs.

Heck, the moneyed classes in the UK took the country out of the EU, never mind the enormous economic, social and political damage, in order to avoid EU transparency laws.

The did a in depth review of basically every car maker in Europe after that. For a while BMW was the only German one that seemed to come out almost clean. until they didn't. Peugeot and Renault were fined in France. As was Fiat in Italy if I remember well. The German OEMs were the worst, with VW leading the pack and Mercedes being a distant second. VW did something clearly illegal, most others thaugjt the just skirted the edge of legality. Maybe that skirting would have worked if it wasn't for public pressure after VW was found of having crossed line of skirting deep into cheating territory.

VW wasn't the only having tweaked emissions, VW was the only one having clearly cheated. that's why they are remembered for it.

You have a caricature of Germany in your head if you believe people yell at you for crossing at red on an empty road.

No, it's pretty accurate in my experience.

DE has strong vigilante culture

Yeah and pedestrians still cross red light I the night fairly regularly.

FFS, do you even understand that word? DE has the opposite of vigilante culture.

People always rely on some governmental authority. When it affects them, that is. Otherwise, no one gives a shit about anything.

I don't think it's vigilante culture. People value order and organisation and this coupled with the direct nature of communication, feel completely within their right (I would say feel duty bound) to say "hey, you're not supposed to do that".

It is also custom here to voice one's opinion in extreme precision or detail. "Hinterfragen" question things, criticise, always down to the details. Not in an emotional way but very in a very matter-of-fact sense.

So think of it from the perspective of "if the rule is that you don't cross on red, then why are you crossing on red? It's against the rule". It's not personal at all.

I actually have been yelled at and told off in the streets for various mistakes such as this one. And this is not just my personal experience but my German friends also verify such stereotypes.

Don't forget the decade-long debacle of Berlin Brandenburg Airport.

Because German society, like most others, is divided between those to follow the rules and those above the rules.

Lol, don't buy into the stereotypes. Germany is like USA with better social policies.

As long as you pay your taxes you're free to do whatever you want.

No one will help you, no one will get in your way.

The occasional cranky old guy calling the cops on a party is not representative of the whole society.

Observation: If you are a multinational company that has the resources to buy entire countries, your cultural origination becomes secondary. Another commenter made a comparison to Canada, but they recently had the snc-lavalin affair that shuffled the cabinet and is still vaguely a topic in their upcoming election.

I'd make the argument that in these countries there are fewer of these incidents and that they become public at a higher rate, and that the public shame is greater than in countries like the US where we know it happens but there will never be any actual public dialog, let alone recourse. Mental exercise: If either of those scandals had happened in the US, what would have been the outcome? For comparison, notice the way that Monsanto managed to export their "trouble" over glyphosate to Bayer, where it escalated into a scandal.

It's all fake, "doing things right" etc are rules for the plebs.

It's like in Saudi Arabia, where of course nobody drinks alcohol, it's haram! But then the sheikhs have the craziest parties with hookers and 10k usd champagne etc.

Why wasn't George Bush Jr. tried at the the Hague? At George and Martin's level in the global elite, you don't go to jail for almost anything, maybe you pay big fines. I certainly don't approve of them, but these understandings predate me and are made above my pay grade.

One plausible answer I heard was that emissions regulations were an EU thing, but the car industry is still very firmly national.

No national government was interested in rigorously enforcing the regulations to the detriment of their own nation's industry.

This is a core issue with the political structure of the EU in general, and isn't even specific to cars.

Those who rise to the top are less likely to be influenced by social norms? Its perhaps supportive of the adage that more CEOs have psychopathic tendencies than the average population. It makes absolute sense that is the case, often to get ahead you must make decisions that hurt others. If you emphatize with others you are less likely to want to be in such a position.

I don't know where you got that red light thing. Except for downtown or other locations with heavy traffic, stopping at red seems to be an optional thing nowadays.

The same for indicating lane changes, or turning of wheeled traffic.

