
Volkswagen Stock Plummets as CEO Apologizes for Emissions Cheat - r0h1n
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/09/21/442174444/volkswagen-stock-plummets-as-ceo-apologizes-for-emissions-cheat?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews
======
yread
I looked a bit into this and it seems strange that this happened only now.

Consider this [1] 2014 study (scroll to last page of executive summary, page
5). Basically they tested 15 vehicles from 6 manufacturers for emissions while
on the road and NONE OF THEM passed the euro 6 average (!) limit. 1 was
exactly on the limit, the worst one emitted on average 24 times more than the
norm. They noted the vehicles emit more when driving uphill.

Then there is this article [2] from 2014 which says the emissions in city
traffic are 3 times the norm.

In 2013 this study [3] was published which measured diesel NO2 emissions and
found out that Euro 5 class vehicles have exactly the same emissions as Euro 2
(from 1992) cars.

[1]
[http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT...](http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_PEMS-
study_diesel-cars_20141013.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10862975/Emission-t...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10862975/Emission-
tests-substantially-underestimate-pollution-pumped-out-by-diesels.html)

[3] [http://uk-
air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat05/13...](http://uk-
air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat05/1307161149_130715_DefraRemoteSensingReport_Final.pdf)

~~~
mironathetin
Would that mean emission limits are set lower than technically achievable?

Car manufacturers still provide more powerful cars every year. I always
wondered, how they can claim their engines emit less while they get faster and
faster. Everybody knows that a modern car does not consume so much less fuel
than a car of then comparable standard 20 years ago. But lets face it,
consumers require more power, less fuel consumption and less emission - in
this order. Probably the development of on paper values has been disconnected
from the real world for marketing reasons (that is no excuse, its an
observation). Before everybody throws stones at Volkswagen only, please
measure other cars (again, no excuse).

From time to time I rent cars of different brands and at the gas station I see
proof that there has been little progress in fuel efficiency. That said,
Volkswagen and Audi diesels seem to be the most fuel efficient engines around
for the pure power they deliver. The only diesel I know that felt more
advanced was a Volvo V60, but mostly because of a geniously constructed gear
system and a perfectly rectangular torque (so I had to change gears at 3500
rpm).

In Europe (and that means in this case in Germany), car manufacturers invented
the fleet consumption and emission. That means, the consumption and emission
of a whole class of cars is averaged. This is to trick high powered engines on
paper into an acceptable consumption and emission range. The goal is clearly
not transparency and openness.

~~~
jonknee
> Everybody knows that a modern car does not consume so much less fuel than a
> car of then comparable standard 20 years ago.

Actually a modern car does consume a lot less fuel than models from 20 years
ago. CAFE standards have had a great effect.

[http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...](http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html)

For a new passenger car the average MPG in 1995 was 28.6 and in 2013 (latest
available data for that report) was 36 MPG. That's a 25% increase which when
multiplied across millions of vehicles is an enormous amount of fuel.

~~~
mhb
It's a 20.6% decrease in gallons per mile.

~~~
kazinator
That is misleading. We should calculate percentage improvements against the
better value. Fewer gallons per mile is better. For instance, if you cut in
half the gallons per mile, it only looks like a 50% decrease. But it's
actually a doubling of the mileage: you go twice as far on a tank of gas. The
_improvement_ in gallons per mile is 100%.

Using something other than mileage: suppose you optimize a program so it takes
half the time to run. It's running twice as fast: it is 100% faster. Looking
at it as a mere 50% reduction of time can be misleading. If you calculate the
speedup using the running time, you have to divide the time difference by the
smaller, better running time: 100 x (Tpoor - Timproved) / Timproved.

The main problem with the "percent reduction" is that arbitrarily good
improvements only approach 100%. If we make a car go a million times longer on
a gallon of gas, it's only around a 99.9999 reduction in gallons per mile,
which looks only about twice as good as a 50% reduction. :)

~~~
mhb
Suppose you're going on a 100 mile trip and you want to know how much better
off you are if you replace your 50 mpg car with a 100 mpg car. You now only
need 1 gallon of gas instead of 2. Even if the car can run without gas, you
aren't any better off than a savings of 2 gallons for the trip. You're not >
million times better off.

