Volkswagen diesel scandal
09-28-15, 02:34 PM
#196
T0ked, in terms of programming, you have basically reiterated what bitkahuna has stated. The separate engine program subroutine IS the code that is "coded to the test". They are gaming the system because not all states have strict smog regulations. Cali, for example, did require a dyno tailpipe sniffer test for your smog check, and it was only recently that they removed this test and relyed on the data coming from the ECU and OBD2 port. The problem is, no one validated this and VW is gaming the system as this was left up the manufacturer (from my understanding) to validate and verify that OBD2 port data values vs. the tailpipe sniffer emissions data values.
09-28-15, 02:41 PM
#197
Not really. Gaming the system meaning taking off side view mirrors or taping up the hood during testing. Or using very low rolling resistance tires. Or having a really tall final drive gear. There is a huge difference between that and disabling the emission system all together. One method violates federal regulations. It's not what the consumers bought nor was it what was advertised.
09-28-15, 03:14 PM
#198
T0ked, in terms of programming, you have basically reiterated what bitkahuna has stated. The separate engine program subroutine IS the code that is "coded to the test". They are gaming the system because not all states have strict smog regulations. Cali, for example, did require a dyno tailpipe sniffer test for your smog check, and it was only recently that they removed this test and relyed on the data coming from the ECU and OBD2 port. The problem is, no one validated this and VW is gaming the system as this was left up the manufacturer (from my understanding) to validate and verify that OBD2 port data values vs. the tailpipe sniffer emissions data values.
09-28-15, 06:37 PM
#200
Lexus Fanatic
iTrader: (20)
There's a reason no body agrees with you. Vehicles performing a few mpgs below the EPA rating or spewing a couple of percentages above its emission rating while not in ideal conditions is one thing. Having a separate engine program subroutine to run only during emission testing to lower results by 40x is a completely different matter.
T0ked, in terms of programming, you have basically reiterated what bitkahuna has stated. The separate engine program subroutine IS the code that is "coded to the test". They are gaming the system because not all states have strict smog regulations. Cali, for example, did require a dyno tailpipe sniffer test for your smog check, and it was only recently that they removed this test and relyed on the data coming from the ECU and OBD2 port. The problem is, no one validated this and VW is gaming the system as this was left up the manufacturer (from my understanding) to validate and verify that OBD2 port data values vs. the tailpipe sniffer emissions data values.
gaming the system in my opinion means finding an advantage by any means necessary whether ethical, legal, moral, or fattening.
09-28-15, 06:53 PM
#202
and Ford/KIA, but not for emissions, not in this way... so far nobody tried so hard to fraud emissions (well at least not in past 15 years.
As to others doing the same, so far every each one of them said specifically that they do not use such devices, and considering how many countries are now testing these vehicles, it would not be smart to lie since we have at least 7-8 countries testing diesels now independently.
As to others doing the same, so far every each one of them said specifically that they do not use such devices, and considering how many countries are now testing these vehicles, it would not be smart to lie since we have at least 7-8 countries testing diesels now independently.
09-28-15, 08:30 PM
#203
Pole Position
Why what VW did is not gaming the system but an outright lie. The blow by blow account of how VW was caught in the commission of fraud :
http://www.businessinsider.sg/heres-.../#.VgoAY-yqqko
Here’s what Volkswagen did and how they got caught
Full details in the link above
What VW did wasn't gaming the system. They got caught in 2014, was given a chance to come clean but straight up lied and denied the facts. They only confessed when the facts became overwhelming.
Gaming the system is playing within the rules while taking advantage of loopholes. VW basically pissed all over the rules.
http://www.businessinsider.sg/heres-.../#.VgoAY-yqqko
Here’s what Volkswagen did and how they got caught
In 2008, tougher emissions rules come in to force.
In 2013, the International Council on Clean Transportation teams up with West Virginia University for a study on the Volkswagen diesel cars.
The two groups alert the California Air Resources Board and Environmental Protection Agency in 2014.
Volkswagen says the study is flawed, blaming “various technical issues” for the results.
The tests find the root cause of how Volkswagen got its cars to pass the tests – discovering the software called “the switch.”
Volkswagen finally admits the scheme on September 3 to the EPA and CARB.
On September 18, the EPA go public with the findings of their Volkswagen tests.
When markets open on the following Monday, Volkswagen stock plunges more than 20%
On September 22, Volkswagen admits the emissions scam is far more widespread, saying it could affect 11 million cars.
Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn appears in a video saying he’s staying at the company, after German press reports state his last day is September 25.
In 2013, the International Council on Clean Transportation teams up with West Virginia University for a study on the Volkswagen diesel cars.
The two groups alert the California Air Resources Board and Environmental Protection Agency in 2014.
Volkswagen says the study is flawed, blaming “various technical issues” for the results.
The tests find the root cause of how Volkswagen got its cars to pass the tests – discovering the software called “the switch.”
Volkswagen finally admits the scheme on September 3 to the EPA and CARB.
On September 18, the EPA go public with the findings of their Volkswagen tests.
When markets open on the following Monday, Volkswagen stock plunges more than 20%
On September 22, Volkswagen admits the emissions scam is far more widespread, saying it could affect 11 million cars.
Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn appears in a video saying he’s staying at the company, after German press reports state his last day is September 25.
Full details in the link above
What VW did wasn't gaming the system. They got caught in 2014, was given a chance to come clean but straight up lied and denied the facts. They only confessed when the facts became overwhelming.
Gaming the system is playing within the rules while taking advantage of loopholes. VW basically pissed all over the rules.
09-28-15, 09:44 PM
#205
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Bosch, the company that actually wrote the cheating software for VW, warned VW back in 2007 that the use of the software in a production vehicle would be highly illegal. I guess we can't hold a gun maker for making an instrument that kills people, but is Bosch really not liable at all for writing the code knowing that the code could be used in only one way and one way only, which is to detect standard emission test and to defeat emission control only when the vehicle isn't in the lab? Is there enough ground to the "we thought they were gonna use it for testing only" argument? 
http://blog.caranddriver.com/report-...ating-in-2007/
Report: Bosch Warned VW About Diesel Emissions Cheating in 2007
The main question surrounding Volkswagen’s emissions-cheating TDI program is: How many people knew about the automaker’s plans? According to a German newspaper, auto-industry supplier Bosch had a hunch that VW was planning on using tampered engine-management software as far back as 2007—and the supplier warned the automaker that such a plan would be highly illegal.
That’s the word from German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, as translated by Automotive News. According to the report, Bosch claims to have supplied diesel engine-management software to Volkswagen under the impression that it would be used only in vehicle testing. That software, which was able to activate emissions-control devices when a testing environment was detected and deactivate them during normal driving, somehow ended up in production vehicles. According to Bild am Sonntag, Bosch wrote to Volkswagen in 2007 warning the automaker that using this software in publicly sold vehicles was illegal.
It doesn’t seem as though Volkswagen listened.
In a statement released last week, Bosch revealed that it supplied common-rail fuel-injection systems, as well as supply and dosing modules for exhaust-gas treatment, on the Volkswagen and Audi models at the center of the growing emissions-cheating scandal. “As is usual in the automotive supply industry, Bosch supplies these components to the automaker’s specifications,” the statement reads. “How these components are calibrated and integrated into complete vehicle systems is the responsibility of each automaker.”
In addition to the 2007 warning from Bosch, it seems that one of Volkswagen’s own engineers tried to blow the whistle on the illegal emissions-cheating program in 2011, as German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported in its Sunday edition.
Automotive News reports that the crisis began when then–VW brand chief Wolfgang Bernhard and engineer Rudolf Krebs began developing a new diesel engine for the U.S. market in 2005. Bernhard and Krebs realized that an AdBlue urea exhaust-treatment system would be needed to meet U.S. emissions standards, at an estimated cost of $335 per vehicle. Reportedly, VW finance heads determined this cost was too high, as a company-wide cost-cutting exercise was then underway.
Bernhard left VW in 2007 and Krebs was moved to another role in the same year, while the engine they collaborated on ended up in numerous VW Group vehicles with the emissions-cheating software in place. Both Bernhard and Audi engine boss Wolfgang Hatz denied any knowledge of illegal activity.
http://blog.caranddriver.com/report-...ating-in-2007/
Report: Bosch Warned VW About Diesel Emissions Cheating in 2007
The main question surrounding Volkswagen’s emissions-cheating TDI program is: How many people knew about the automaker’s plans? According to a German newspaper, auto-industry supplier Bosch had a hunch that VW was planning on using tampered engine-management software as far back as 2007—and the supplier warned the automaker that such a plan would be highly illegal.
