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[ExtremeTech] VW’s Diesel Defeat Devices Finally Located, Cracked Wide Open

7K views 84 replies 41 participants last post by  superstition222 
#1 ·
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According to the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, the code in question was masquerading as if it was related to engine noise.
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Now, you might be thinking that a single code model couldn't possibly compare all the variables in play between various test facilities, and that some cars should have shown a fault simply due to random chance. But VW was aware of that possibility and took steps to prevent it. Their defeat device had ten separate profiles to allow it to detect various permutations in test scenarios.

Not all the defeat devices were sophisticated. The Fiat 500X (not manufactured by VW) has a much simpler defeat device. The vehicle's emission control system runs for 26 minutes and 40 seconds after you first start the car, period. That's long enough to pass most emission tests, and it doesn't try to detect if the vehicle is being tested. But VW's work was extremely sophisticated, it evolved over time, and the company's claims that this was all instituted by a few rogue engineers are more farcical than ever.
Source.
 
#3 ·
It seems this may be a bigger problem altogether. Something that more than just VW is doing and to some extent I wouldn't be surprised if most all of them are doing SOMETHING. Seems testing may have to get a tad more sophisticated to combat these issues and massive, massive fines should be put out (with that money going to something useful in lowering greenhouse gases) to deter others from doing it.

Bums me out though. I want a small diesel engine in a small truck. I'd love a Ranger or Tacoma with a 4cylinder turbo diesel. This may make it to where we never see such a thing in the states. Hell, I'd even love the Subaru flat 4 diesel they have. That'd be amazing in my old Impreza or even just in a Forester or Outback. I'd probably choose that over the 3.6 H6 which is an excellent motor.
 
#4 ·
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Originally Posted by PearlJammzz View Post

It seems this may be a bigger problem altogether. Something that more than just VW is doing and to some extent I wouldn't be surprised if most all of them are doing SOMETHING. Seems testing may have to get a tad more sophisticated to combat these issues and massive, massive fines should be put out (with that money going to something useful in lowering greenhouse gases) to deter others from doing it.

Bums me out though. I want a small diesel engine in a small truck. I'd love a Ranger or Tacoma with a 4cylinder turbo diesel. This may make it to where we never see such a thing in the states. Hell, I'd even love the Subaru flat 4 diesel they have. That'd be amazing in my old Impreza or even just in a Forester or Outback. I'd probably choose that over the 3.6 H6 which is an excellent motor.
I agree the companies that do this need punished, but fined and given to something like global warming??....Are you kidding me??!!...You do know any fines a company bears for doing this will inevitably end up making the cars more expensive, hence we pay that fine, not the company. ...They simply pass the cost onto the consumer....So it wouldnt prevent ALL of the companies from doing the exact thing, no skin off their nose.

However a better system, would be to fine those companies that do such shenanigans, put that in a fund and at the end of that year take those funds and give it to those companies that comply with the regulations without having such software(or other means) to cheat for the company. NO company wishes to fund their competition, just makes it harder to compete....The fined company would either have to raise prices to make up for the fine and lose marketshare due to higher prices, OR the keep the price the same as their competition and take a REAL hit to their pocketbook....This would encourage companies to comply without using such cheats.
 
#5 ·
Related news: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/05/diesel-cant-catch-a-break-lawsuits-over-emissions-hit-gm-fiat-chrysler/

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Two auto manufacturers are in legal crosshairs this week because of emissions from their diesel vehicles.

The US Department of Justice sued Fiat Chrysler of America (FCA) on Tuesday over 103,828 diesel Ram 1500s and Jeep Grand Cherokees. The DOJ claims that the cars contain "at least eight software-based features" to meddle with the cars' emissions control systems.

And today, two plaintiffs have asked a judge to let them proceed with a class-action lawsuit against General Motors. They claim that 705,000 of the American carmaker's diesel Silverado and Sierra HD trucks are giving off nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in excess of what a consumer would expect and what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) legally allows.
 
#6 ·
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Originally Posted by soth7676 View Post

I agree the companies that do this need punished, but fined and given to something like global warming??....Are you kidding me??!!...You do know any fines a company bears for doing this will inevitably end up making the cars more expensive, hence we pay that fine, not the company. ...They simply pass the cost onto the consumer....So it wouldnt prevent ALL of the companies from doing the exact thing, no skin off their nose.

However a better system, would be to fine those companies that do such shenanigans, put that in a fund and at the end of that year take those funds and give it to those companies that comply with the regulations without having such software(or other means) to cheat for the company. NO company wishes to fund their competition, just makes it harder to compete....The fined company would either have to raise prices to make up for the fine and lose marketshare due to higher prices, OR the keep the price the same as their competition and take a REAL hit to their pocketbook....This would encourage companies to comply without using such cheats.
Which is why the people responsible...as in the ones who were directly at fault should be fined and potentially jailed for fraud-related charges.