~~~
kazinator
I'm only not one million times better off because I have other costs to deal
with which are completely unrelated to the gas.

If the gas were the only resource I have to worry about (whatsoever), then I
would in fact be a million times better off.

~~~
mhb
So if the 50 mpg car cost $5,000, you would be willing to pay >$5,000,000,000
for the 100 mpg car?

~~~
kazinator
In fact, I understand economics well enough to recognize that I've already put
more time and effort than necessary into this thread.

------
tiplus
Test tuning seems to have a long history at VW. The VW subsidiary Porsche
tuned the 918 spyder with a battery just large enough to pass fuel consumption
test at ~78mpg, or 3l/100km which is ridiculously far from reality.

I am very curious, as to who wrote that patch. Afaik, almost all German
manufacturers buy their common rail Diesel motor control units from Bosch.
Stuff like pressure adjustment, valve control, or silly 'sports mode' buttons
are all designed at Bosch. They ship a modular firmware which the
manufacturers customize. Maybe VW were not the only customers of this special
'feature'.

~~~
kuschku
The post from yread makes this seem very likely...

------
arcticbull
I have to hand it to them, it takes a huge pair to actually design, develop
and ship something like this to customers. I'd always assumed if anything this
crazy as going on at least one employee would have blown the whistle at some
point.

I guess this answers my Bond-villain henchman recruiting problem. I'd always
wondered how those super-villains recruited henchmen and grunts necessary to
run their island fortresses. Turns out it may not be all that hard ^_^

~~~
mikekchar
When I worked at the now defunct Nortel, I was asked to implement a feature
that would allow a large bank to spoof it's telephone numbers in long distance
telephone calls. I was told that the feature was necessary to make a $60
million sale.

I looked at the spec and, of course, the change they were requesting was
disallowed. Even worse, there was an actual law specifically forbidding
running equipment with that ability in the country where the request was being
made. I refused to implement it.

The B level manager came to my lowly cubicle (I was still pretty young back
then, so didn't actually hobnob with people in that stratosphere often). I was
told that it would cause a lot of people a lot of trouble if I didn't do the
work. And besides, _we_ weren't running the equipment, so _we_ weren't
breaking the law. I refused again.

They never asked me again and I never knew if they found someone else to patch
the code without my knowledge. I'm pretty sure they did. But how do you
whistle-blow that? They just cut cut everyone who doesn't play ball out of the
loop.

I can well imagine something like that happening here. It's pretty easy to
find someone with kids, or someone who needs their job for keeping their work
visa, or someone who just doesn't care. You can patch it in the load build in
most large companies and nobody would ever know the difference.

~~~
chmaynard
Great story. Your refusal to do illegal, unethical work took courage. The B
level manager should have gone to bat for you and put his job on the line,
too.

~~~
wolf550e
'mikekchar was working for a salary. The manager might have received a bonus
for making 60 million sale.

------
tinbad
Meanwhile GM gets away with a laughable $900m settlement for knowingly using
faulty parts that have caused the deaths of hundreds and many more severely
injured.

Reason I'm saying this is I expect VW will end up paying magnitudes of this
amount for their wrongdoing that did not result in anyone's death.

EDIT: Toyota had to settle for $1.2b in the unintended acceleration lawsuit
that may have caused the death of 3 people where, up to this day, there is
still no proof that there was something wrong with the cars, let alone that
any employees were knowingly approving the installation of faulty parts.

[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-18/gm-s-
cynici...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-18/gm-s-cynicism-
pays-off-in-ignition-settlement)

~~~
NickM
_for their wrongdoing that did not result in anyone 's death_

It's well-established that fossil fuel emissions actually do cause many deaths
due to increased cancer rates and other respiratory illnesses. Burning diesel
without proper emission control systems will also create larger particulate
pollution which is especially detrimental to the public health.

Unlike the GM case, it will be impossible to trace exactly how many premature
deaths VW has contributed to, but that doesn't mean they should be punished
any less harshly.

