E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches • Hacker News Board

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#111

Post by monkbroc » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 2:41 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #107

monkbroc wrote: post #85

Background: I used to be an automotive software engineer. I speak for myself only here. Whenever the topic of automotive software comes up on HN there are comments alongs the lines of "global variables bad", but not much construtive feedback. I want to explain some of the tradeoffs that lead to the architecture used in automotive software to get a better discussion going with HN readers about that architecture. tl;dr…

So you can use global variables and the like, but is there any progress in going higher level than C in industry? In which case you use global variables and whatnot, but you have static assertions about things like "this is only written to in one spot" For example, I know there's an embedded systems company that writes everything in Haskell, and running their Haskell program actually generates "safe" C code that they…

Without going into specifics, there was a static analysis tool that was part of the toolchain that caught multiple writes in different modules or in tasks of different priorities. It was a build error unless allowed on a case-by-case basis.

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#112

Post by cplease » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 2:42 AM UTC

danjayh wrote: post #62

kbenson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that all of the designs have in common is poor performance and piss-poor fuel economy. At what point does it become economical to just run gasoline instead of diesel then (that is, manufacturers selling gasoline models)? If we are talking about diesel still being economical instead of gasoline, but just not as economical as when it was allowed to be more polluting, I'm not sure I can muster much sympathy…

> At what point does it become economical to just run gasoline instead of diesel then (that is, manufacturers selling gasoline models)? If we are talking about diesel still being economical instead of gasoline, but just not as economical as when it was allowed to be more polluting, I'm not sure I can muster much sympathy (but I'm fairly uneducated on the subject, so it may just a matter of not knowing enough). People…

> People run diesels due to durability. They run at lower RPM than similarly designed gas engines, and last longer between rebuilds.

This makes plenty of sense for heavy machinery and trucks. This makes no sense for passenger cars, and little sense for most consumer SUVs and light-duty trucks. On any decent modern car a gasoline engine with proper maintenance is the about the last thing to go. How often does a typical car owner rebuild their engine? By the time you get to 200K, a car is typically a money hole for reasons having little to do with the engine. This goes double in northern climates with real winters. By the time the engine needs a rebuild you have a rust-bucket clunker that should be replaced with a more contemporary model.

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#113

Post by monkbroc » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 2:44 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #106

bsimpson wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an embedded developer, so I don't have much value to add re: architecture; however, this caught my eye: > The microprocessor has to run for 10+ years in a wide range of temperatures and be dirt cheap, so you end up with specs like 180 MHz, 4 MB of flash and 128 KB of RAM. If I'm paying tens of thousands of dollars for a car, how come they're using the cheapest possible components? If tinkerers can ship the Ra…

$30 Raspberry Pi (2) reboots itself when exposed to strong light. The RPi line is also totally unreliable, it tends to bug up and/or crash after running for too long. The car components are made to different spec than consumer electronics (for starters, there are several types of component, depending on what "range of temperatures" you need to operate them in; e.g. the stuff that goes into the traffic lights in north…

All good points.

The CPU, Flash and RAM share the silicon die with lots of specialized peripherals like CAN controllers and hardware timer units. There's a lot more on the chip than just a CPU.

Also, cost is king in automotive...

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#114

Post by mrpippy » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 2:57 AM UTC

bri3d wrote: post #52

TheHolyLancer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porsche have a bit more go juice than a lot of the other stuff. If they did a ECU remap (likely) coupled with some hw changes to the engine (maybe, maybe not), they would likely have at least suspected something. Like, I can tune my Lancer Evo, with stock parts, to around 360 chp / 290 whp from 291 chp / 220 whp. This will put more strain on the parts, to nuke the little gas mileage, up the emissions (no CARB), and v…

The rated horsepower on the 3.0 TDI in the Cayenne is the exact same as in all of the other applications I listed - do you have any source that it had a different map installed? I'm kind of basing my whole theory on the concept that it didn't because the rated output is identical.

I wouldn't be surprised if Porsche customized the throttle mapping and/or transmission programming. ECU remapping would be a bigger job though

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#115

Post by TheCondor » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 3:11 AM UTC

knieveltech wrote: post #110

superuser2 wrote: post #96

I'm conflicted. What do people think about the ethics of buying (non-diesel) Volkswagen cars at this point? Obviously new cars pad VW's profits and reward bad behavior. But what about used ones? Seems like prices will be plummeting. And if you like the cars, seems like a great time to buy.

I have one of the cars that will be impacted by the recall. Performance and fuel economy are both top notch. The cabin fit and finish are on par with vehicles three times the price. I'll certainly be holding on to mine. If the used vehicle price plummets I'd definitely consider getting a 2nd one for my wife.

Will you comply with the recall?

