
West Virginia Engineer Proves to Be a David to VW's Goliath - impostervt
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/23/us-usa-volkswagen-researchers-idUSKCN0RM2D720150923
======
flurpitude
>"When the news about Volkswagen broke last Friday, Carder heard from some of
the heavy diesel engine manufacturers that were part of the consent decree.

>"They saw what had happened and called to say: 'Good job, you guys,'" Carder
said. "Some folks said: 'How did they not learn from our mistakes 15 years
ago?'"

Neither VW nor these companies made a "mistake", though they all use that
term. This was deliberate deceit, fraud, trickery. If there was a mistake it
was thinking they could get away with it and come out with more money. Each
time they talk about their "mistake" they reveal how deeply attached they are
to a culture of denying responsibility.

~~~
niels_olson
So, what deceits do software makers call "mistakes"?

~~~
Gravityloss
Graphics drivers can detect when a speed test is being run, and degrade the
output quality to get a higher frame rate.

I don't think anybody called that a mistake, it's just straight cheating.

If anything, they've probably seen that and thought it was a great idea!

[http://techreport.com/review/3089/how-ati-drivers-
optimize-q...](http://techreport.com/review/3089/how-ati-drivers-optimize-
quake-iii)

~~~
gambiting
As someone who works in games industry - we have a line to AMD and NVIDIA open
all the time. They change their drivers to work with our game just as much as
we change our games to work with their drivers. Each driver has thousands of
profiles for different games, and that has nothing to do with cheating - it's
because no one writes perfect, 100% standard-compliant shaders or other gpu
related code. The article you linked is ancient, but this still happens -
drivers know that in your specific game there's a problem with the textures so
they will automatically reduce the fidelity of texture shaders, or do some
other changes. If you changed the name of our game internally, the drivers
would no longer pick it up and you would lose 10-20 fps depending on the
situation. That's not "cheating".

~~~
ryandrake
To me, the line between cheating and ensuring good compatibility is drawn when
you deceptively "optimize" for particular benchmark measurements at the
expense of other qualitative un-measured or difficult-to-measure qualities.
This undermines the purpose of the benchmark.

There's a huge difference between "Game XYZ uses these inputs and shaders,
let's make sure our driver works as well as possible when we see this pattern"
and "When we detect the user is running Benchmark ABC, make everything look
like shit so we come out with a high benchmark score that we can use in our
marketing materials!"

I'll admit, however, the line gets fuzzy when the game itself is used as a
benchmark.

~~~
Gravityloss
Come to think of it, with computer proliferation this will permeate
everything, and already has.

Trying to buy airline or cruise tickets? Some kind of shenanigans are bound to
happen. The system is trying to infer if you might be willing to pay a lot.

Though, in the old times this haggling was done by real people.

------
hoopism
_" Despite the discrepancies, a fix shouldn't involve major changes. "It could
be something very small," said Carder, who's the interim director of West
Virginia University's Center for Alternative Fuels....

"It can simply be a change in the fuel injection strategy. What might be
realized is a penalty in fuel economy in order to get these systems more
active, to lower the emissions levels."_

Fix is likely not that big of a deal... but what about the impact on the
consumers who paid for a car with a certain performance level and are now left
with a diminished product?

I have several colleagues who have VW TDIs that are distraught. Many of them
are very well informed consumers who took pride in purchasing a more
environmentally friendly car at a higher premium. The car might be able to
meet those environmental standards but the price tag no longer seems
justifiable.

~~~
happyscrappy
Are diesel vehicles actually more environmentally friendly? It sure doesn't
seem that way driving behind one.

~~~
Agustus
Yes, they are among one of the four items identified in improving fuel
economy: Aluminum frames (carbon fiber is better but cost prohibitive at this
time), diesel, streamlining (read shrink), and the other that I am currently
blanking on.

a. Diesel engines get 33% better fuel economy. [1] b. Have a lower total cost
of ownership. [2] c. They are better than petrol gasoline on three out of five
emission items, the one that is noticeable to the naked eye, particulates, is
what causes concern. [3]The caveat is that petrol gas emits particulates at a
smaller micron level, unnoticeable to the naked eye, and may actually be of
greater concern to the general public.

1\. [http://www.carsdirect.com/car-buying/diesel-fuel-vs-
unleaded...](http://www.carsdirect.com/car-buying/diesel-fuel-vs-unleaded-
gasoline-understand-the-pros-and-cons) 2\.
[http://www.dieselforum.org/files/dmfile/20130311_CD_UMTRITCO...](http://www.dieselforum.org/files/dmfile/20130311_CD_UMTRITCOFinalReport_dd2017.pdf)
3\.
[https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200609260829...](https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060926082929AA4DvqB)