You can't "punish" a corp because they accout for it in their bottom line, you can only shut them completely down via bankrupting them with unreasonable fines (which will be fought in court) or you go after the individual who made the decision that allowed the scenario to happen.
 
#7 ·
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Originally Posted by DIYDeath View Post

Which is why the people responsible...as in the ones who were directly at fault should be fined and potentially jailed for fraud-related charges.

You can't "punish" a corp because they accout for it in their bottom line, you can only shut them completely down via bankrupting them with unreasonable fines (which will be fought in court) or you go after the individual who made the decision that allowed the scenario to happen.
Actually you CAN punish a corporation for this had this happen at our OWN facility .... We make main engine fuel pumps for airplanes(commercial and military)...We had recently switched from one vendor to another for a housing and cover, we originally had a vendor in Minnesota doing the work for us, we switched from the Minnesota company to one in India... The moment we switched we noticed that the parts were not correct...the threads were off...some of the bolt threads were actually SUPERGLUED in rather than pressure fitted in...

Every time we go with a new vendor we are supposed to do a "first article" inspection on the first shipment...a couple of parts get inspected 100% to the specs and if met it is approved and the parts that were inspected are put in storage so if there any questions they original part is there to re-examine it... Well the higher ups were so desperate for cheaper parts no first article inspection was done and no part was in storage, they kept blaming the employees on the floor for the parts failing on the planes(we do further processes on the parts when they come in)... It was SOOOO bad it actually shut down the Pratt and Whitney production line cause of this...

When we asked to see the first article parts for examination we found out there were none!!!.... Well scapegoats were found to placate the FAA and the customer and those that got fired for their "responsibilty" in the incident, all mentioned to the floor employees outside of work place they were pressured(threatening with firing them) if they didn't get the cheaper parts the company desired.... Yes these individuals were responsible directly with this, but when the placed between a rock and a hard place with the company able to have deniability when the crap hits the fan... Yeah plenty of more future scapegoats for the company to hire, as long as they can claim innocence when things go wrong.... Seen it first hand....

BUT if the company is held responsible for the actions of THEIR employees, would make a corporation vigilent to the going ons of their people rather than willingly turning a blind eye when it benefits the company....
 
#8 ·
Well this is what happens when some idiot without the proper qualifications starts to dictate what is allowed and what is not( i mean the useless EuroX thingy). I really want to see a comparison between how much pollution was prevented with all this vs how much pollution was crated because all of it when they manufacture and then dispose them.... It would be a very interesting thing to read.
 
#9 ·
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Originally Posted by soth7676 View Post

I agree the companies that do this need punished, but fined and given to something like global warming??....Are you kidding me??!!...You do know any fines a company bears for doing this will inevitably end up making the cars more expensive, hence we pay that fine, not the company. ...They simply pass the cost onto the consumer....So it wouldnt prevent ALL of the companies from doing the exact thing, no skin off their nose.

However a better system, would be to fine those companies that do such shenanigans, put that in a fund and at the end of that year take those funds and give it to those companies that comply with the regulations without having such software(or other means) to cheat for the company. NO company wishes to fund their competition, just makes it harder to compete....The fined company would either have to raise prices to make up for the fine and lose marketshare due to higher prices, OR the keep the price the same as their competition and take a REAL hit to their pocketbook....This would encourage companies to comply without using such cheats.
Your suggestion that the corp will simply pass those costs to the consumer and cause higher prices isn't without merit. But you're forgetting that this is a corp with a lot of competition. Them raising their prices due to their own policies would be terrible business and they WILL lose market share. Plus all the terrible PR they have gotten the past year definetely wont help. Overall it would be a very bad idea for them to raise their prices.
I'm all for the fines to go to offsetting the damage they have done, seems like the best route to go. Paying corps for simply following the law sounds a bit ridiculous.
 
#11 ·
Yeah really, rouge engineers is ridiculous. Usually understaffed and constantly dealing with BC problems, engineers love to take unpaid overtime to give cars extra power and worse emissions, because you know, it really matters to them. The automaker who depends on these "rouge" defeat devices, nah they had nothing to do with it. Why would they want to sell more cars?
 