With the exception of a few so called hidden champions german engineering is a myth now.

It can't be any different, because shareholder value and time to market rules,

the prekariat has neither time nor ability for deep thought,

which isn't tought anymore, or not as it once has been.

It's mostly all superficial pretense now.

Learning to forget, only to get some paper which says so.

But we can be fantastic fanboiz!

Cheers! :-)

edit: make that something like 80/20 or 90/10, or anything in between.

edit: also regional variations, as always, but the trend is there.

Everywhere.

I've never been surprised about Dieselgate. If an engineer is given a metric to beat, they'll beat the metric, not the spirit of the metric. The same attitude of improving the test still exists, it's why manual sports cars have tall gears - the test will happen at a more efficient rev range than the users will actually use. Variable valve timings, variable cam profiles, more aggressive sports modes: these are just hiding the real emissions at a rev range the emissions test won't reach. And wasn't it accepted wisdom that you shouldn't believe the MPG or L/100km figures?

So-called 'tech' is just as bad. A defeat device is so similar to the everyday silicon valley attitude it's hard to believe it didn't originate there. Move fast and break things? Building companies based on massive amounts of user data, then complaining you can't feasibly do manual content review? We can't build a society based on the assumption that engineers will act in the public's best interest.

for me it was also hard to grasp what went wrong here. i always thought if this test can be gamed something is flawed with this test. they were given the task to pass the test and they did although that did not translate to the outcome the engineers developing this test envisioned for it i guess. It feels like they changed the requirements and then went after anyone not passing anymore. i do understand that they purposefully tried to detect the test to game the result "somehow" but i cant help it but to think if its possible to reduce emissions for the test then its a viable strategy on the road given the same usage pattern... although i don't really know how they actually did it...

so the problem is that vw purposefully lowered engine performance during the test. they could have done that on the road, and been within spec, but then their cars would have felt sluggish, so instead they just made their cars lie during the epa test

VW detected a test cycle and turned emissions treatment, Adblue and some other things, on. When on the road, these systems were tuned down or fully turned off.

From my limited understanding it wasn't just lowering engine performance they couldn't be simultaneously be efficient with fuel and low in emissions (IIRC burning at a higher temperature is good for fuel economy but bad for other pollutants). It's very well possible that no single configuration could have made them meet the requirements.

If memory serves well, they used steering, rev and so on as input to decide if the car was on a test bench. Then they turned on emissions treatment, or rather turned it up. Obviously that works on the road as well.

As a tangent, VW was part of group of German manufacturers colluding in limiting Adblue tank capacity (I'd have too look up details). in order to maximize revenue, they also extended the refill periods to match inspection intervals. Basically so the OEMs could sell dirt chepa Adblue to customers. Now the smaller tanks were insufficient to treat emissions on the road without being refilled between inspections. Instead of mounting bigger tanks, VW decided, apparently, to just turn the system of while on the road. Clearly illegal because test cycle recognition is illegal. As opposed to using technical loop holes when road operations are concerned.

It was sort of the opposite - there was a control module called "kundenspezifische Akustikbedingung" or "customer acoustics condition" in Bosch diesel control units which was _deactivated_ by conditions like steering input that indicated real driving. So the car started in "low emissions" mode by default (essentially, running richer, which increased consumption and CO2 emissions but reduced NOx), and then leaned out (decreasing consumption but increasing NOx) once the "acoustic model" was deactivated.

https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~klevchen/diesel-sp17.pdf

The acoustic mode was used to recognize the test cycle and to properly dose Adblue. It didn't impact fuel mixture, that was something VW later did to make the engine generally compliant. The new, leaner mixture resulted in some power losses.

Under all other operating modes, the Adblue dosage was reduced to almost zero. That is clearly illegal. In addition to that, VW did some other stuff especially for the US market to meet California's emission requirements.

What everyone else did was playing with temperature windows, under all operating conditions to reduce Adblue and optimizing for other things. Not ullegla per-se, as these windows kinda used to be legal, but definitely violating the spirit of regulations. Some manufacturers exaggerated more than others. But only VW cheated as clearly, as bluntly, as long and at as large a scale. No amount of VW PR can change that.

