Volkswagen Fraud

[overthere]

Agreed, but the largest cause of emissions

---SNIP---

are much "cleaner" than they use to be.

Yep, me too on the removing emissions gear especially air pumps. I recall 'tuning' my brothers monster Oldsmobile by removing the hood, driving down the highway and fiddling with the distributor until it ran right under load. The factory timing settings, checked with a timing light, didn't mean much with the air pumps etc removed. Every mechanics top of the tool chest had a bunch of small pipe fitting plugs and rubber caps for the various disconnected ports and hoses. After plugging them all, we'd check for vacuum leaks with a can of starter fluid(aka 'rooster juice')- if the engine stumbled when you sp[rayed near a port, there was a leak....

Alberta does not have emissions testing, not for many many years. Cars may be cleaner than they used to be, but their overall fuel economy or more accurately overall consumption is not much better in the last 20 years.

Edited October 3, 2015 by Charles Anthony
[---SNIP---]

[msj]

A couple of things to add to this:

1) A podcast from October 9 with Ken Feinberg http://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/masters-in-business/

It is interesting because Feinberg is known as the "master of disaster" and has been involved in the payouts for 9/11, BP and GM.

He mentions that VW is a property damage claim rather than a claim for lives.

I take this to mean that this is going to be quite costly for VW - to fix, to reputation, to used vehicle values etc...

Some of those numbers will become hard, known quantities - by January we should know the approximate cost of a fix, for example.

2) This link is an early attempt to forecast the effect to VW stock. http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.ca/2015/10/putting-price-tag-on-scandal-sturm-und.html

There is lots to think about here.

[Wilber]

Yep, me too on the removing emissions gear especially air pumps. I recall 'tuning' my brothers monster Oldsmobile by removing the hood, driving down the highway and fiddling with the distributor until it ran right under load. The factory timing settings, checked with a timing light, didn't mean much with the air pumps etc removed. Every mechanics top of the tool chest had a bunch of small pipe fitting plugs and rubber caps for the various disconnected ports and hoses. After plugging them all, we'd check for vacuum leaks with a can of starter fluid(aka 'rooster juice')- if the engine stumbled when you sp[rayed near a port, there was a leak....

Alberta does not have emissions testing, not for many many years. Cars may be cleaner than they used to be, but their overall fuel economy or more accurately overall consumption is not much better in the last 20 years.

Yep, me too on the removing emissions gear especially air pumps. I recall 'tuning' my brothers monster Oldsmobile by removing the hood, driving down the highway and fiddling with the distributor until it ran right under load. The factory timing settings, checked with a timing light, didn't mean much with the air pumps etc removed. Every mechanics top of the tool chest had a bunch of small pipe fitting plugs and rubber caps for the various disconnected ports and hoses. After plugging them all, we'd check for vacuum leaks with a can of starter fluid(aka 'rooster juice')- if the engine stumbled when you sp[rayed near a port, there was a leak....

Alberta does not have emissions testing, not for many many years. Cars may be cleaner than they used to be, but their overall fuel economy or more accurately overall consumption is not much better in the last 20 years.

Much more difficult today with engines and transmissions completely integrated units, all controlled by computers. Of course they can be reprogrammed but the EPA is really starting to crack down on tuner makers who mess with emission controls

Engine transmission combinations have become quite a bit more efficient and lot more powerful, but safety regs and consumer demands for standard equipment that used to be only available on the most expensive luxury vehicles, have kept making them heavier. Reducing weight has become just as important to manufacturers as power plant efficiency and aerodynamics. Hence Ford going to an aluminum body on its half ton trucks. Expect a lot more aluminum in vehicles.

[msj]

Another thought provoking article by one of my favourite Canadians living in San Diego area: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-theory-of-the-volkswagen-scandal

It is speculative but an interesting look at how geek culture could lead a company down the road to cheating.

[bush_cheney2004]

....It is speculative but an interesting look at how geek culture could lead a company down the road to cheating.

Interesting piece, but it's a bit simplistic with regard to what actually happens within engineering and design ("geek") cultures. It is very common to develop and deploy methods to set performance limits while also being able to override ("defeat") those limits for any number of reasons, from development and production testing all the way to field use. This applies to defense systems, industrial machines, automotive, medical devices, aerospace, etc.

In other words, the "defeat devices" are often designed on purpose without regard to any normalization of deviance by an organization. Morton Thiokol's engineering director refused to sign off on Challenger's cold weather launch because of empirical data that proved the o-ring seals were likely to fail. It was the pressure (and costs) of NASA's "go fever" that pushed the ill fated launch forward, not the "geeks" with their calculators.