#13 ·
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Originally Posted by nvidiaftw12 View Post

Yeah really, rouge engineers is ridiculous. Usually understaffed and constantly dealing with BC problems, engineers love to take unpaid overtime to give cars extra power and worse emissions, because you know, it really matters to them. The automaker who depends on these "rouge" defeat devices, nah they had nothing to do with it. Why would they want to sell more cars?
Lots of people cheat when pressured to meet goals that they believe are unachievable, especially when their job is on the line.

The larger the conspiracy, the less likely it is to exist.
 
#14 ·
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Originally Posted by Mookster View Post

Lots of people cheat when pressured to meet goals that they believe are unachievable, especially when their job is on the line.

The larger the conspiracy, the less likely it is to exist.
Watergate was pretty big.

I'd say its more based on how dumb the theory is, or at least some other metric related to the KISS principle.

That aside, cant wait for when we find out DEF is garbage
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#15 ·
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Originally Posted by Mookster View Post

The larger the conspiracy, the less likely it is to exist.
The more profitable a conspiracy is, the more likely it is to exist. (That includes the cost/benefit ratio in terms of how likely it is to be caught and what penalties will be levied.)

If General Smedley Butler is to be believed (and I do believe him) war is a conspiracy. Are you claiming something like WWI was a small matter?

Everyone should read this.
 
#16 ·
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Originally Posted by silverwing View Post

Your suggestion that the corp will simply pass those costs to the consumer and cause higher prices isn't without merit. But you're forgetting that this is a corp with a lot of competition. Them raising their prices due to their own policies would be terrible business and they WILL lose market share. Plus all the terrible PR they have gotten the past year definetely wont help. Overall it would be a very bad idea for them to raise their prices.
I'm all for the fines to go to offsetting the damage they have done, seems like the best route to go. Paying corps for simply following the law sounds a bit ridiculous.
You seems to missed the point of my statement....if it is easier for a company to simply pay the fine then engineer their cars to meet the regulations it wouldnt prevent ALL the companies from doing it and merely pass those to the consumer....HOWEVER if the fines were set in a fund to reward those that DO properly follow those regs, it would encourage companies to actually meet the regs without cheats therefore not only NOT being fined, but getting rewarded for it.... Also discouraging those from attempting to pull the stunts some of theses companies are attempting... Using the fines to merely "fix" the damage done by this, we are talking goverment beauracrats here....If you tell me they are going to be truly careful and thoughtful with the use of those funds, well i got a bridge in New York I would love to sell you, pretty cheap no less...
 
#18 ·
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Originally Posted by ILoveHighDPI View Post

I still consider the "Rogue Engineers" heroes.
The amount of restrictions placed on the rest of the world simply due to "California" is ludicrous. VW was saving the world from insanity, the emissions that they failed on were harmless to people, it's sad that they got caught.
You are a contemptible fool.

These limits are put in place for the benefit of all,take time to understand the reasons before such ridiculous statements.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ILoveHighDPI View Post

I still consider the "Rogue Engineers" heroes.
The amount of restrictions placed on the rest of the world simply due to "California" is ludicrous. VW was saving the world from insanity, the emissions that they failed on were harmless to people, it's sad that they got caught.
They're not harmless. Countless studies have proven that diesel emissions are really bad for everyone. The less, the better.

It's been said before but VW thought they could develop a diesel engine that could pass the emissions tests without using AdBlue and they can't so they had to cheat. It is just money they didn't have to spend designing their engines all over.
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ILoveHighDPI View Post

I still consider the "Rogue Engineers" heroes.
The amount of restrictions placed on the rest of the world simply due to "California" is ludicrous. VW was saving the world from insanity, the emissions that they failed on were harmless to people, it's sad that they got caught.
Go to any European city and take a few deep breaths.
 
#21 ·
European Emission Standards only go stricker and stricker. However after Euro 6, even petrol engines needed particulate filters. By Euro 7, various sources tell that reducing exhaust emissions further is impossible so the emphasis will be on fuel consumption. I hope this makes hybrid minimum requirement. Imagine every hot hatch being like Peugeot 308 R hybrid
biggrin.gif

 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ILoveHighDPI View Post

I still consider the "Rogue Engineers" heroes.
The amount of restrictions placed on the rest of the world simply due to "California" is ludicrous. VW was saving the world from insanity, the emissions that they failed on were harmless to people, it's sad that they got caught.
This has got to be sarcasm, no way your being serious........right?
 
#23 ·
Sorry, I have to rant on this one, and applaud anyone who makes it through it all. I usually keep my mouth shut and just worry about building my computers, and focus on learning other people's tricks and ideas.