With the help from Bosch:

"Supplier’s Role Shows Breadth of VW’s Deceit" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/business/bosch-vw-diesel-...

Yep. Bosch tried to protect their asses by sending VW a letter that this software was test purposes only, any road or production use would be illegal. They still got fined.

"In June 2008, Bosch wrote a letter demanding that Volkswagen agree to pay any penalties if they were discovered using a defeat device."

The use of that software as a defeat device surely was a surprise to everyone when it came out years later...

The EDC17 analysis in this paper does not support this: “ Figure 4 shows how the fuel injection quantity (additive) correction (qCor) is modified by the acoustic condition.”

Not that it makes the cheating any less illegal, but I’m interested in the source of your analysis and why it differs from the model in the FR and the disassembly performed by that research group.

Then my source was too old, they just talked about Adblue dosage. What you say does make sense so, since after the software update cars in Germany had less power then before. My take is that Adblue dosage was the main issue so.

Thanks! Nice paper, I didn't know they had access to the SW specifications

You can find these (leaked of course) easily by googling “Funktionsrahmen”. They are shared widely by tuners.

Thats unbelievable. So they purposefully fucked with the car design to sell some juice? Beancounters beware. I wonder who it was that pitched such an unconscionable asinine idea. It seems like there were some missing NO men as well.

If I remember well, the main offenders were German OEMs that colluded with VW on that. other European OEMs mainly toyed around with other stuff and edge cases, some activities were later found to be illegal. Most so were able to fix it by "just" burning more Adblue and getting rid of temp windows and such things.

VW was the only one I know that was forced to tweak engine performance. IMHO the goal was optimize weight and cost, and engine design. Only VW seemed to have gone far enough to design engines that were technically barely, if at all, able to comply with emission requirements. So they resorted to cheating. Once that worked, it escalated to the point 11 million cars were affected. Kind a stupid if you ask me.

The challenge is the test is flawed if it stipulates to narrow/limited of a test range. This is why in SW we do automated tests, unit tests, but also real-user testing.

For emissions the only solution is in-situ testing over real-world operating conditions over a period of time. In other words real-user-testing of the vehicle as it will be used.

This would stop all such games immediately.

I would be very interested to see which brands / models of cars would see significant MPG reporting changes.

How much would this exacerbate / accelerate the challenges car companies face in complying with governmental MPG requirements?

I think older Aston Martins had a tall first gear precisely to give them a good 0-60 figure.

Is it the engineers fault? Or is this the result of antisocial business decisions?

If you’re not going to trust engineers, who are you going to place your trust in? Business men? Lawyers? Bureaucrats? Politicians?

If we’re looking at engineers as multi variable function optimizers, You’ll find that the field will be automated away in short order. And that will be one less group to trust.

Fact is, at any level, everyone has an assumption of trust for society. There are of course consequences to violating that trust. But then smart people find ways to insulate themselves from this consequences.

Regardless, the problems you speak of exist regardless of what professions exist. The real problem is how do you align incentives to align for better outcomes, and that is a hard problem to solve.

You make it sound like engineers are failing their moral duty and then ignore the people in charge of them who actually make the important decisions in any company. I can almost guarantee it wasn't some lowly engineers decision to be a bad faith participant in the testing; they build what they're told to. Also, comparing car ECU engineers to software engineers generally is a stretch, I don't think there's much of a common culture there.

The technical details:

"The exhaust emissions scandal („Dieselgate“)"

https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...

This is hands down the best exhibition of the topic that I've ever seen, and perhaps one of the better CCC talks too! It's for a long time been my go-to reference whenever I encounter someone frustrated about the opaque version of the story retold in newspapers.

I watched the video and I did not understand why would they go to such lengths to use "alternative" mode most of the time, only using the proper one when in the NEDC cycle. Only downside I could understand from the talk is that it would use more AdBlue which seems such an unimportant thing.

