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F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

nytimes.com

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Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#41

Post by csydas »

throwaway30911 wrote: post #23
jamessb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emissions from Volkswagen cats above those permitted by the Clean Air Act (enabled by cheating on emissions tests) are estimated to have caused a significant number of premature deaths in the US: > According to the study, conducted by researchers at MIT and Harvard University and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, excess emissions from Volkswagen’s defeat devices will cause around 60 people in t…

In that case it would make more sense to forbid cars entirely except for utility vehicles or electric cars. Which the government hasn't done for decades, so it is a little hypocritical to make a big thing of the VW scandal.

I think this somewhat misses the forest for the trees - the case against VW and the punishment isn't over hypothetical deaths, it's about cheating the emissions tests and not complying with regulatory standards. In a tangential way yes, the goal is to increase quality of life, but that's not really the point of the case/arrests, nor is it realyl the focal point of the research done, which was more a study on just how much excess pollution was produced as a result of the scandal.

The FBI's actions have nothing to do with the MIT link.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#42

Post by disiplus »

_nedR wrote: post #36
dovdovdov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this blows up it's over for most german car manufacturers. They sold a lot of diesel cars, and most of them probably have some hacks to meet Euro standards. They should be forced to fix all cars, reimburse buyers for any losses, and be forced(!) to go green asap (which probably means at least 10 years, so yeah there should be some force)!

It seems to be game over for diesel cars in general, even if you ignore their eventual replacement with electric cars. They have been getting a lot of bad press lately. Their popularity was due to their higher fuel efficiency; But for diesels, it seems that there is trade-off between fuel efficiency and NOx emissions ( http://www.livescience.com/52284-volkswagen-scandal-clean-di... ). With many cities and countries t…

diesels are popular in europe for one reason that probably somebody from us will not understand. the price of fuel. because the price of fuel is so much bigger fuel efficiency is the biggest concern

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#44

Post by eeZah7Ux »

celticninja wrote: post #12
legulere wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, however it seems like they only use VW to exemplify the issue, when pretty much all manufacturers are cheating.

Also it helps that it is not a US company.

And it happens to be from a country with a strong economy.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#45

Post by gst »

I'm surprised that he decided to stay in the United States. Germany doesn't extradite its own citizens to countries outside the EU (except in very limited cases such as war criminals), so he would have been perfectly safe if he'd moved back to Germany.

And even if he would have been sentenced in Germany the sentences handed out in such cases are _much_ more relaxed than the potential sentence he's facing in the United States.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#48

Post by davewritescode »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #6
legulere wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, however it seems like they only use VW to exemplify the issue, when pretty much all manufacturers are cheating.

I have not been closely following this scandal, so I was unaware that other car manufacturers have been indicted in emissions cheating. Could you share a source with more information about this?

Not even just emissions, lots of companies play software tricks to game efficiency numbers. Chevy and Ford have both played games with the manual V8 sports cars that locks out the 1 -> 2 shift and force the driver to go 1 -> 4 to save gas when the computer sees the car accelerating at the same rate as the EPA test.

The funniest thing was the Ford would sell you a software update to defeat skip shift under the guise of a "performance tune", at least that's how I defeated it while still keeping my warranty.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#50

Post by john61 »

CommanderData wrote: post #21
falkooo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look at this talk of the latest CCC at 13:11 https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7904-software_defined_emissions He talks about how it is possible that the cars achieve the low results in the testcycles but produce much higher emissions on the real road. The reverse engineering in the beginning of the task is also very interesting.

I was about to post this. VW have been playing dirty tactics even after the scandal.

He demonstrated the same for Opel / GM.
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