~~~
enraged_camel
Don't forget the contribution to climate change. It's probably negligible,
since the cheating VW cars make up a very small portion of cars worldwide, but
it's still worth thinking about, in my opinion.

~~~
MagnumOpus
This is not about climate change. The main climate change contributor from
emissions is CO2 - which relates 1:1 to fuel consumption (and how could it be
otherwise). Fuel consumption is hard to fake and is tested independently all
the time.

What this is about is particulates and NO and NO2 - which aren't a significant
contributor to climate change, but have detrimental effects such as emphysema
or bronchitis in humans, acid rain or creation of surface ozone that damages
lungs.

------
swingbridge
There's no defense for what they did. I mean it's so silly it's the sort of
thing you expect to be part of the evil guy's plans to destroy the world in a
Bond film... not something that a stupid corporation actually does.

~~~
tjic
Sure there is.

"We consider this law illegitimate and do not consent to be bound by it."

You may not LIKE that defense, but it's a defense - pretty much the canonical
anarchocapitalist one.

~~~
6stringmerc
Very well stated, and I agree a defense exists for the accused.

Gaming tests and parameters doesn't seem too far fetched to me. In high school
one class allowed for one 3x5" notecard to be brought to the final exam, and
it could have notes written on it. Following the letter but not the spirit of
the rule, I used a razor blade to gently split the notecard and was able to
peel it open for about 70% more writing space. Though a technicality, I did
manage to use my device with approval in that case.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
I don't really agree. Air pollution isn't like test notes at all, it kills
people.

If you had "Followed the letter but not the spirit of a rule" and wound up
endangering people's health, do you honestly think there would be no
repercussions other than a "haha, clever you! You can get away with it on a
technicality this once" ?

~~~
6stringmerc
Can you empirically show that Air Pollution in the US killed more people in
2015 than listeria in Blue Bell ice cream?

Being good stewards of the Eart is important, and as long as there are
regulations and rules, there will be different attitudes to contend with. I
consider air quality to be valuable, I genuinely do. I also think the entire
annual production of all VW automobiles globally does less air quality
"damage" than one season of wildfires in the western United States. Or a
vocanic eruption.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Can you empirically show that Air Pollution in the US killed more people in
> 2015 than listeria in Blue Bell ice cream?

"empirically show" is a stupefyingly high standard for a comments thread.

I assume that you are familiar with the scale of the problem for starter?

e.g. [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-
pollut...](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-
pollution/en/) [http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/study-air-
pol...](http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/study-air-pollution-
deaths-to-double-by-2050/57507/)
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26973783](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26973783)

It's a misdirection on your part anyway, comparing a knowingly harmful and
deceptive like this to Some industrial accident is not valid: People die in
accidents; this does stop murder being a thing.

~~~
kamjam
If something really wants to be done about pollution from burning fossil fuels
then bunker fuel may be a good place to start, that low grade crud burnt by
shipping our wonderfully cheap crap from around the world...
[http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-
pollution/11526/](http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/)

------
QUFB
Four days ago, GM was fined $900 million for a known defect that _killed_ over
100 people. If the VW fine exceeds that, something is clearly out-of-line with
corporate prosecutions in the US.

~~~
x5n1
US loves prosecuting foreign companies. Not so much local companies. So sure
they could go after Volkswagen, what do they have to lose?

~~~
dougb
What about VW going after the US through the TPP ?

From [http://www.dailydot.com/politics/tpp-leaked-investment-
chapt...](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/tpp-leaked-investment-chapter-
isds/)

> Corporations may be granted through “Investor-State Dispute Settlement”
> (ISDS) tribunals the authority to demand taxpayer compensation for domestic
> energy, health, environment, land use, and other policies. With the
> exception of Australia, all of the countries involved in the TPP talks have
> agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of ISDS tribunals.

*edited to format the quote. Giving up.