Is there something I am missing?

They limited Adblue tank capacity, together with other German OEMs in a cartel. Also it seems the affected VW engines indeed are not able to meet emission standardstandards without serious changes.

https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~klevchen/diesel-sp17.pdf for those who don't love videos/talks, although this one is great.

Not only Volkswagen....

"In this paper, we described two families of defeat devices used in the Bosch EDC17 ECU to circumvent US emission tests. The first family of defeat devices was used by Volkswagen and lies at the heart of the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal. The second device appears in the diesel Fiat 500X automobile sold in Europe, and has not beed documented previously."

I wonder if there's a way to put a figure on the damage those 9 million vehicles have done. For example, we know that diesel cause cancer [1] and these cars were emitting more than they should have been. How many extra deaths did they cause?

[1] https://www.hazards.org/chemicals/fuming.htm

I remember this being a very popular take on reddit back when the story broke out (and calls to try VW execs for murder). I remember the number 120 (but seems they or my memory is not that correct [1]) edit: Another find was 5k/year in europe [2]

What I found fairly frustrating was seeing this angle only limited to VW (even when it became clear that many makers acted similarly) - but it also felt like a weird angle in general. Should we calculate deaths by pollution in general and treat them as murder? It would be an interesting reminder on what our technological society is built.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#D...

[2] https://phys.org/news/2017-09-dieselgate-deaths-europe-year....

I think it is some kind of manslaughter or willful negligence.

If a local government enacted a law for factories that they should all have fire sprinklers installed, to save x number of lives per year.

Then the a factory operator decides to pretend they installed sprinklers, but did not.

Shouldn't they be culpable for excess death?

I think it's similar here - the EU mandated a safety measure (a certain limit on NOx and particles), the car companies merely pretended to comply.

> Should we calculate deaths by pollution in general and treat them as murder? It would be an interesting reminder on what our technological society is built.

It sounds like a can of worms you definitely do not want to open. It's probably uncomputable. Sure, pollution may directly decrease people's life span. But having private cars, ambulances and helicopters being able to transfer people to specialized hospitals in emergencies directly saves lives. So does a generator providing emergency power for said hospital. Then there are n-th order effects of how our fossil-fuel-based civilization impact peoples' health and lifespans. It's likely impossible in practice to meaningfully untie all those interdependencies in order to put a meaningful body count on diesel engines. It's prohibitive to even do this on the margin.

On the other hand, a clear fact remains: diesel emissions are bad for peoples' health, and an engine that pollutes more is worse than one that pollutes less. It's an externality, just one that's hard to price on the margin.

So perhaps we should sidestep the problem and price in the externality in bulk. To the extent that a given type of pollution, in aggregate, causes health problems, we should tax it in proportion and funnel the funds into public healthcare.

Legally there is a difference between exploiting loop holes, e.g. temperature windows, and putting these loop holes in to an extent through lobbying and actively ignoring even these loop holed regulations. Everybody did the former, with some over stepping. VW did the latter. and that is the reason only VW managers are on trial at the moment.

Personally, both approaches suck, but only is most likely illegal. What pisses me of even more is the fact that VW waited, and German authorities with them, until VWs gray eminence Ferdinand Piech died. only to avoid asking how much he knew...

I would actually really like it if a public-health approach was taken to household choices. Driving a car is simply expensive for society at large, because it has all sorts of negative effects on air quality, pedestrian safety, even stuff like municipal service provision (less density = higher costs). This isn't priced in, either in terms of taxation (normally you tax goods that cause social ills heavily, like cigarettes). In fact, the reverse happens. This is stupid, and bad for everyone, even car drivers.

And as always, the poor pay more. Your plumber, landscaper, construction crew need a car, but you're not gonna pay them more, are you.

Always some out of touch chodes getting paid six figures to work from home telling the rest they should be taxed more for using a car or something stupid.

It would be pretty easy to offer a tax rebate for people who use a van for work.