That’s the word from German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, as translated by Automotive News. According to the report, Bosch claims to have supplied diesel engine-management software to Volkswagen under the impression that it would be used only in vehicle testing. That software, which was able to activate emissions-control devices when a testing environment was detected and deactivate them during normal driving, somehow ended up in production vehicles. According to Bild am Sonntag, Bosch wrote to Volkswagen in 2007 warning the automaker that using this software in publicly sold vehicles was illegal.
It doesn’t seem as though Volkswagen listened.
In a statement released last week, Bosch revealed that it supplied common-rail fuel-injection systems, as well as supply and dosing modules for exhaust-gas treatment, on the Volkswagen and Audi models at the center of the growing emissions-cheating scandal. “As is usual in the automotive supply industry, Bosch supplies these components to the automaker’s specifications,” the statement reads. “How these components are calibrated and integrated into complete vehicle systems is the responsibility of each automaker.”
In addition to the 2007 warning from Bosch, it seems that one of Volkswagen’s own engineers tried to blow the whistle on the illegal emissions-cheating program in 2011, as German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported in its Sunday edition.
Automotive News reports that the crisis began when then–VW brand chief Wolfgang Bernhard and engineer Rudolf Krebs began developing a new diesel engine for the U.S. market in 2005. Bernhard and Krebs realized that an AdBlue urea exhaust-treatment system would be needed to meet U.S. emissions standards, at an estimated cost of $335 per vehicle. Reportedly, VW finance heads determined this cost was too high, as a company-wide cost-cutting exercise was then underway.
Bernhard left VW in 2007 and Krebs was moved to another role in the same year, while the engine they collaborated on ended up in numerous VW Group vehicles with the emissions-cheating software in place. Both Bernhard and Audi engine boss Wolfgang Hatz denied any knowledge of illegal activity.
09-29-15, 01:01 AM
#206
Bosch, the company that actually wrote the cheating software for VW, warned VW back in 2007 that the use of the software in a production vehicle would be highly illegal. I guess we can't hold a gun maker for making an instrument that kills people, but is Bosch really not liable at all for writing the code knowing that the code could be used in only one way and one way only, which is to detect standard emission test and to defeat emission control only when the vehicle isn't in the lab? Is there enough ground to the "we thought they were gonna use it for testing only" argument?
09-29-15, 02:43 AM
#207
To add, there are many teams working together in R&D. There is also tons of code and builds that are never released nor see the light of day and only used for diagnostic and development purposes only. Yes, Bosch may have written this code, but contracted to develop under VW, VW had the same access and were the owners of this source and used it accordingly for their own purposes.
09-29-15, 09:31 AM
#208
Lexus Fanatic
iTrader: (20)
if bosch knew they were cheating they are also guilty.
09-29-15, 11:15 AM
#209
Lexus Test Driver
There I have to disagree. Just because you make a gun and know it's made for killing doesn't mean your guilty. Same with drugs.
YOU are ultimately responsible for the actions taken from using said product. Not the mfg.
YOU are ultimately responsible for the actions taken from using said product. Not the mfg.
09-29-15, 12:28 PM
#210
Lexus Fanatic
Look who is coming to VW's defense:
I'm not a terribly big fan of Clarkson....he has never been one of my favorite automotive journalists. But I have to agree with at least part of what he says here. I can't say I agree with everything he says here, but he does makes some good points.
http://www.theweek.co.uk/jeremy-clar...-of-volkswagen
Jeremy Clarkson has taken time out from working on his new Amazon motoring show to come to the defence of Volkswagen, the German car company currently embroiled in a scandal over its diesel-engine emissions tests.
According to Clarkson, the company's senior management should "stop wringing their hands and sweating in press conferences and go on the attack."
The whole issue has come about, Clarkson said in his column for The Sunday Times yesterday, due to "eco-mentalists" telling people first that diesel engines were less polluting than other engines before changing their minds and drawing attention to the damaging properties of the blend of nitrogen and oxygen – or NOX – the engines produced.
Various "soft-in-the-head governments" listened to those critiques and introduced new regulations on how much NOX a car could produce, Clarkson notes.
The new rules left VW with no choice but to redesign its engines, but the company went further and "fitted its engines with a clever bit of software that exaggerated their economy and cleanliness when they were being tested."
According to Clarkson, the trick is no different to everyday deceptions like lying on a CV or parking on double yellow lines.
