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Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
81–90 of 100 posts
Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#82It is outrageous to suggest that the blame lies with a handful of people and not a whole division of the company. I don't work in the automotive industry, but I do work as a design engineer in the semiconductor industry and for a mature product in a highly competitive industry, I can guarantee that the external test wasn't the only test that these cars were put though. When we release a chip external reviewers will r…
One of the people named is Audi’s chief engineer, and they're both described as "being in charge of R&D" at VW. So I would presume they're pretty high up the food chain, not the low-level guys who actually wrote the if: test then: cheat bits.
Still I can't believe that so many people must have known about this and just let it happen. Sad. This is a tech oriented forum and I hope some of the engineers reading this would act differently in a similar situation.
Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#83I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker today, about why unit-test coverage is always bad unless enforced. I decided that it's because even though my boss and myself will have good intentions, we can both mutually decide (without ever discussing it) that the tests should slide - I will try to meet his deadline, he won't check too hard. Unless there are credible institutions that take that decision away fro…
This is not on the same league. Your unit-test coverage example is closer to the Toyota incident. Surely, it was a catastrophe, and lives were indeed lost, but no one actively inserted a "speed up when driver hits the breaks" feature into the firmware.
A closer analogy to the VW case is if the build bot actually did exist, but you wrote some nefarious unit test that just spit out all OK results regardless of what the exercised code did, so that you were allowed to merge whatever crap your team produce, as long as it actually compile.
If that is the case, we can discuss different possible assignations of responsibility, but you cannot claim that some good intentioned people just slide into misbehavior due to not paying enough attention. Someone had to be aware they were actively cheating!
Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#84The rest of the commenters are quick to dismiss this article as presenting scapegoats, but I'm very keen to see more in-depth investigation about how this was orchestrated. There are a lot of different ways that this type of cheating can develop over time, and simply saying "lots of people knew must have known about this" isn't very satisfying to me. There are plenty of ways that upper management can stay in the dark…
>There are plenty of ways that upper management can stay in the dark. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, BP didn't make the decisions that lead to the blowout, but created excessive pressure for cost-cutting. In the case of Barings Bank, the managers were genuinely unaware of the rogue trader's fraud, but allowed him to bypass internal controls. I read this as an exec saying: "Just get it done. I don't care how it's d…
As an engineer who worked in a couple plants and focused on QC and the like, I damn near have an allergic reaction when any level of management says something like that. I immediately assumed that sort of conversation took place, and it's a strong signal something unethical is afoot - or at least a call for something unethical. ("I'm not saying you should ignore the samples, but sometimes you get different results if you test again, you know?")
Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#85Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#86> in August 2007,[..] It rebranded the company’s diesel engine TDI—for turbocharged direct injection. Huh? VW's diesel engines had been TDIs for well over a decade at that time, for example my 1996 Golf was a TDI. The TDIs are awesome engines. I previously had a gasoline engine with the same horsepower rating, but the TDI was better in every way: unkillably high torque at low RPMs (I could go from a standing start to…
The reason people perceive diesels to be better is that they have much flatter torque vs RPM curves, so any schmuck can make them accelerate without shifting to the correct gear. If diesel engines gave better performance at the same amount of horsepowers, and used less fuel, why don't we see diesel engines used in horsepower-limited racing car classes? Why has Ferrari and Lamborghini not ever offered a single diesel…
"The Audi R10 TDI, usually abbreviated to R10, is a racing car from the German car manufacturer Audi. The car is a classic at Le Mans, winning every year since its introduction until it was replaced by the R15. [..] It was the first diesel-powered car to win either of those events. "
Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#87Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like the majority of people saying these are scapegoats didn't read the article that closely. It clearly says these two engineers were top aides to the former CEO. Regulator's aren't stupid enough to be fooled by a couple of junior engineers being offered up as a sacrifice. They'll definitely go after the highest-level people they can get.
>Regulator's aren't stupid enough to be fooled by a couple of junior engineers being offered up as a sacrifice. They'll definitely go after the highest-level people they can get. Maybe in a just world. I don't hold out too much hope.
Well, this time the German government is pissed. There are powerful people at both ends this time.
Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#89Scapegoats, in other words. People don't do this on their own.
These guys were heads of the teams of other engineers that constructed the software.
Re: Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers
#90Scapegoats, in other words. People don't do this on their own.
These guys were heads of the teams of other engineers that constructed the software.