Nah. Too easy to game. Let them pass on the costs to their customers.

Actually, I like when goods reflect their cost of production, the economy works better that way.

Exactly, just add the cost of cleaning up pollution to everything, then use the money to clean up the pollution.

Side effects: cheaper ways of cleaning up pollution, and people making less pollution so their stuff is cheaper

Anything else is just cheating

> Your plumber, landscaper, construction crew need a car, but you're not gonna pay them more, are you.

Why not? If they all have to pay the same tax, they'll all start charging more. Same way they do if the price of pipe or lumber or gas goes up.

Exactly. We're paying for it somehow, the only question is whether the costs should be borne proportionately by the people that impose those costs. And the reasonable answer is: "Of course!"

How do plumbers, landscapers and construction crews survive in countries where car ownership and gas is taxed heavily?

They have higher rates and their are fewer of them . And as a consequence 99.9% people mow their lawn themselves. Even many software engineers here do significant own work when the family builds a house. At least in bigger companies it is fully socially accepted that a software engineer is less productive at work during the year they are building a house.

- Living in a high tax country

Unfortunately the poor will also pay more for the climate change the diesel causes, and are more likely to be affected by the crap air.

The rich always make sure they never pay for anything. That’s why they’re rich.

Calculate deaths by ignorance and treat them as murder, too. Why not.

should we calculate deaths by pollution --- yes.

Should we treat them all as murder --- no. For the time being this would classify everyone as a murderer, so it's impractical.

Should we treat intentionally illegal pollution as murder --- yes.

I find infuriating that, globally, most of the fines will be paid to customers (who were misled in their purchase) instead of the actual victims (the public and, a fortiori, the people who got and will get sick).

How did we turn this health issue into a business one?

I wondered the same thing. How many customers can honestly say that the emmission levels had anything to do with their purchase? It is the governments/health services that have to pick up the pieces if the emmissions were really that bad.

It also staggers me that a company can afford to pay $30B in fines and costs. Do you think the ATM can fit their bank balance on the screen (perhaps it can now!)

The analysis I saw back then limited itself to vilifying VW, looking at excess deaths from PM2.5 etc., not taking into account any reductions in other emissions caused by the vehicles getting better mileage.

There is e.g. [1] which doesn't paint a pretty picture.

I'd btw. put blame also on introducing tax incentives for diesel cars in the first place. Without those this wouldn't have happened. And those were to prevent tax arbitrage between European countries :/.

[1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/200596/1/1668020459....

Long time ago German cars were kinda perfection of how car could be build. But recently this company was gasing apes… How low could VW fall!? https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/29/vw-condemne...

The word Gaswagen getting a whole new meaning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van already means systematically and at large scale murdering people.

That must have been quite a long time ago, because the German car makers experienced the same rude awakening as their American counterparts did, when Honda and Toyota showed up in force, back in the 80s. And they took as long if not longer to catch up.

I don't think the VW Rabbit was actually a higher quality car in terms of reliability than the Ford Escort, and both were light years behind the Toyota Corolla.

The VW Rabbit, imo, was better built than a ford escort (excepting electrical); but much worse design. They didnt do thinks like "oops we forgot to bolt in the transmission" (my favorite ford trick); they did things like "when the clutch needs adjusting the entire car has to come apart to reach a retaining screw" and iirc there was something about a crankshaft that was destined to break in half at 30k miles...

I agree. I'm baffled as to why German cars are held in such high regard with some people. Long term reliability doesn't match assembly quality and initial impressions.

In the case of VW and Audi? Marketing and build tolerances. Especially those customers see, famously those between skin panels.

I remember reading a book about the auto industry in the late 80s, and it described the typical German car factory: There was a large re-work area at the end of the assembly line, where skilled technicians discovered and repaired defects. This was better than sending out defective cars, but it did not catch latent defects or correct those defects through better design.

