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Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

reuters.com

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Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#191

Post by kuschku »

andor wrote: post #158
rconti wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the Passat has urea injection and is implicated as well -- though it didn't exceed emissions by as much as cars without aftertreatment. And the "couple of engineers" was in reference to the head of engineering and another guy. It wasn't implicating rogue low-level engineers. http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-real-cause-of-the...

The current scandal is only about the "EA189" engine family with NOx traps for exhaust treatment. The new "EA288" engine family with urea injection was designed from scratch, and, I hope, doesn't need cheating software. Edit: the EA288 is/was -- at least in Europe -- also sold with NOx trap, but VW still claims it's free from cheating software.

Yes, completely different families.

EA189 was a Pumpe-Düse system able to get up to 280mpg in production vehicles, at the cost of high NOx emissions.

EA288 is a standard common-rail engine with AdBlue.

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#192

Post by tonyarkles »

hydrogen18 wrote: post #74
cmiles74 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code might even have been outsourced. I'm not trying to disparage outsourced developers, I know what I might do if the user story was something like "Needs to pass emissions when attached to test system."

In that case it would probably be "The system shall pass all emissions tests"

Under all conditions? Under normal conditions? Low-temperature? High-temperature? At 10,000 feet? Only when attached to the test harness?

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#193

Post by nhaehnle »

dahart wrote: post #159
Havoc wrote: post #148

Earlier 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…

> It is likely that those particular positions benefit and are motivated to cheat on regulations for the benefit of the company? No, the bottom line of the company is affected, and it is far more likely that business people are applying pressure.

I agree with most of your comment, but not with this point. Being the Head of R&D who is able to boast about bringing a "breakthrough" new diesel engine to market is bound to come with some personal perks.

You can re-define this as "business people are applying pressure" if you like, but that does not change the responsibility of those position - and besides, it's kind of a cop-out. With that thinking, you can re-define everything as being down to market pressure.

Somebody made a decision to do this, and I can easily see an unethical head of R&D making that call for personal career reasons - just like unethical researchers cheat by making up data. I'm not saying that that's necessarily how it happened, but it's a definite possibility.

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#194

Post by johansch »

selimthegrim wrote: post #120
johansch wrote: post #61

Earlier 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.)

He's the CEO of the American branch not VAG

My mistake. Still, my argument persists.

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#195

Post by rconti »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #171
rconti wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize this is the exact opposite of what the rest of the world is saying, right? Is this the first article you've read on the matter? I've been following it with great interest, and many others have expressed shame that it's the US that is catching a European company cheating, and threatening prosecution. This all happened because of the work of the West Virginia lab, plus CARB and EPA's investigation, and the…

actually the european started this asking for help since they had the equipement for static test, but not the equipement to fool the defeating device into thinking it was actually on a road.

Good call. It wasn't European governments, and it wasn't an attempt to punish automakers for malfeasance, though.

The ICCT (an NGO) that appears to be based on Europe, commissioned the West Virginia study to try to figure out how more stringent US Diesel standards were being met, so they could encourage automakers to meet the same standards in Europe.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/foreign/2015...

"In 2013, his organization [the ICCT] commissioned a study of VW diesels by West Virginia University after questions were raised about European diesel emissions standards and whether European vehicles were emitting too much nitrogen oxides linked to smog. Testers looked at three diesel cars for the U.S. market: a 2012 VW Jetta, a 2013 VW Passat and a BMW X5. The group expected the cars they tested would perform better than those in Europe, because U.S. regulations are tougher. They were surprised the two Volkswagens had significantly higher-than-expected emissions, while the BMW performed well. They were so certain they had done something wrong that they tested the cars two more times with similar results."

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#196

Post by rconti »

caskance wrote: post #172
andor wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current scandal is only about the "EA189" engine family with NOx traps for exhaust treatment. The new "EA288" engine family with urea injection was designed from scratch, and, I hope, doesn't need cheating software. Edit: the EA288 is/was -- at least in Europe -- also sold with NOx trap, but VW still claims it's free from cheating software.

Considering all we've learned in this saga about the industry in general and Volkswagen in particular, I would say it's more than likely that it had cheating software anyway.

I think this is part of the problem. The EA189 without AdBlue needed the cheating software. The Passats with AdBlue also had the EA189 and likely could have been tuned to work without the cheating software, but likely have it anyway.

It's a bit of a shame that EA288 cars are stacking up at dealers nationwide and will apparently never be certified for sale (VW said they would not ask for certification), even though they almost certainly don't need the cheat. (Although it's possible that it's still present, which is of course still illegal, need it or not).

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#197

Post by bryanlarsen »

An earlier article said that the two who engineered the cheating were the chief engineer and the guy in charge of engines. So whether they engineered it or not, they (and the CEO who has already been fired) are responsible; that's their job.

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#198

Post by dogma1138 »

danielweber wrote: post #151
OopsCriticality wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model year 2005 Camry in question from the trial would have been made available in 2004, and the electronic throttle control system was designed prior to 2004 (IIRC, the ETC design was carried forward from the previous model). How does it makes sense to apply MISRA-C:2004 in this case, especially when the Toyota ETC in question was admittedly not designed under MISRA-C:2004 nor prior MISRA-C revisions? It is inac…

Barr always struck me as something of a charlatan trying to bamboozle a jury.

I remember when this was posted on HN before, what I always wondered about is the discrepancy between the violations that NASA found and Barr.

NASA found 7000 and change Barr found over 81,000, I'm not sure whats the size of the code that was reviewed but that's allot, even if you count the fact that half of them might be silly like naming convention violations that still leaves quite an odd number for actual violations especially when considering that the code for an embedded system can't be that huge.

And the 10,000 global variables thing, well 10,000 sounds like a huge number but there wasn't any mention if they were a) necessary, b) implemented correctly, and c) out of how many variables in total? if the code they've tested has say 1 million variables then well.... And how they described global variables is also weird, they claimed that every software within the system can access them to me this sounds that your stereo or the rain sensor for the wipers can override data for the breaks, but that might be true only if everything is running within a single application.

If the breaks run as an independent application well then only every function within the break software (depending on the language and how global variables are implemented) could potentially access those variables.

To me pretty much that entire explanation seem to be constructed to sound worse than what it is, which is why I think that expert witnesses should only be allowed to be appointed and called by the court it self (as in by the judge so they and the jury could understand the technical details better) and not by either the defense or the prosecution.

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#199

Post by Laaw »

dogma1138 wrote: post #92
Laaw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it blow your mind that there are no "standards of engineering" or whatever for software? There's no licensure body for software engineers who build software running your car, and therefore no accountability on a personal level. When an engineer builds a bridge, she has to personally sign off on the bridge, saying it's safe, and is risking not only her professional career, but I think she can also be jailed an…

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

None of those are what I described, though.
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