~~~
x5n1
Corporations bite back?

------
abakker
So, the real moral here is that Volkswagen took advantage of the fact that our
emission standards basically trust the cars own on board diagnostics to
determine if they pass emissions...

CA, at least, uses the BAR-OIS inspection for diesel cars, coupled with a
"visual inspection" to make sure that the car does not produce visual
pollutants. Effectively, this means that the software reads whether the car is
passing from the OBD-II port in the car, and then, as long as the car has the
necessary parts (Exhaust recirculator, catalytic convertor, etc) then it
passes.

It would not surprise me to find out that more than just VW have these kind of
issues. Effectively, we don't actually verify with any instrumentation whether
the emissions are within spec.

Sure, VW may have duped the system on purpose, but, the fact that this has
gone on for _years_ has to weigh in a bit on a critical mind. Our tests don't
work very well if this stuff can go on this long.

___

Of course, it is also trivial to find an inspection location that will pass
almost any diesel vehicle, if you know where to look. For any interested
parties, try googling "diesel exhaust delete" or some similar query for any
number of Ford f-350s, Ram 2500s or any other large turbo diesels. This
basically consists of taking a saw, and cutting out the EGR, and some other
flow restricting parts of the exhaust to increase exhaust flow, typically done
in combination with a chip/turbo map.

The results can be significant. A person I know got a fairly significant bump
in both power and MPG at the expense of needing to carefully plan how to pass
emissions tests. The main question that weighs in is whether it is better to
pass emissions and get 13-15mpg, or to fail emissions technically, but get
24-26Mpg with diesel. Those are real numbers with a 2008 Ram 2500.

I think this VW thing should spark a larger conversation about how we measure
emissions in the first place, and what cost the emissions passing imposes.

~~~
noipv4
I think you mean the Diesel Particulate Filter delete.
[http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2013/01/epa-says-dont-touch-
pat...](http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2013/01/epa-says-dont-touch-paticulate-
filter.html)

~~~
abakker
That is certainly one part of it, though many people go significantly further.
frequently, this involves simply sawing off the whole exhaust system and
having a local muffler shop fab a new set of pipes and mufflers for you.

The truck that my friend has is a ram 2500, with a chip/tune and the exhaust
removed, it dynos at about 490HP/1100 ft-lbs of torque, and still achieves
~25mpg highway. The downside is that there is an unknown emissions toll for
doing that modification.

Again, I have to wonder though, at almost 10mpg better, is the reduced
emissions actually logical? i.e. do the emissions reduction systems really
make up for needing to burn additional fuel to do the same work?

~~~
hapless
Whether it's "logical" depends on your goals.

If you value public health more than fuel efficiency, then yes, emissions
controls are a logical choice.

~~~
abakker
well, thats what I'm getting at. By getting 10mpg better, do you produce fewer
total emissions than if you had the emissions controls in place, but burned
more fuel?

I imagine than there are many possible solutions where it makes sense to use
strict emissions controls at the cost of fuel consumption, but there are also
others where the increase in mileage would reduce total emissions further than
the emissions controls would.

rough estimate. on a 25 gallon tank of diesel, with emissions controls in
place, the truck goes 350 miles. on that same tank, the truck goes 625 miles
with the emissions removed. so, to go 625 miles with the exhaust controls in
place would use ~44 gallons of fuel vs 25. Is that actually a net
environmental benefit? My gut tells me that the environmental costs of
refining, transporting and burning the extra fuel are higher than the
marginally higher emissions in the unrestricted truck. I don't expect those
numbers would work out the same in all vehicles or cases though.