I think different countries acquired their own stereotypes early in the industrial age: German perfectionism, Swiss precision, Italian style, American ingenuity, etc. Those ideas continue to be marketed after they have ceased to be relevant, at least to the original degree.

And granted, I know nothing about luxury / sports cars.

One of my sons just bought an '88 Celica GT and I am impressed with how much better it is than same year VW Cabrio and my first car a Caprice from same time frame.

Nice one, the Celica!

I’m mid 30s in the US, and I always had the impression that Japanese cars were the best quality:price ratio, American cars were cheaper quality, but also cheaper overall, and German cars were for showing off that you could spend money.

I read a profound observation that I can barely recall. Can anybody find it? Its that German cars use a design that assumes tight tolerance parts, which drives up cost. But Japanese cars use looser tolerance parts which still make up a strong "whole" which is robust to bad parts and wear.

I don't know much about the design of German cars, but typically in the Japanese ones, you will find that they are designed to work with loose tolerances, but manufactured with actual dimensions very close to the "blueprint" and very little manufacturing variation. As a result, you get very robust construction since everything is basically working exactly in the region it's designed for.

Just in case you don't know it...

In germany it's not possible to have a criminal prosecution against a company. It's only possible to do it against the individual persons in that company who acted criminally.

Pretty stupid imho and one of the few things I'm jealous about the US.

It's also the reason why VW had to pay a huge fine in the US but not in Germany.

Actually germany can't do shit about it. They can only try to punish some employees IF they can prove they are guilty....

which is the stronger deterrent, a (large but recoverable) corporate fine or prison time for the decision makers? I'd wager the latter --- the former mainly punishes shareholders.

Having a criminal record has other consequences for companies in the US, like being ineligible for most government contracts.

But the managers who caused it are long time gone, they got their pay raises and new jobs. The stocks went up too in the meantime, rewarding those who enabled in the process.

The proper response would be to prosecute both the corporation and specific individuals who acted illegally.

The former as a corrective action to help unwind any advantage gained in the market due to the illegal activity. This means, though, that fines need to actually claw back the ill gotten gains, not the small fraction they represent today. Right now, the fines are just another expense, assuming the company even gets caught.

Prosecuting the company properly might also ensure some measure of justice in cases where specific individuals' guilt is obscured by corporate structure and systems (intentionally or otherwise).

Prosecuting individuals who break the law in service of their employer (executive or not) isn't much different than prosecuting soldiers who commit war crimes -- obviously different in degree, but not in kind.

"I was just following orders" shouldn't be an acceptable defense in either case, though coercion and fear of reprisal should certainly be taken into account.

OTOH executives can't hide behind the company as an entity.

They seem to be doing it just fine anyways based on this article.

> Winterkorn, 74, was initially meant to stand trial alongside the other four executives but recently underwent an operation, leaving him unable to appear.

This basically leads to people getting away with lots of sketchy behavior, (in the US) because the corporate veil absolves the decision makers of any personal responsibility.

A stark difference between the EU and the US is that European companies have a harder time claiming their product is safe when it really isn't. For example, lead paint was banned in European countries long before the US.

This thread is about how Volkswagen claimed their cars were safer than they were.

Not safer, cleaner.

I guess it depends on timeframe. The reason we care about the cars being “cleaner” is because it is safer. But not in a someone is going to be maimed way.

> It's also the reason why VW had to pay a huge fine in the US but not in Germany.

VW had to pay 1 billion euro in germany.

Maybe that's not enough, but it definately is not the case that companies are not persecuted in any way at all in Germany.

It's funny how the dieselgate scandal was just a few years ago (and still ongoing) and now that same company's big and bold slogan is "VW way to zero - roadmap for climate neutral mobility". We live at a time that a bit of shame is easily forgotten.

That is true but also, if the previous management have gone and a new management really care, how long should they be judged by their predecessors.

I think this issue comes up all the time with individuals either being negligent or just plain incompetent and then when it all screws up, they just blame the previous management and move onto another similar job in another company. At what point is the individual liable and what point is it "tough luck VW, you have to pay for that crook of a CEO you employed"

DG didn't increase co2 emissions. NOx seems to be a wash wrt anthropogenic climate change given opposing effects of methane neutralization and O3.