~~~
smanuel
There's one small issue with diesel engines. Diesel exhaust fumes cause
cancer: [http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/14/diesel-
fu...](http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/14/diesel-fumes-
definitely-cause-cancer-should-we-be-worried/)

~~~
Agustus
The article mentions that particulate is in a classification that is known to
cause cancer, however, the article admits that "IARC isn’t in the business of
telling us how potent something is in causing cancer – only whether it does so
or not."

The amount needs to be identified, because it could be similar to the
radiation levels in bananas... There is some, but it may not be enough to be
deadly.

~~~
smanuel
I mentioned this mostly as a reply to:

 _[3]The caveat is that petrol gas emits particulates at a smaller micron
level, unnoticeable to the naked eye, and may actually be of greater concern
to the general public._

The diesel exhaust fumes are proven to be worse than the petrol engines in at
least one respect - health.

Maybe if every truck on the road and a lot of the cars ran on bananas and not
on diesel, then I would be concerned about the radiation levels in bananas.

Moreover in the place where I live people are allowed to remove their car DPFs
which makes things even worse.

------
marcusgarvey
This, plus:

-the case of the Kansas mathematician investigating election fraud

-the case of the banking expert pointing out that CalPERS and other large pension funds are being suckered by private equity

make me hopeful that we'll see a new trend of academics and specialists
pointing out the fraud in the systems we take for granted.

[http://cjonline.com/news/2015-04-01/wichita-state-
mathematic...](http://cjonline.com/news/2015-04-01/wichita-state-
mathematician-sues-kris-kobach-sedgwick-county-elections-commisioner)

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/09/the-larger-
implicatio...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/09/the-larger-implications-
of-calpers-staff-and-board-incompetence-in-private-equity.html)

------
uptown
I'd like to know how they expected to get away with this? Something like this
isn't a decision made by one or two people. The layers of engineering, and
number of people that had to be involved in pulling this off had to be
enormous. I'm amazed that a whistleblower didn't come forward sooner.

~~~
emcrazyone
Actually one or two people could have gotten away with this. As a software
developer on large automotive projects, I was often writing code to do things
I didn't understand. My coding came from hand written specifications that
often had sequence diagrams which is basic software flows. I.E. Do this when
you see these conditions. I typically didn't understand the conditions.

Additionally, modern ECUs in vehicles are modifiable at run time through
something called XCP/CCP programming. You can think of of this as calibrating
the ECU. ECU = Electronic Control Unit.

The thing that really bothers me about all this is from the article

"Carder said he's surprised to see such a hullabaloo now, because his team's
findings were made public nearly a year and a half ago."

It seems nothing was done until the media outlets got a hold of the story?

Why didn't this blow up happen a year and a half ago before all these
additional vehicles were put on the road?

~~~
scott_s
This didn't blow up a year and a half ago because VW had not yet confessed.
The timeline as I know it is that these results were published a year and a
half ago, which got the attention of the EPA. The EPA did their homework, and
about a year ago, started pressing VW on this issue. VW denied for a year, and
just recently finally admitted. It's an unfortunate timeline, but I think a
reasonable one. Source, from molecule in this thread:
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
think/transportation/adva...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
think/transportation/advanced-cars/how-professors-caught-vw-cheating)

And great insights on the software side of this.

~~~
jazzyk
EPA doing their homework is fine, but what exactly is reasonable in VW denying
this for a year?

~~~
scott_s
Nothing. I'm assuming that VW is in the wrong and _not_ reasonable. I
interpreted the original question to mean, why did every one else (media,
government, public) not pay attention to this until now? Given the timeline,
it's reasonable that the media, government and public did pay attention when
they did.

------
ipsin
Carder may be surprised at the "hullabaloo" now because he released the
results 18 months ago, but I have had a hell of a time finding any written
documentation of their technique.