I think public health and fuel economy go hand in hand. the total
environmental costs of petroleum are much higher than the emissions that come
out of cars. reducing demand through greater fuel economy should be factored
in to the overall emissions equations.

~~~
hapless
EPA emissions limits are based on grams of pollutant per horsepower-hour. In
order to reach compliance, your emissions control equipment needs to reduce
pollution much faster than it reduces efficiency.

It's not uncommon for illegally chipped/straight-piped trucks to see 50%
improvements in fuel efficiency, but they're belching out tens or hundreds of
times the volume of common pollutants (depending on the pollutant)

~~~
abakker
Thanks for that info. Out of curiosity, is there any accounting for the other
emissions involved in making the fuel, though? Full transport and refining is
energy intensive. on-vehicle emissions controls are also costly, and also use
energy to make. Finally, petroleum is a finite resource.

I am all for emissions controls on vehicles if they genuinely reduce net
emissions. If the reduced fuel economy doesn't equal out though, then at best,
we're simply moving the emissions out of cars and into
refineries/shipping/factories instead.

~~~
hapless
I have a hard time believing that we're moving the emissions.

1\. The efficiency/emissions tradeoff is almost entirely a diesel problem. For
intrinsic reasons, gasoline engines suffer much less from emissions controls.
The relevant systems are both much less complicated and much less intrusive.
There is very little efficiency gain available by e.g. removing your catalytic
converter.

(The vapor reclamation requirements can be very complicated, but those parts
do not intrude on the function of the engine, so they are not making the
system less efficient)

2\. The math doesn't work out on the back of a napkin. Emissions controls can
reduce total tailpipe pollutants by as much as 99%. Even if it caused 2x the
fuel consumption, how on earth would that result in a 100-fold increase in
emissions in the distribution chain?

------
branchless
They should try the bank line:

* hey we are just playing the game, it's the regulators who set the rules

* it's business, if we didn't get innovative with the rules we'd loose customers and go out of business

* it was one rogue guy, the culture here is fine!

If all these fail then just make sure the fine is less than the profit you
make from the "transgression".

~~~
davotoula
"We have a legal obligation to our shareholders to maximise our profits."

------
w_t_payne
Presumably VW had a project (either in-house, or through one of their tier-1
suppliers) to develop this technology.

A crime was committed, so who is criminally liable?

The sales-people who agreed the deal? The project manager who was given the
project to manage? The release manager who signed-off the release? The systems
test manager who tested the vehicle? How about all the software developers and
other engineers who were assigned to work on the project?

I'd particularly like to know what people think the extent of criminal
liability for individual software developers in the automotive industry is and
should be?

~~~
dbot
Convicting someone of a crime requires proving all of the elements. Most
crimes require a culpable state of mind (or mens rea). So the issue would be
whether an individual has the requisite mens rea (recklessly, knowingly, etc.)
These are very fact-intensive inquiries.

Having worked in the antitrust world, I saw lots of cases where mid-level
managers and employees were engaged in anticompetitive conduct. The fact that
their bosses demanded that behavior as part of their job function didn't
absolve criminal liability.

~~~
w_t_payne
What would the appropriate actions on the part of those mid-level managers and
employees have been to avoid criminal liability?

~~~
dbot
Refuse to participate in the scheme. Yes, it is possible (or likely) that you
will be fired. But going to federal prison is a very real possibility. I
visited several witnesses in prison. They are "normal" guys - the kind you see
standing on the sideline of a kids' soccer game. They have kids, two car
payments, a mortgage, etc. It's a tough situation to walk away from
(especially because the crime is often just a phone call or a few emails with
a competitor).

Keeping a conspiracy going year after year is difficult. There is "cheating"
by conspirators, turnover of personnel, etc. The DOJ also has an immunity
program that protects whistleblowers from criminal liability (and sometimes
the company from treble damage civil liability). The immunity program makes it
much more likely that someone quits the conspiracy and turns themselves in.

So while losing your job sucks, if your company is violating federal antitrust
law, chances are your job is not secure or desirable anyways.

------
kinofcain
The EU announced earlier this year that they were changing the test procedures
and certification rules for diesel cars to more accurately assess and control
NOx output and to prevent gaming of the tests by manufacturers. Defeat devices
were explicitly called out:

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/03/car-
maker...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/03/car-makers-face-
real-world-emissions-tests-in-eu-pollution-clampdown)

------
TomGullen
Even with the looming threat of billions of dollars of fines, big co's STILL
try to cheat the system.

In a deregulated market, how can we ever expect these co's to act honestly? We
can't.