What would VW have to do for you to quit holding a grudge? Are there hoops to jump through, or is a temporal thing? If the latter, how long? If the former, then what, will public floggings satisfy you?

It wasn't that long ago that I charged my Nissan Leaf at an Electrify America charger, paid for by VW, and VW seems to be moving forward with their electrification efforts. I'm not saying all is forgiven, but I'm ready to move on. If they actually release that Buzz electric van, we'll likely stand in line to buy one.

My experiences with Germans in business is a very polished ethical public face, whether small or large businesses, and absolute chaos and gerry rigging (sic) behind the scenes.

I normally avoid national stereotypes but these have been my experiences. Wirecard makes the EU diesel regulatory whipsawing of VW and other european firms such as Jaguar small beer though- fraud on a huge scale arguably largely enabled by EY...

Why not try him in his absence, and assume he is fully sane?

Because criminal procedure does not allow either.

It doesn't, in Germany?

Criminal law in Sweden allows both - if no specific reason exist for a psych evaluation of the accused, the person is assumed sane. That's the basic assumption.

If the person doesn't show up, a trial is often postponed once or so, but ultimately, if the accused doesn't show up, the trial can be held anyway if it is considered to be performed satisfactorily despite the absence.

That to me sounds like a good default.

I'm certain regarding in absentia, and doubt the "assume sane, then modify the sentence afterwards if assumption turns out to be wrong" very very much.

To be more precise: it's possible to do a trial in absentia, but only if the maximum sentence is a financial penalty, reprimand, loss of driver's license and so on. Paragraph 232 Criminal Procedure Code (StPO).

Because trying plaintiffs in their absence is difficult under German rules of criminal procedure (Sec. 230 Para. 1 StPO[1]). Exception exists only if the plaintiff leaves a trial after their initial statement, does not appear for an adjourned date(Sec. 231 StPO[2]) or if the plaintiff intentionally caused their absence by rendering themself unfit for trial (Sec. 231a StPO[3]).

According to the court's press statement[4] (in German) they decided that the plaintiff is not fit for trial but did not culpably cause this unfitness. The court decided to separate the trial and postponing it until the the plaintiff recovers. They explicitly did so to no longer postpone the trial against the other plaintiffs indefinitely.

[1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_st... [2]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_st... [3]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_st... [4]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_st...

He's not insane, he had an urgent hip operation.

Edit: Actually, I can't say for sure whether he is insane or not.

If anyone has any doubts about the morality of automotive OEMs, the EU fined the German ones some months for agreeing to limit the development of more efficient / clean technologies -- https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-fines-german-car-cartel-e...

I'm wondering why their engineers still agree to work for a company that actively conspires towards poisoning their children.

I wouldn’t want to try to do that either. With the political climate in Europe it would be stupid to invest sums into making ICE more efficient or less harmful. Could very well be that in 3-4 years it will be impossible to sell an ICE car because of fuel prices, city bans or whatever. It’s the same reason why the diesel scandal happened in the first place: stupid rules and regulations with even more stupid metrics.

I don't understand why the emissions procedure was so easy to trick in the first place. Obviously we want to know how much the emissions are in real life driving, so why isn't the test simply that we find a representative sample of 100 or so people who have the cars and are using them? Just shove the measuring kit on the cars, maybe pay people for the inconvenience, and see what the numbers come out as?

We're not talking about figures that were almost legal here, which maybe could justify a lab test, they were pumping out many times the amount that was allowed.

Because you need to have this measured out by the time the car is available for purchase (maybe even way in advance?), not after.

Also comparable standardized test procedures. Those are needed for certification proposes.

Not really, you could just do it as tax proportional to how much in-practice the company’s cars pollute. Though that would introduce a greater difficulty in risk and cost management since it’s harder to predict and control in advance.

