Mental note, never buy a VW car again. Cheating on emissions is bad, but passing the buck down to the rank and file is deplorable.
Don't forget Audi, Porche, Bentley, and others that VW owns :)
Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
161–170 of 259 posts
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#162Nope, definitely systemic within the company. The engine is a system that must meet certain requirements. The standard way of meeting those requirements is to have a urea injection system. That's what the competitors in the US do; it's also what Subaru, for example, don't do, and they don't sell into the US market. In order to pull off this little 2-person hack that Horn alleges, those couple of software engineers wo…
> those couple of software engineers would have to have a major say over the entire engine design. I call bullshit.
I agree. Developers wouldn't take that amount of corporate risk on for such a hack without having significant backing from management.
Even if they were completely on their own, which is impossible for me to believe, at some point another developer would have noticed and said something. Developers are smart enough to know anything that can go wrong will go wrong and that such a hack would be exposed, taking a lot of people down with it.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#163It's an utterly brazen lie to say the company didn't know about this. Anyone who's ever built anything as part of a team - whether the Linux kernel, a space shuttle, or a Lego set - can tell you design decisions like this cannot be secreted into the final product. So let's say a software guy decides to make this fix. How do you do that? - You'll have a version control system, won't you? At the very least someone will…
I guess they are worried about significant legal action against the top-brass and are throwing off some chaff. Will the legal system go after the little guy again or land the big fish?
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#164Even if that was the case (which I doubt), it's the executives' fault for creating a culture which fosters cheating. It's their fault for not being aware of what's going on in their own company. They probably have a culture of "Don't ask, don't tell".
These execs get paid huge salaries/bonuses for being responsible for stuff. But when things go wrong, the first thing they do is shift the blame back down to their workers.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#165"This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason," - I'm not buying it. What would be their motive compared say to VW's motive? VW has a heck of a lot more motive for falsifying emissions than do "a couple of software engineers." Even if you were to argue the engineers were somehow fearful for their jobs that's still VW's problem because they're the ones who created that work environment i…
"...for whatever reason" is the part that got me.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, it implies a couple of engineers could slip through arbitrary code to be executed under selective conditions. That's terrifying.
I wonder what the NTSB thinks about this. This is a clear safety issue.
US vehicle safety is governed by NHTSA, and they are already using this to push for further regulatory power.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/foreign/2015...
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does any one really thinks that true? http://www.ldra.com/en/software-quality-test-tools/group/by-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Industry_Software_Reliab... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_26262
YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW. OUR LORD AND SAVIOR UNCLE BOB MARTIN SEZ WE NEED STANDARDS BEFORE THE GUBBERMINT MAKES US DO IT. FOR THE LOVE OF DO NOT CONTINUE POINTING OUT THAT STANDARDS HAVE NECESSARILY SPRUNG UP IN SEGMENTS OF THE INDUSTRY THAT INVOLVE RISK. UNCLE BOB WILL FIND YOU... UNCLE BOB KNOWS ALL, SEES ALL... PUNISHES ALL. /end sarcasm
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Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're making an awful lot of assumptions there. >those couple of software engineers would have to have a major say over the entire engine design. I call bullshit. The two people they're mainly talking about are head of R&D group and engine development. Yeah I'd imagine they have major say over engine design.
Having a lot of say in design, and keeping secret an intentional violation of government regulations from your entire international company are two pretty different things. I'm making assumptions, and I believe this story is pure, unadulterated bullshit from top to bottom. Is it likely that the heads of R&D and engine development at VW are hands-on and writing code themselves? No, its extremely unlikely. Having worke…
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Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/content/en/the_gr... "Winterkorn’s professional career began in 1977 as a specialist assistant in the research division "Process Engineering" at Robert Bosch GmbH. From 1978 to 1981 he headed the refrigerant compressor development group "Substances and Processes" at Robert Bosch GmbH and Bosch-Siemens-Hausgeräte GmbH. In 1981 Winterkorn joined AUDI AG as assistant to the Mem…
So much for quality assurance! He was also known as a micromanger, I just don't see how he didn't somehow figure out that his entire clean diesel strategy was bullshit.
QA, particularly in Germany, is all about processes. Not deep technical understanding. It bores the hell out of any competent engineer.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
When this CEO of a company with 600k employees says "it's some software engineers", I assume he might actually be honestly referring to what we would call engineering managers, perhaps with hundreds of indirect reports, 2-3 levels down from the CEO. I find this plausible... (Particularly since these hearings seem designed to score political points rather than to find out what actually happened.)
The (now resigned) CEO prided himself on being an engineer and in depth knowledge. I don't believe he didn't know how VW was able to market clean diesel engines in the US without having a clean diesel emission system for them. His big thing was to be the largest car maker and he needed to juice US sales to get there. He had to have spent a lot of time on US strategy. The shitty part is that he succeeded--they became…
fact is the whole report chain is rotten. who wrote the code, who told him so, and indirectly most engineers that had a reasonable knowledge to be in a position of suspecting a foul play.
you can't get this running for 6 years without widespread cooperation, or at least willfully turning a blind eye.
those engines ran loads of miles on benches before being put into cars, and it's a large group running multiple cross tests on many parameters including fuel consumption and efficiency and operating temperature, which should give anyone within the sector a good rough idea of how an engine performs emission wise.