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#116

Post by jevinskie » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 3:33 AM UTC

monkbroc wrote: post #85

Background: I used to be an automotive software engineer. I speak for myself only here. Whenever the topic of automotive software comes up on HN there are comments alongs the lines of "global variables bad", but not much construtive feedback. I want to explain some of the tradeoffs that lead to the architecture used in automotive software to get a better discussion going with HN readers about that architecture. tl;dr…

Testing also included very expensive (SW license cost, now HW), cycle accurate simulators at Delphi. ASIC specs were implemented into C and hooked into the simulator. Prototype firmware was compiled and run on the CPU simulator and "board" (netlist of simulated ASICs). This helped discover bugs/spec deficiencies before ASIC tape-out (save $$$). Of course, it was all wrapped in a Tk "dashboard/test unit" GUI for the other teams to consume. Tk was actually quite a pleasure to use, especially when interfacing with C!

EDIT: It basically provided at least two implementations for an ASIC by independent teams. The ASIC guys would implement the real deal in an HDL and test it. However, full system tests where the HDL simulation is hooked up with CPU simulation were too slow. By implementing the same spec in C, you gain simulation performance and get a second implementation and set of eyes that can help find bugs.

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#117

Post by oxryly1 » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 3:51 AM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #4

Clearly it's the fault of those pesky engineers again, how else could you explain the same type of cheating across multiple divisions of the company. They only other explanation would involve Management, and obviously that's not it. Though the fact that none of the other manufacturers spoke up about the violation of emissions standards when when they must have done their own tests to see how VW managed to get emissio…

It is the fault of those pesky engineers. Of course, these particular engineers were promoted to top management, so...

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#118

Post by knorby » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 4:13 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #100

knorby wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was comparing methods, not scale. The scale of an impact of one really bad car when it comes to certain emissions shouldn't be understated; it is important to remember that VW was simply seeking pollution they could get away with. Emissions tests are done on individual cars rather than a bulk standard by make/model for that exact reason. VW is the second largest auto-maker in the world...few comparisons are going t…

Scale matters a lot, though. The EPA's goal is to regulate the overall quality of the atmosphere. To the extent that they regulate individual machines, it's just because of their contribution to the total. When something is done by a few idiot hobbyists, it's just not worth trying to enforce. The effort would be better used elsewhere. Individual cars are tested for emissions not so much to catch illegal modifications…

If the EPA had to tackle the problem standalone, then, sure, the scale wouldn't make it sensible. It could end up influencing whatever regulation goes into cars to prevent this sort of dishonesty in the future. Perhaps cars will need to start logging to a black box of sorts to track engine related settings, or emissions will need active monitoring and logging.

It is also worth noting that the hobbyist solution has the potential of becoming widespread. If VW merely does a software fix, more than a few owners with suddenly sluggish cars might look into the devices. There is nothing specific about 'rolling coal' by trucks...most uses of the devices are purely for performance tuning.

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#119

Post by throwaway2048 » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 4:25 AM UTC

S_A_P wrote: post #88

I definitely think management was involved here. However, its entirely possible that some management was not aware of the details. I doubt that more than some couple tens of people at VW group know intimate details of the VW diesel ECU. With badge engineering/platform sharing, its possible that Porsche/Audi/VW or whoever was not directly responsible for delivering the code could be in the dark about it. Im sure they…

NOX fumes kill tens to hundreds of thousands of people every year, there isn't many "bigger problems in life" than things like that.

Pollution has very diffuse, but very real human and ecological consequences. One of the reasons this fight is so hard is because they are so hard to reason about or even witness. It took systematic study of events like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952 to realize how many people stuff like NOX emissions kill and disable.

What if doing something took a day off of the life of every single person in the world. In terms of "days of life destroyed" you would have an event unparalleled by any genocide in history, but yet how many people would even care?

Re: E.P.A. Finds More VW Cheating Software, Including in Porsches

#120

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 4:27 AM UTC

danjayh wrote: post #62

kbenson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that all of the designs have in common is poor performance and piss-poor fuel economy. At what point does it become economical to just run gasoline instead of diesel then (that is, manufacturers selling gasoline models)? If we are talking about diesel still being economical instead of gasoline, but just not as economical as when it was allowed to be more polluting, I'm not sure I can muster much sympathy…

> At what point does it become economical to just run gasoline instead of diesel then (that is, manufacturers selling gasoline models)? If we are talking about diesel still being economical instead of gasoline, but just not as economical as when it was allowed to be more polluting, I'm not sure I can muster much sympathy (but I'm fairly uneducated on the subject, so it may just a matter of not knowing enough). People…

> The EPA made standards that are impossible to meet using any available technology without causing some or all of the problems I mentioned.

I think you're being hyperbolic here in saying that the standards are impossible to meet. What about urea injection? That works pretty well, right?

But even ignoring that, it's not like there's some god-given right to run diesel engines. Either the emissions standards are reasonable or they aren't. That's the only consideration here. If they are reasonable, and most diesels can't meet them, well then too bad, diesel is just an inferior technology. There's alternatives that don't find it impossible to meet environmental/health standards.