
Volkswagen Emissions Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers - petethomas
http://www.wsj.com/articles/vw-emissions-probe-zeroes-in-on-two-engineers-1444011602
======
akamaka
The 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. 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.

There are important lessons that will come out of the VW case and I'm very
interested to learn them. The dismissiveness of the comments here is really
disappointing, on the other hand.

~~~
ecdavis
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.

~~~
jandrese
A top aide to the CEO sounds like exactly the kind of person who would be the
fall guy in a scandal like this. Important enough for the regulators to be
happy, but not someone who has actual power in the company.

~~~
robbiep
The ceo has already fallen on his sword at volkswagon

~~~
petra
Not really. In a case like this people will likely go to jail, so resigning
isn't a big deal.

~~~
yAnonymous
* resigning with a 30 million payout

------
kinofcain
"Engineers" in this context meaning "Heads of engineering departments". These
guys aren't individual contributor engineers.

------
mpweiher
> 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 4th gear without ever pushing the gas pedal), great acceleration at
high speeds (at 160 km/h, hit the pedal and it _goes_ , whereas with the
gasoline engine it was hit the pedal and ... wait ... wait ... still trying to
accelerate ... wait ). And of course far, far better gas mileage.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
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 engine?

~~~
mpweiher
"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. "

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R10_TDI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R10_TDI)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
The LMP1 class is not restricted by horsepower, which is what I said. Nascar
or WRC would be examples of classes with horsepower limits.

------
joezydeco
_" For more than a year, Volkswagen executives told the Environmental
Protection Agency that discrepancies between the formal air-quality tests on
its diesel cars and the much higher pollution levels out on the road were the
result of technical issues, not a deliberate attempt to deceive Washington
officials."_

[http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Volkswagen-...](http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Volkswagen-
denied-deception-to-EPA-for-nearly-a-6520476.php)

So VW is telling us that this year of lying to the EPA was done _completely by
these two engineering managers_ and nobody else in the VW executive staff?

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Where did they say that? They are suspending people left and right and there
are investigations ongoing against Winterkorn.nright now there has nothing
final been said yet.

------
lifeisstillgood
I 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 from us
(a build bot that refuses to deploy untested code for example) we will slip
towards worse.

Management does not need to apply pressure towards misbehaviour - they simply
have to not constantly strive for best behaviour. Our expectations fill in the
rest.

As such, we are unlikely ever to find an email from the board saying "Hans,
frig the tests next week, we can't be arsed to invest in catalytic
converters", but the organisation decided that anyway.

I think it's to do with lack of candour - see the Pixar book out recently

~~~
crpatino
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!

~~~
lifeisstillgood
But my unit tests do do that ;-)

------
djaychela
It will be interesting to see if the investigators manage to obtain an email
chain which will show where the pressure to do this came from - from day 1
I've felt it was unlikely that this was an isolated incident, or one which
management weren't tacitly aware of, and I would be very surprised if it
doesn't turn out that we find out where it all came from - my bet is that it
was pressure from above that led to it, but that's just a hunch - it may be
that management didn't know what was going on, and the engineers took it on
themselves to cheat. But either way, I don't think we're near the bottom of
this yet.

~~~
crb002
Proof is in the version control commits.

------
coldcode
Scapegoats, in other words. People don't do this on their own.

~~~
runholm
These guys were heads of the teams of other engineers that constructed the
software.

------
deegles
I can see it already: "[Car manufacturer]'s Self Driving Car Crash
Investigation Zeroes in on Two Engineers."

------
greg1232
It 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 run it thorough a handful of
benchmarks, but we run far more tests internally because when you are building
complex systems, not everything that you plan for happens, and you need an
extreme level of detail to be able to understand and fix performance problems.
Literally hundreds of engineers will participate in performing these
measurements, and most of them, along with the whole management tree up to the
CEO (especially for an important consumer facing product), will participate in
interpreting them. Not doing this means getting left in the dust by your
competitors. There is no way that only a small number of people knew about
this. Two is laughable, people here with software engineering backgrounds
should be highly skeptical that any piece of software in a product with as
many users as a car was only examined by two people. The only explanation is
that a large number of engineers and managers knew about this and did nothing.

~~~
jpatokal
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.

~~~
greg1232
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.

------
smoyer
In my opinion, this is going to get far worse for VW. People bought cars
expecting the stated fuel economy - if they submit their cars to the recall,
there's likely to be a class-action suit aiming to recoup enough cost to pay
for the difference in fuel costs over the life of the car.

Cars that don't go through the recall process will continue to pollute at a
greater rate and will earn the ire of the EPA (here in the US).

It's going to cost them a huge amount of money to satisfy both the EPA and
their customers.

~~~
mratzloff
It's going to get worse, but not for the reason you state. Changing car
performance (acceleration profile, etc.) for the worse is a necessary outcome
of fixing this issue. That's why people will sue.