But I've been reading people's responses on here, and I believe this is a crappy scenario no matter what way you look at it, because in the end, I have a feeling that nobody wins except for the people who don't deserve to. At least in America...I'm pretty sure, though, that we weren't smart enough to come up with all of this on our own. I'm pretty sure it's just as bad no matter where you go, because big corporations are almost without country. They're in their own reality. And I think people need to know.

This reminds me of what just went down with Wells-Fargo, where the corporation was forcing the low-level employees to open phantom accounts the customers were unaware of, in order to raise the accounts per person, to give the executives a card to play and a metric to show when doing their quarterly earnings reports, in order to drive stock price, stock purchases, and profitability up. When caught, the executive(s) were allowed to keep the profits they made...they were fined less than two percent of what those profits were...the woman in charge of overseeing the fraud at the executive level was allowed to retire with her full pension and benefits...and a lot of low level managers and employees got terminated. And employees calling the ethics hotline? Fired.

And this is nowhere near the first time an atrocity like this has been met by the same kind of "what the hell is that?" nonsense justice. This is just recent.

I work in engineering, and have seen and lived through how this plays out for both the little company and the big company. The little man is fined, and has to pay something in restitution fees. Sometimes they have special task forces from outside companies who have to come in and certify that they are playing nice. All sorts of time and funds get spent on coming up with the reports and metrics these task forces need to see...it takes up people's productivity, because now they have to do some other process they didn't have to do before, just to show that they were doing their job the right way. ISO does this as well, if the company is ISO certified. Depending on the infraction, OSHA might, too. And all of this forces the little man to raise their prices, lay off people. Usually this makes it very difficult to stay profitable - this can kill a small company, who is already just barely making it via lower average wages and not much to shed. They just aren't big enough and don't have enough avenues to absorb the hit.

In a bigger company, perhaps the same thing happens, but the fine is never going to be large enough to take the company out. Certainly not a publicly traded company, nobody wants the stock market value to drop like that. Like I said, Wells Fargo gained significantly more from what they did than the pennies they lost when they got busted. A few million dollars isn't enough in comparison to hundreds of millions in cashflow, assets, and growth, especially with a company on the stock market, and even more so when the company is in competition with other companies of the same relative size.

What really happens when you go after a big company is that they start to divest, they perhaps do organizational changes and lay off employees. They restructure their health plan and pull back or remove employee benefits. They go a year without giving raises, or they implement raises later in the year than they would normally have. They close buildings and move operations to cheaper parts of the world, or combine those operations into other facilities and give people twice as much to do. They find cheaper suppliers, or demand that their suppliers make the same thing for less cost. They stop selling their least profitable commodities, and lay off the people who used to make them. They do whatever it takes to still show growth on the stock market and meet their dividends - and pay the executives the same amount they always have.

True, if it's bad enough, a big company can be forced to take this out on the consumer. That would be a very viable option if VW isn't the only one facing these kinds of charges - if all of the manufacturers are going to get caught for doing things like this, you'll see those who got caught raise their prices, and those who didn't get caught will raise their prices too. Why? Because you never, ever drive the market price down, you take advantage of the additional cash. If everyone else all of a sudden charges $40,000, and you can sell the same thing at a great profit for $22,000, you charge maybe $39,500. You match the market, because people will be forced to pay what the market demands. There's nowhere else to go.

If you drive the price of a commodity down, you never know who will come out of the woodwork and can beat you on that price. You never know how low someone else can go, and as a big company you don't want to compete with the Great Value's on price, you want to compete with the Kraft's of the world.

If the company/companies still can't manage after all of what they can do to manage cost, they might merge or acquire each other.

In the end, the executives still win. And the executives are probably the people who drove this decision - maybe it's as low as the engineering director for VW, but he's still an executive. And let's assume he or she gets fired, or maybe some executives get let go due to a merger. It's not like they will never work again, they'll find somewhere else - perhaps somewhere less ethical will applaud what they tried to do. Even if they don't, they'll cash in on their stock options and live off of the millions they posess. Usually when an executive is let go, even in a terrible at-fault situation, they are given a generous severance package - you don't want to deter executives from coming to your company because you "harshly punish executives for their mistakes." Maybe the terminated executive has to sell a yacht to live comfortably for the rest of their lives - you would be shocked to know what they are worth and what they can liquidate.

You might think "well, the Government has rules and regulations in place to hold big companies accountable. There's special hearings that take place to make the companies pay." And there are. But it amounts to a slap on the wrist, and a "they're looking now, so stop doing that."