As I have stated earlier, many OBDII emissions compliant systems for autos have perfectly legal cold start and "limp home" modes that purposely defeat engine management firmware routines for emissions control. This is the legal reality on the ground, and I think VW and probably some other manufacturers took advantage of the situation. Also, many electronics subsystems are provided by Tier 2 & 3 suppliers, which adds another layer of engineering design and management. We already know that Bosch told VW not to exploit "defeat" subroutines in their embedded firmware.

I don't think this was a case of "geek culture" deviance, but willful intent. We shall see....

[Wilber]

Another thought provoking article by one of my favourite Canadians living in San Diego area: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/an-engineering-theory-of-the-volkswagen-scandal

It is speculative but an interesting look at how geek culture could lead a company down the road to cheating.

Interesting article and quite plausible. There is a part of human nature that tempts people to be too smart for their own good and do things just because they can. A form of showing off to your peers.

[TimG]

I don't think this was a case of "geek culture" deviance, but willful intent. We shall see....

"Geek culture" in embedded systems development is different too because the stakes are higher (look at the auto breaking s/w in Lexus - I was impressed that lawyers could not find any spurious defects in the code that could be used to make Toyota liable). I think this problem emerged because the European authorities accepted companies that gamed the fuel economy tests with special tires and vehicle stripped of extra weight which create the expectation that a little trickery is fine. Add to that the requirement that the engine had to be put in a special mode for emissions testing because it is hard to get accurate results and you have a situation where it would be very easy to rationalize outright fraud as a means to get "more accurate readings". Edited October 17, 2015 by TimG

[kimmy]

That's right Tim, there's gotta be a way to blame this on the government somehow!

-k

[TimG]

That's right Tim, there's gotta be a way to blame this on the government somehow!

Failure to understand the complete picture, which includes the actions of the government regulatory agencies, helps no one. In this case, the government regulatory agency did ignore the cheating that went on for fuel economy which created an environment where every company had to cheat lest they look bad compared to their competition. The regulatory agencies have since realized their errors and are fixing their processes which is as it should. The fact that such cheating went on for years is a relevant fact.

[GostHacked]

Failure to understand the complete picture, which includes the actions of the government regulatory agencies, helps no one. In this case, the government regulatory agency did ignore the cheating that went on for fuel economy which created an environment where every company had to cheat lest they look bad compared to their competition. The regulatory agencies have since realized their errors and are fixing their processes which is as it should. The fact that such cheating went on for years is a relevant fact.

But it's just not our government that missed it. Everywhere that VWs are sold end up missing it as well. VW royally screwed up and they got caught. But now I want to see a larger investigation to ALL vehicle emissions and the computer systems that monitor/mitigate them. You think VW is the only one doing it? They just happen to be the first that got caught.

[Wilber]

But it's just not our government that missed it. Everywhere that VWs are sold end up missing it as well. VW royally screwed up and they got caught. But now I want to see a larger investigation to ALL vehicle emissions and the computer systems that monitor/mitigate them. You think VW is the only one doing it? They just happen to be the first that got caught.

I'm sure all the diesels being imported into NA (particularly VW) have been thoroughly checked since this came to light. It is an issue with one engine only, the 2 L four cylinder. The 3L V6's are not included and are still for sale.

[TimG]

I'm sure all the diesels being imported into NA (particularly VW) have been thoroughly checked since this came to light. It is an issue with one engine only, the 2 L four cylinder. The 3L V6's are not included and are still for sale.

It is also only an issue because VW did not want to install the additional pollution control systems that the more expensive cars have. This was clearly a question of VW circumventing the rules to gain advantage rather than being forced to circumvent the rules because everyone else was doing it.

[Wilber]

It is also only an issue because VW did not want to install the additional pollution control systems that the more expensive cars have. This was clearly a question of VW circumventing the rules to gain advantage rather than being forced to circumvent the rules because everyone else was doing it.

Quite likely. i'm pretty sure we will find out what happened.

[Topaz]

On NBC the other night, they had a listing of cars that were the best and naturally the Korean and Japanese were on the top and the only North American built car in the list was Buick. Many problems with the NA cars is the companies are keeping up with tech. and there fore many are having problems with transmissions especially Jeep, but is still selling well because of its looks.

[Michael Hardner]

and there fore many are having problems with transmissions especially Jeep, but is still selling well because of its looks.

http://www.truedelta.com/Jeep-Wrangler/reliability-146

I rented a new Jeep for 3 weeks this summer to drive to the southwest US and I loved it. The stats don't bear out your claim either.

[cybercoma]

The grocery-getters that they've been building, like the Compass for instance, have had a lot of transmission problems.

[Michael Hardner]

I had a Wrangler and was jazzed but I am NOT a "car person". Bought my first vehicle at age 40.

[Michael Hardner]

...and I'm drifting the thread again but this may be a good topic. I will try...