~~~
knd775
It is regulated... They just didn't follow the regulations.

~~~
pionar
The point was that if they don't follow regulations, how can we expect
corporations to act ethically if they're deregulated?

~~~
branchless
Pretty sure we have seen this worked well with banking /s

------
robmcm
Environmental impact aside, this is the same practice employed by Samsung and
HTC with regards to performance benchmarks:

[http://bgr.com/2013/11/27/samsung-benchmark-cheating-
banned-...](http://bgr.com/2013/11/27/samsung-benchmark-cheating-banned-htc/)

I saw a documentary about other manufactures removing seats and using
different tires for tests. I expect this is rife with any industry imposed
tests :(

------
ck2
This is why I believe in corporate death sentences.

You ship millions of cars that don't actually slowly poison the drivers but
the people on the side of the road instead, you should have more than a little
justice coming your way.

~~~
rhino369
It would be a bad idea to shut the company down totally, but if you wanted to
enact a death sentence, just cease the shares and auction them off again.

The company still operates--which allows employees to keep their jobs and the
economy doesn't take a huge GDP hit--but the owners pay the price.

~~~
jessaustin
How would this proposal solve _any_ problems? The executives of the firm are
the ones who, ahem, _actually decided to break the law_. Why should they keep
their freedom, to say nothing of their jobs? The various index funds and
pension plans that you want to penalize were never informed of the scheme.

~~~
rhino369
New ownership would presumably clean house.

And this wouldn't prevent those who were involved from being charged as well
for their individual role.

>The various index funds and pension plans that you want to penalize were
never informed of the scheme.

I only meant this how you'd carry out a corporate death penalty without
hurting third parties. Any corporate death penalty would wipe these share
holders out anyway.

------
7952
It is strange that he is apoligfising for misleading people. The damage is the
excessive toxic gas that was released into our communities.

~~~
toyg
Nobody cares about the actual damage, it's the _reputational_ damage that is
important. "If they cheated on this, how do we know they followed all other
safety/environmental regulations and their cars won't just blow up? How do we
know their published accounts are truthful?" etc etc.

The apology is basically "sorry we lied in this case, _usually we don 't lie,
please keep trusting us_."

Actual damage is relatively nonimportant. You can always donate to this or
that green group, develop a magic air-cleaning machine or something... but
only if you keep getting money out of customers trusting you.

------
tonyjstark
I worked with them and know that before they release software they do a risk
calculation. They do it even for small mobile apps and if the risk is too high
because they would need to regain public trust they don't release that app /
software. So how in the world can it be that they released this? Normal
employees there are not allowed to make such decisions.

------
digitalneal
IMO, EPA should seize the cars till there is a legal solution. Let the
consumers sue for being sold a vehicle on false pretenses. Being a car
enthusiast, I already see posts on the forums from car guys stating they will
refuse to allow VW to fix the problem on their cars, because they know the fix
will sacrifice performance and economy.

------
morsch
How likely is it that other manufacturers are doing the same thing?

~~~
usrusr
All of them optimize for those well defined regulatory test cases. It's all
shades of gray as long as they are just tuning parameters to yield favorable
results in the test scenarios without bothering with possible drawbacks in
other situations. But things suddenly turn solid black when a method of
optimization is employed that is explicitly disallowed in the rules.

It's not unlikely that this infraction was enabled by "motivated disbelief"
questioning that software alone can be a "defeat device". And without court-
actionable "defeat device" this thing would clearly be in the gray range, even
if the "up to forty times" that are being talked about would probably make it
one of the darker shades.

They might have even checked this with some lawyers, who can sometimes be very
eager to look at the law in the way most favorable to the client: "Yes, it may
hold in court" (and if not I will still get my money, also, the negative PR
caused by the lawsuit even if you wirll will be your problem, not mine)

------
einrealist
I can say so much: many VW employees in my "vicinity" are baffled, too.