Tests needs to be standardized to ensure that they are replicable. If running the test several time wouldn't give the same result (within a small tolerance margin) manufacturer would cry unfairness and they would be right. What if in one run more driver use the freeway and in another where stuck in cities traffic ?

I tried to address this in my comment. If if was some marginal thing where there was a chance they were close, then maybe it would make sense to have a standardized lab test.

If someone is 50kg overweight we don't need a special procedure with a sensitive scale to decide that.

I'd assume the VW engineers could still create a defeat device (ie detect the test equipment and alter performance) for that situation

This is pretty much how the defeat was discovered - by a group who were curious about how US diesels could be so great compared to their European counterparts, using sniffers attached to vehicles performing normal road driving.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't work very well as a certification test, as it would require standardization. But, as a failsafe in addition to a standardized test plan, I think this would be great - basically "we'll give you the procedural test you know and love, and we'll drive 100 normal road miles with more lenient thresholds in place. Fail either and you don't get a certification."

Likely the emissions procedures were developed with the "help" of industry (VW included) lobbyists as well.

Any remediation from Dieselgate that doesn't include structural changes like improved testing means the auto industry has won.

Have any Professional Engineers working for VW been fined or sanctioned in any way for malpractice?

We don't have this concept over here.

Wasn't there an individual recently that used medical procedures to avoid trial?

You mean Elizabeth Holmes and pregnancy?

No, someone else, but that one I wasn't even aware of, I wouldn't put it past her to do something like that on purpose to try to avoid jail - and quite possible end up with having her child paying the price for that.

Maybe Harvey Weinstein and using a walker to look disabled in public, then?

Yes, that's the one. Thanks. I couldn't find any reference to it but apparently there is now some movement regarding this that his surgery dates happened to overlap with great regularity with his court dates.

I'm not sure anything will come of that because I find the idea of a doctor cooperating with such a scheme rather farfetched, but in the case of Weinstein it probably shouldn't be ruled out a-priori.

I wonder how you tell illegal optimizing for a test vs. legal optimizing for a test.

Lord knows what sort of magic they stick into 'Energy Star' appliances.

Well, easy in case of VW: If the optimization involves checking "steering wheel has never moved out of 0 position since engine start" and "intake air is at exactly 293K", then it illegally optimizes for a test.

> Lord knows what sort of magic they stick into 'Energy Star' appliances.

I had a phase a few years back where I monitored all my appliances and office stuff to see how much solar I needed and I found the energy star ratings to be more or less correct with my appliances except for my moms Samsung stove

For the love of God can we pleaaase stop referring to scandals as “something-gate”.

Why? It's not a bad idea, a certain suffix that means "scandal" is useful, no?

How about using just -scandal?

Spanish has a million good suffixes, but my favorite is "-azo", which means hitting somebody with something. Puppyazo would be a reference to when somebody was hit with a puppy (or when a puppy was hit, or a when a shockingly big puppy was revealed.)

So Caracazo means Caracas hit...itself?

I think you missed the chance to voice this opinion 50 years ago.

The Watergate scandal had nothing to do with "water". It was the actual name of the hotel where the crime took place. "Dieselgate" is a meaningless word.

Every car manufacturer, even in the USA, harms people with their cars. Even a battery car emits particulate matter. If you really want to put something sensible on the road, it's the FCEV. That frees the air from particulate matter.

> That frees the air from particulate matter.

It doesn't, as long as the car still has tires and brakes.

Yes. But not every manufacturer has committed this level of fraud in an attempt to illegally circumvent regulation.

FCEV needs 2 to 3 times more energy than an EV for the same range.

>hydrogen cars are only half as efficient. If an electric car converts 86% of the energy originally harnessed by a wind turbine into moving the vehicle forward, the hydrogen car has access to only about 45%.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-09/how-hy...

Energy generation is the main source of pollution for an EV over its whole lifetime. So, an FCEV is far worse than EV (however you produce your hydrogen).

VW is behaving fraudulently in the matter.

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