Meanwhile here in the US we let people mod their diesel engines and nothing is done about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
211–220 of 259 posts
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#212It's a good thing that there are stiff penalties for perjury during congressional hearings. Few examples just during this past year, when people lied under oath, got caught, and... Oh, never you mind.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#213Do we think VW are the only car manufacturer doing this? I very much doubt it. They're just the first to get caught. Where rules stand in the way of profit, they get bent or broken. Banking, automotive industry... which next? Oil? Housing? Pfff ... come on, we all know they're rotten, it's just a question of how rotten and whether it comes out. I suspect it's the tip of the iceberg for the auto industry. Whether we g…
They have additional filters. It's not like the emission targets are impossible to meet. They're just impossible to meet without the filters.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Say the detection for the emissions testing is something like a flag in the software that says the car is on a dyno, or some other factors that the ECU has legitimate reasons to keep track of. In that case, the defeat system is just a quick if else predicated on those state variables and swapping between a set of engine parameters that is emissions test safe and another set that provides better performance. I don't m…
Okay, imagine you're working on the hardware of the engine. Pistons, bolts, lubrication. One Friday afternoon you leave work depressed because the emissions suck, they've sucked for months, and they won't get better without a major redesign. On Monday morning, the emissions tests are suddenly passing. "Ha, just one of those things," you say, "I thought we had emissions problems, but I guess we don't after all. Let's…
I'm not arguing that it was a few people working in secret, just that it would be possible for the changes to be done at a high level (in the engine system), without pulling in all the people that were involved in developing the vehicle (or even the powertrain).
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#215It'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…
>design decisions like this cannot be secreted into the final product.
I'm not entirely convinced. You compare it to the Linux kernel. I'd say a better comparison is router firmware upgrades.
If a manufacturing plant gets sent a new image with a note attached saying "HQ says use this one" then they're definitely going to load it onto the cars.
Clearly someone cooked the image somewhere & there is likely to be version control in place but I doubt the whole thing is as transparent code-wise as you suggest.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I really expected VW to do better in handling this. Ignore whatever comes out of the VW USA guy. The investigations in Germany will most likely be more fruitful especially because police is involved.
Exactly. The most devastating part of all of this for me (a US citizen) is that the German CEO resigns in disgrace and there are ongoing criminal investigations in Germany, but in the USA the CEO holds fast and blames engineers. It seems like the German government is more competent that the US at enforcing laws against corporations, even when those laws are USA laws... *EDIT: This comment is poorly worded. What I mea…
This was an engineering problem. There may be an assumption that while there are about a dozen people in the US who work for VW in an engineering capacity, the US part of the group is in essence purely a marketing operation.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#217He may come to regret testifying under oath with these particular sentences, which are very much falsifiable. I'm not sure what the penalty is for lying to congress but this could very well backfire. There is absolutely no way that anybody within VW is able to put limits on the scope of the fall-out of this whole affair at this point in time.
Not smart to still be in 'damage control' mode when the only way out is total transparency.
I'll be very surprised if there won't be a mass resignation of engineers working for VW for being thrown under the bus like this.
The mere suggestion that 'a couple of engineers and their managers' could get away with deception on this scale speaks volumes about VWs perceived internal lack of process - something they shouldn't be able to get away with - and their lack of documentation for the development track of the engine.
If they've shredded documentation or if they suddenly find their version control systems and email audit trail blank there just might be jail time for some execs after all.
The thing that bugs me is that they are still somehow in lala land about how they're going to cover this thing up, digging a deeper hole in the process. You'd say the VW brand has sustained enough damage but clearly the execs don't agree with that.
"for whatever reason"... quote of the day, as if engineers put stuff in production without reasons, specifications or instructions.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#218How is Volkswagen's US head, who lives and works in the US, able to issue proclamations with such certainty about the non-existence of private conversations and directions taking place among the engineering staff and management in Germany, where he spends almost no time? It is as if a US diplomat stationed in New Zealand used his authority to declare that Bush had never authorized any torture, and it was rogue indivi…
I would assume he is speaking on behalf of Volkswagen, not testifying as an individual on his own experiences. Volkswagen's current story is that it was a couple rogue engineers, so he is conveying that. Congress isn't going to get the CEO in to testify, so it's reasonable to assume he is speaking as a proxy.
When speaking under oath take great care to not exceed the domain of verifiable facts.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 s…
The "individuals" VW is claiming are responsible are 10 managers and 3 top engineers, which include the head of R&D, the head of engine design and the head of Audi. The definition of "individual" might be different between what VW claims and what you read, though.
Isn't that sort of like a company president blaming "unauthorized excesses by employees" while neglecting to mention that the "employees" were actually all VP-level?
It sounds to me like they're either casting the blame on the rank-and-file, or they're heavily bending the truth by trying to make it seem like the culprits were "merely" regular employees.
Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found products made by car companies to be in general more reliable than those made by software companies (either in Silicon Valley or not). I trust my life to my car (software included) every day. I wouldn't do that with any software of my smartphone, not even the OS.
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…
Not sure whether software is the domain that standards should be applied to. Software is just a tool.
If you use software to build a bridge, bridge standards should apply. If you use software to build a car, car standards should apply.
If you use software to build a fart app, fart app standards should apply. (Which frankly, don't have to be very high.)