As he sees it though, the risks to car makers and indeed Europe as a whole are huge if VW is "driven into the wilderness" by lawsuits, fines and damage to the company's reputation and sales. Because if VW goes out of business "the fallout would be immense because it owns Audi, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat and Skoda as well. So they'd also go to the wall.
"And without the profits from these engineering powerhouses Germany would no longer be in a position to bail out the Greeks or house half of Syria. Which would cause global economic collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe and many plagues."
Clarkson says that in his view what the company has done simply isn't that bad, so the punishment does not fit the crime.
"Put simply, then, Volkswagen looked at a set of arbitrary figures that had been dreamt up by a bunch of ill-informed, woolly-headed government officials and chose to ignore them. We are not talking about thalidomide here. Or Bhopal. It’s just a bit of good-natured rule-bending, and we all do that."
The 55-year-old presenter says that the whole issue is "rubbish" because "about 60 per cent of man-made NOX emissions do not come from road transport, and of the 40 per cent that do, the vast majority are from lorries and buses. So in the big scheme of things, your neighbour's Golf diesel makes no discernible difference."
Clarkson's claims on issues relating to pollution and the environment have been repudiated frequently by scientists and campaigners.
Bill McGuire, professor of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL described the presenter's Sunday Times columns as "barely coherent products of Clarkson's own fevered imagination".
Clarkson's view that VW has merely engaged in "well-intentioned and harmless cheating" sits in contrast with the official position of the governments of the US, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, France, South Korea, Canada, Norway and India where investigations and legal proceedings are now underway.
I'm not a terribly big fan of Clarkson....he has never been one of my favorite automotive journalists. But I have to agree with at least part of what he says here. I can't say I agree with everything he says here, but he does makes some good points.
http://www.theweek.co.uk/jeremy-clar...-of-volkswagen
Jeremy Clarkson has taken time out from working on his new Amazon motoring show to come to the defence of Volkswagen, the German car company currently embroiled in a scandal over its diesel-engine emissions tests.
According to Clarkson, the company's senior management should "stop wringing their hands and sweating in press conferences and go on the attack."
The whole issue has come about, Clarkson said in his column for The Sunday Times yesterday, due to "eco-mentalists" telling people first that diesel engines were less polluting than other engines before changing their minds and drawing attention to the damaging properties of the blend of nitrogen and oxygen – or NOX – the engines produced.
Various "soft-in-the-head governments" listened to those critiques and introduced new regulations on how much NOX a car could produce, Clarkson notes.
The new rules left VW with no choice but to redesign its engines, but the company went further and "fitted its engines with a clever bit of software that exaggerated their economy and cleanliness when they were being tested."
According to Clarkson, the trick is no different to everyday deceptions like lying on a CV or parking on double yellow lines.
As he sees it though, the risks to car makers and indeed Europe as a whole are huge if VW is "driven into the wilderness" by lawsuits, fines and damage to the company's reputation and sales. Because if VW goes out of business "the fallout would be immense because it owns Audi, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat and Skoda as well. So they'd also go to the wall.
"And without the profits from these engineering powerhouses Germany would no longer be in a position to bail out the Greeks or house half of Syria. Which would cause global economic collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe and many plagues."
Clarkson says that in his view what the company has done simply isn't that bad, so the punishment does not fit the crime.
"Put simply, then, Volkswagen looked at a set of arbitrary figures that had been dreamt up by a bunch of ill-informed, woolly-headed government officials and chose to ignore them. We are not talking about thalidomide here. Or Bhopal. It’s just a bit of good-natured rule-bending, and we all do that."
The 55-year-old presenter says that the whole issue is "rubbish" because "about 60 per cent of man-made NOX emissions do not come from road transport, and of the 40 per cent that do, the vast majority are from lorries and buses. So in the big scheme of things, your neighbour's Golf diesel makes no discernible difference."
Clarkson's claims on issues relating to pollution and the environment have been repudiated frequently by scientists and campaigners.
Bill McGuire, professor of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL described the presenter's Sunday Times columns as "barely coherent products of Clarkson's own fevered imagination".
Clarkson's view that VW has merely engaged in "well-intentioned and harmless cheating" sits in contrast with the official position of the governments of the US, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, France, South Korea, Canada, Norway and India where investigations and legal proceedings are now underway.
Last edited by mmarshall; 09-29-15 at 12:33 PM.