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Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

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Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#61

Post by hattmall »

vuln wrote: post #25
fragmede wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? Are the parts necessary to meet emissions requirements extra expensive and so are only worth installing on commercial vehicles which are more expensive, vs passenger vehicles have a different profit margin, or is it something else, like commerical vehicles have lower standards for noise or higher standards for maintenance?

Commercial diesel engines run for millions of miles / tens of thousands of hours versus passenger or non commercial is measured in hundreds of thousands of miles typically and thousands of hours. Commercials idle for far longer especially in dense areas like cities, rest stops, distribution centers and ports. Maintaining a fleet of diesels can be written off as a business expense (OPEX) while most non commercial use…

There's also no real competitive force. Gasoline isn't a viable alternative in most cases.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#62

Post by spacecadet »

Syonyk wrote: post #5

Is there any detailed information anyone can find on what they allegedly did, at a technical level? "Defeat device" is such a broad category of term that it's useless for understanding the details of what it's claimed they did. The Justice.gov writeup [0] isn't any better. > The company allegedly installed defeat devices on 630,000 model year 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. The company also alleg…

Engine computers can easily be reprogrammed to make the engine run at all sorts of different operating bands. You could easily detect state emissions equipment, since it must pull information from the ECU. To me- these devices are either pre-programmed operating modes that produce clean emissions but the vehicle would not operate under this tune (emissions testing is often not under load) and so once back on the road, returns to the original operating mode. OR, entirely fake modules created to trick emissions systems without altering the operating mode.

PS check out Megasquirt if you want to learn about DIY Fuel Injection. I ran a home brew Megasquirt/Megaspark system off an IBM laptop in my Volvo 740 Turbo back in the 90s, one of the things that got me into hardware.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#63

Post by recursive »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #42
AmVess wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transition to what, exactly? Pixie dust? Unicorn farts? There's nothing to transition to .

Not to mention that they're often burning stuff behind the curtain to power the non-burning stuff . As long as it's out of sight it's okay.

There are lot of parts in the network. No one claimed they would all make a step transition overnight. Part of that is to replace parts of the network which continue to work, while being capable moving the other parts forward.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#64

Post by rightbyte »

Syonyk wrote: post #54
Guvante wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC other manufacturers would detect the usage pattern of tests and run cleaner as a form of bypass. Similarly you could lie on the OC2 response.

Sure, I know what other manufacturers did. I want to know the technical details of what Cummins allegedly did "enough that they're not arguing a massive fine, while claiming they didn't do it on purpose." Claiming they "installed defeat devices" isn't nearly enough detail. How did it alter either the engine combustion cycle or the emissions control system behavior?

Who knows? I believe VW chief engineers got in jail not knowing what their subordinates did. I really tried to understand the VW scandal but I could not.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#65

Post by Gibbon1 »

avidiax wrote: post #15
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

VW did it Renault probably did it These guys probably did I think there was a point where regulators said "diesel puts out lung damaging levels of pollutants killing X people a year. We shall either ban diesel engines ... or make manufacturers make diesel engines that don't pollute that badly" So they set a safe level. And no manufacturer has been able to achieve the technology to meet that level. I know some manufac…

> And no manufacturer has been able to achieve the technology to meet that level. Urea-injection seems to work (that's what Mercedes does). But it requires another tank and special equipment. And VW could meet the emissions requirements. That was the cheat. When they detected that they were being tested, they tuned the engine to meet emissions requirements. During normal use, the engine would make better power or eff…

Random idea. Change emissions requirements based on GPS coordinates. That's sort of what they do in shipping. Ships burn cleaner fuel in port. If a semi is driving around Los Angeles low emissions are important. In middle of Kansas not as much.