I mean, really, why would government employees on these special inquiry teams and legal boards TRULY go after the people who funded them to get to the positions they're in? Because lobbyists from these big corporations, well, they're really just reminders to the government officials "don't forget where you came from." Why would a senator, who stands to profit from a company like a manufacturer, and was funded to run an election campaign by manufacturers, want to go after a manufacturer in the name of justice? The factory knows that they can fund that senator to BE a senator in exchange for protection and the occasional law in the factory's favor - hence, lobbyists. The senator knows he's a senator because he was funded in exchange for these things.

I don't want to come off as a negative Nancy, or a political nut, or a pessimist or a conspiracy theorist. I don't want to seem distrusting. I'm not. I've just seen all of this happen, and accepted that this is how the world works a long time ago...in the end, the employees are the ones who will suffer for this, the general people like you and I when we go to work wherever we work. And hey, maybe we don't buy those nice groceries or those big gifts we wanted to buy...which makes those companies feel the impact...and start to take measures to manage cost...and make their suppliers start to take measures to manage cost...and with everyone getting paid less, and things like cars being more expensive...

It's my belief that this is really what currency inflation is. The problem is, none of us at the bottom see compensation equal to inflation. Then we hit a recession, where there's a vacuum and nobody has enough money to do anything, including businesses - oil and gas tanking is driving companies to stop building and doing anything, because it trickles down. It makes me worry about what happens when we can't reset and bounce back.

It makes me angry that the vox populi has been thwarted and diverted so much, focused so far away from the man behind the curtain, that this is where we stand. But this is still where we stand.

And don't get me wrong, executives have to give up all sorts of things to be executives, and I don't really blame them. They have to live with loveless marriages or loneliness, have to live with not seeing their kids grow up (or having kids at all), have to live with the stress of immorality, and having to sleep knowing they have to downsize and destroy hundreds of people's lives tomorrow, and have to constantly move and travel and never really have "home." They have to live with never really feeling connected to anyone or anything, because all of this numbs them over time. It's just another kind of profession most of us choose not to take on. We criticize it even when the executives do a good job, and are honest, and that isn't fair.

But when they do things like this, with VW, all we can do is criticize them - we don't have any other recourse as We The People.

-Edited for flow, typos and grammatical issues, and coherence.
 
#24 ·
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Originally Posted by Imouto View Post

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Originally Posted by ILoveHighDPI View Post

I still consider the "Rogue Engineers" heroes.
The amount of restrictions placed on the rest of the world simply due to "California" is ludicrous. VW was saving the world from insanity, the emissions that they failed on were harmless to people, it's sad that they got caught.
They're not harmless. Countless studies have proven that diesel emissions are really bad for everyone. The less, the better.

It's been said before but VW thought they could develop a diesel engine that could pass the emissions tests without using AdBlue and they can't so they had to cheat. It is just money they didn't have to spend designing their engines all over.
The only failures that I've heard about are Nitrous Oxide, A.K.A. laughing gas, odorless and tasteless, used in medicinal applications. Harmless to people.

If everything else is up to spec, then VW was actually releasing less of the harmful emissions by taking a shortcut on one emissions standard that actually doesn't hurt anyone.

From what I've read Nitrous Oxide in the atmosphere does cause some brown haze, so they want it removed for aesthetic reasons, not for any practical benefits to quality of life.
 
#26 ·
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Originally Posted by ILoveHighDPI View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by Imouto View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by ILoveHighDPI View Post

I still consider the "Rogue Engineers" heroes.
The amount of restrictions placed on the rest of the world simply due to "California" is ludicrous. VW was saving the world from insanity, the emissions that they failed on were harmless to people, it's sad that they got caught.
They're not harmless. Countless studies have proven that diesel emissions are really bad for everyone. The less, the better.

It's been said before but VW thought they could develop a diesel engine that could pass the emissions tests without using AdBlue and they can't so they had to cheat. It is just money they didn't have to spend designing their engines all over.
The only failures that I've heard about are Nitrous Oxide, A.K.A. laughing gas, odorless and tasteless, used in medicinal applications. Harmless to people.

If everything else is up to spec, then VW was actually releasing less of the harmful emissions by taking a shortcut on one emissions standard that actually doesn't hurt anyone.

From what I've read Nitrous Oxide in the atmosphere does cause some brown haze, so they want it removed for aesthetic reasons, not for any practical benefits to quality of life.
Laughing gas is just one of the Nitrogen-oxygen compounds - there are more than just the N2O (hence the "x" present in diesel exhaust gasses). These are unstable compound that react with water in the atmosphere to form acidic compounds, leading to corrosion and acidic rain. I'd recommend you to read up on some sources about nitrogen oxydes and their consequences for the environment, but at this point I think you're either a troll or a denialist.

As for human health, the major factor is the tiny particles in the exhaust gasses - which are also suppressed by the VW-software.
 
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