~~~
struppi
Really? I've heard those rumors (that many car makers build cars that try to
detect whether they are tested) years ago. The reasoning back then was that
hybrid cars could cheat the results, by completely emptying their batteries
during the 20 minute test...

[Edit: Clarifications after reading the replies]

~~~
einrealist
Well, it's not R&D I work with. And it is possible, that this "feature" was
not even developed by VW itself, but by a supplier. However, someone must have
known this within the company. And since the CEO is also head of the R&D
department.....

~~~
struppi
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I have not been talking about VW in particular. I've
heared the rumor that "many car makers" do this...

------
rrmm
In my cursory search, I've not found any numbers for just how badly they
cheated. Anyone know what the test vs defeated emission numbers were?

I imagine there's gonna be a huge class action suit on top of everything.

Edit: 10-40x the EPA limit of NOx according to the EPA letter to VW (pdf:
[http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-
caa-09-18-15....](http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-
caa-09-18-15.pdf))

------
ohitsdom
I don't understand this "defeat device". What's the incentive for VW to do
this? If the car can emit in the target range during a test, why not do it all
time?

~~~
masklinn
Performances. The engine's efficiency is much lower under restricted emissions
conditions.

Quoting from
[https://np.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/3lhhjk/have_you...](https://np.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/3lhhjk/have_you_ever_been_asked_by_your_boss_to_violate/cv8ypjk)

> They were caught cheating on NOx emissions primarily although all emissions
> are in a way connected.

> NOx is created when temperatures and pressures are very high during
> combustion. Sadly NOx emission is generally higher when your combustion is
> nice and hot and rapid, which gives higher efficiency (closer to the ideal
> thermodynamic cycle).

> […] [A lying] car will produce a lot more NOx in normal driving, and have
> better fuel economy.

> […] If VW correct this via recall the car will be required to run on the
> "clean" calibration all the time. This will mean poorer fuel economy, I
> would be speculating to say by how much but VW wouldnt have bothered
> cheating if it wasnt a significant gain. It may even have implications on
> durability if certain parameters (like exhaust gas temps, turbocharger RPMs
> or oil life) are affected as they often are.

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tantalor
Previous discussion;
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240001](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240001)

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totalrobe
Nice discount on VW stock

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crabasa
Probably a great time to buy some VLKAY:

[http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=VLKAY](http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=VLKAY)

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vegabook
It looks like the stock is pricing in an enormous fine, because otherwise a
500k recall would not do anything like this to the price. Even adjusting for
VW's disgraceful wrongdoing, do I smell veiled protectionism? Payback for
Europe's hounding of GOOG in there somewhere?

~~~
sz4kerto
At the moment $17B is wiped out -- the fine could be even bigger than that,
and then there's the backslash of the damaged reputation...

~~~
a3n
I don't read annual reports, but it would be interesting to see next year's
paragraph on "good will."

------
Simulacra
Hint: Buy VW stock now.

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happyscrappy
Did VW have to do this in Europe as well or are their air standards more lax?

~~~
masklinn
Current european standards are laxer, especially when it comes to diesel. In
fact, the whole thing was busted because a european supporter of cleaner
diesel thought "look they've got much cleaner figures in the US market so they
know how to do it and we can way tighten emission standards".

Then they went to road-test US-market cars, and found out the real-world
emission profile was more or less identical to the EU one, and completely out
of spec for the US regulations.

See
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19/volkswagen...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19/volkswagen-
emissions-cheating-found-by-curious-clean-air-group) for a timeline and a
rundown with names and all.

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anc84
Huh, this was days in the coming. I am surprised it just happens today. I
should have bet on it...

~~~
netrus
The market was closed on the weekend.

~~~
anc84
Ah, I did not know that. Thanks!