That said phasing out diesels is better idea over the medium run.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#66

Post by KennyBlanken »

sottol wrote: post #14
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

VW did it Renault probably did it These guys probably did I think there was a point where regulators said "diesel puts out lung damaging levels of pollutants killing X people a year. We shall either ban diesel engines ... or make manufacturers make diesel engines that don't pollute that badly" So they set a safe level. And no manufacturer has been able to achieve the technology to meet that level. I know some manufac…

Used to be known as emissions cheating before VW, now it's emission fraud. Imo every manufacturer does/did it for gas and diesel engines. I've heard of gas cars in the 90s assuming that they're on a test stand if you rolled down the window shortly after starting and kept it down and reduced power output. And stories like that.

I've never heard the bit about windows and I don't see how that wouldn't be very obvious in a pre-canbus car; "why does the ECU have a sense line to the driver's side window?"

What is easy is looking for the car to be started and then held at a raised idle. Once cars had traction/stability control, the ECU could look for mismatched front/rear wheel speed, or the steering wheel not being turned more than a few degrees.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#67

Post by anigbrowl »

AmVess wrote: post #27
chrismartin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more reason it's time to transition away from burning stuff to produce energy.

Transition to what, exactly? Pixie dust? Unicorn farts? There's nothing to transition to .

Sarcasm doesn't improve anything, plus it's rude.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#68

Post by dcormier »

spacecadet wrote: post #62
Syonyk wrote: post #5

Is there any detailed information anyone can find on what they allegedly did, at a technical level? "Defeat device" is such a broad category of term that it's useless for understanding the details of what it's claimed they did. The Justice.gov writeup [0] isn't any better. > The company allegedly installed defeat devices on 630,000 model year 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. The company also alleg…

Engine computers can easily be reprogrammed to make the engine run at all sorts of different operating bands. You could easily detect state emissions equipment, since it must pull information from the ECU. To me- these devices are either pre-programmed operating modes that produce clean emissions but the vehicle would not operate under this tune (emissions testing is often not under load) and so once back on the road…

VW's detected emissions testing when the steering wheel was never turned.

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#69

Post by KennyBlanken »

spacecadet wrote: post #62
Syonyk wrote: post #5

Is there any detailed information anyone can find on what they allegedly did, at a technical level? "Defeat device" is such a broad category of term that it's useless for understanding the details of what it's claimed they did. The Justice.gov writeup [0] isn't any better. > The company allegedly installed defeat devices on 630,000 model year 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. The company also alleg…

Engine computers can easily be reprogrammed to make the engine run at all sorts of different operating bands. You could easily detect state emissions equipment, since it must pull information from the ECU. To me- these devices are either pre-programmed operating modes that produce clean emissions but the vehicle would not operate under this tune (emissions testing is often not under load) and so once back on the road…

Manufacturers were doing this well before OBD2. They'd look for a condition where the car was started and then idle raised and held raised, for example.

Once things like CANBUS became popular, as well as ECUs getting integrated with ABS/traction control, they'd look for drive wheels spinning and but not undriven wheels. When stability control systems became a thing, they could monitor steering angle and look for the car moving but not being steered, ditto for the accelerometer not detecting acceleration and cornering.

Tuners knew all about this shit because they disassembled ECU code and looked at ROM formats. They could point you right to the table used for when the ECU thought it was undergoing emissions testing. The cheating was plain as day and no government regulators cared enough to look. They probably even knew it was going on.

Here's the billion dollar question: the ECUs aren't developed by the car manufacturers. They aren't even coded by thr manufacturers. The car manufacturer just puts in maps for various engine parameters. The ECUs are supplied by companies like Bosch, Hitachi, Nippon-Denso, Magneti-Marelli, and so on.

They almost certainly knew this was going on and were complicit. Why have none of them been held responsible?

Re: Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

#70

Post by bastard_op »

thelastgallon wrote: post #56

Air pollution kills 10 million/year[1]. All the legacy carmakers + fossil fuel companies are responsible for this. Nearly all the big car manufactures have done this[2-6], and probably continue to do so, these small fines are not a deterrent, just cost of business. 1) Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That as Normal? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p... 2) https…

I was just thinking "wasn't Volkswagen vilified for this not long ago?"

So basically all automakers with diesel do the needful and fake around results anyways. I guess these rules are merely up for interpretation loosely, and this is why the planet is dying.

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