Was their research limited to observing the effects on cars as they were
driven around (something they did), or were they able to dump and analyze the
firmware as well? The EFF wrote a story talking about how the DMCA made it
hard for researchers, but didn't actually mention the barriers (if any) in
this case.

If anyone has links to the written research or an understanding of how hard it
is to get at the firmware controlling these emissions, I'd love to read it.

~~~
scott_s
This is the full paper: [http://www.theicct.org/use-emissions-testing-light-
duty-dies...](http://www.theicct.org/use-emissions-testing-light-duty-diesel-
vehicles-us)

------
lordnacho
Are any other manufacturers under suspicion? You'd think the incentives are
similar for the large players, and they are certainly all able to do this kind
of trick.

~~~
Phlarp
Personally, I won't be the least bit surprised when we find out all the major
American and Asian manufacturers do/did this same stuff and worse.

Ultimately I can't place total blame on the manufacturers, consumers demand
emissions standards from their legislatures and then turn around and nearly
bankrupt themselves buying 5000lbs extended cab trucks that says 24MPG on the
sticker but realistically won't get more than 12 in real world conditions.

If you demand magic and are willing to pay $30k to get it, don't act the least
bit surprised when someone lies to you

~~~
masklinn
Most manufacturers aren't all-in on diesel, which was VW's strategy. They
fudged the tests to have low-consumption during road tests but still pass NOx
lab testing (NOx being a side-effect of good combustion in a diesel engine,
which you want for better fuel efficiency and to limit particulate matter)

~~~
Phlarp
The the underlying technique used to fudge the test was that the ECU firmware
behaved differently during testing than it would in the real world.

I imagine the performance / efficiency curve can be similarly tweaked in a
gasoline engine, allowing the OEMs to both pass the mandated emissions
standards testing and still sell the kind of big boy truck consumers demand.

~~~
mzs
Yep, google Chrysler Lean Burn (which made sense back when they did it,
allowed to avoid catalyst for a few more years) and more egregious GM Lean
Cruise (which is now not permitted in US models).

------
acomjean
The West Virginia report from may of 2014 . Car a and b, though not specified
I think are the VWs car c is a BMW. Page 63 shows the difference between
driving around and testing.

Report (pdf):

[http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/WVU_...](http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/WVU_LDDV_in-
use_ICCT_Report_Final_may2014.pdf)

------
gambiting
Funnily enough, if VW changes all cars to run permanently on the "clean" map
it will actually increase the fuel consumption, reducing NOx emissions at the
same time. So what is better? To burn more fuel but emit less NOx, or burn
less fuel but emit more NOx?

------
beambot
The researchers could have made a _lot_ of money ($15-30M) off this
information by shorting Volkswagen prior to the release of their reports, and
it would've been perfectly legal. I speculated a bit about this notion --
specifically for VW and more generally as a startup / arbitrage opportunity:

[http://www.travisdeyle.com/musings/volkswagen.html](http://www.travisdeyle.com/musings/volkswagen.html)

~~~
ma2rten
People already do things like that:

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/in-praise-of-
sh...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/in-praise-of-short-
sellers)

------
anarcticpuffin
I'm wondering how they detect that they're in an emissions test quickly enough
to not emit too much early in the test. Do the testers connect their equipment
to the OBD-II port of the car? Or I guess you could tell from the fact that
one set of wheels is spinning while the other wheels are stationary (because
it's mounted on a dynamometer).

~~~
anarcticpuffin
I found a bit of an answer. According to this EPA document, it detected a test
by sensing the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, duration of
engine operation and barometric pressure.

[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)

------
criddell
I'd like to know what sanctions the individual VW engineers will face. I
assume professional engineers in Europe have a similar code of ethics that
engineers in the US and Canada have to uphold. "Just following orders" doesn't
let you off the hook.

~~~
ghaff
Well, in a _formal_ sense, most US engineers aren't licensed and have a
specific code of ethics to uphold. (To be clear, that doesn't mean they don't
or shouldn't follow their own code of ethics or that they haven't agreed to
follow a code of conduct with their employer.) I'm not sure to what degree the
situation is different in Germany. Of course, engineers who interact with
regulatory bodies often are licensed--and, indeed, that's one main reasons for
getting licensed.

------
Tinyyy
What a ridiculous scandal. Greed knows no bounds eh.