~~~
smoyer
You're right - I was assuming the pollution controls would only result in a
lower fuel economy. On the other hand, degrading the car's performance to
improve emissions is the opposite end of the spectrum. Since fuel economy
versus performance provides an entire spectrum of tuning options, it will be
interesting to see exactly which trade-offs they make in the ECM's code.

~~~
developer1
It seems premature to assume they can fix the problem with code changes alone.
If that's the case, the performance drop will likely be beyond acceptable. The
required changes could make the vehicles physically unsafe to be on the road
(think, being unable to accelerate out of danger's way because now you need 60
seconds to go from 0-50 km/h). If the option for a compromise between
performance and regulatory requirements is already possible with the current
hardware, wouldn't the cars likely have already shipped as such?

It seems much more likely that there will be parts replacement involved, and
we may soon discover that the entire engine must be swapped out. This is
unlikely to be feasible for cost, but bricking cars to intolerable driving
conditions is also not enough. It's going to be really interesting to see how
this develops. Done properly, this would probably be the end of VW. So I'm
sure we'll see some half-assed solution that doesn't work for the consumer,
but lets the company survive for a few more years until they finally collapse
from consumers taking their future business elsewhere.

------
trhway
wasn't the last Great Recession simply due to some poor schmucks making
mistakes while calculating risk estimates for bonds ratings?

------
DyslexicAtheist
glad they found the culprits. I was absolutely certain it would be renegade
engineers and the higher level up (politically secured allies) have nothing to
do with it. Torches and pitchforks everyone.

The amount of restraint I have to exercise as an ex-consultant who made his
living working for the likes of Audi, VW & Siemens nobody here can possibly
comprehend.

~~~
crpatino
Did you seriously said the word "renegade"?

Even if their superiors did honestly not know that they were loading fraud-
ware in the vehicles, this is most likely the result of systemic social
dynamics and perverse incentives. Mutually exclusive goals get set with no
regard to the laws of physics or reason. Everyone who dares mention this self
selects outside of the management hierarchy, so the whole chain of command
becomes an echo chamber of overconfidence.

Then, at the end of the day, something has to give. It was the emission
control testing in this case. It could have been much worse.

------
onli
Do I miss that in the article, or is it really not stated from where the
information that the investigation is focusing on them is coming? People
"familiar with the matter" as only source? It would be a pretty bold (and
irresponsible) move from a criminal investigation to leak suspects to the
press that early, given that this will destroy their career. Stuff likes that
needs prove or very very strong hints pointing at them, enough to start a
trial, and there is no word about that.

I understand everyone who thinks that this looks like presenting scapegoats.
This stinks. The whole article shouldn't have been published like that, and we
should not upvote it.

------
dev1n
I'm sure these engineers weren't acting on their own here.

~~~
TheCapn
Well, seeing how one is titled the "Chief Engineer" I wouldn't be too
surprised that he represents an entire department (or many) and is the last
stop before board of directors.

~~~
hkmurakami
To me, having been in the auto industry as a peon, Chief Engineer sounds like
a person with a Junior Middle Manager pay level without officially having any
direct reports.

~~~
zardo
That's odd, I work in an auto company, our chief engineer is the head of all
engieering, he reports to the GM, who reports to the board of directors.

Another odd thing though, is that VW apparently puts their compliance
responsibilities under engineering management. Our compliance department,
which I work in, is an independent department. That has its own difficulties
with being less integrated with development, but we don't have any competing
goals.

------
fnordfnordfnord
These scapegoats are old dudes; they might really be the right scapegoats (as
opposed to the a couple of junior or mid-level coders, one might expect).

------
a3n
> Both men developed an international reputation as engineers, said Ferdinand
> Dudenhöffer head of the Center of Automotive Research at the University of
> Duisburg-Essen.

> “It will be difficult for Volkswagen to replace them,” he said.

Genuinely legendary engineers, _and_ allegedly with the balls to cheat (but
not quite the balls to stand on principle). It will indeed be hard to find
that combination among the remaining legends.

------
hcrisp
Why didn't this same link I posted earlier get picked up when peterthomas
submitted it? I think they are the same? Seems like HN had a glitch?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330573)

------
wiz21c
Strangely, nobody talks about the investors... Did they command such a cheat ?
After all, the top engineers are already 2 levels deep in the management (top
level being investor, then CEO, then tehe engineers) so they're relatively low
enough to be scapegoat...

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to3m
"regulators are considering steps to tighten emissions standards for diesel
engines"? - interesting that the old emissions standards were (one presumes)
absolutely fine, until somebody turns out to have been cheating.

~~~
mhw
I think you've got to look at this as a process of gradual refinement in which
both government and industry participate. The government wants to achieve its
overall objectives of reducing emissions over a long period of time (decades);
it knows that if it just set the emissions targets at the target on day zero
the entire industry would fail to meet them and the industry would collapse.
So the regulations have to be set with some idea of what is currently
achievable or within reach of the industry given an economically feasible
amount of investment.

So the aim of the regulation is to push the industry in the direction you want
them to go at a rate which gets everyone to the destination without destroying
the industry. And every so often the regulations need to be tightened to keep
the development process moving forward.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
...at the expense of the consumer who can't get a decently priced compact
pickup (among other examples)

------
colin_jack
Some of these comments seem to be proof that not everyone commenting on here
reads the articles before giving their views.

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rancur
surely management at fault here for undue pressure? NASA / Morton Thiokol

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mtgx
I assume they are the scapegoats.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
of course your "assumption" is right.

"head of" is a low level (entry-level) mgmt position in these places. No idea
why anyone would down-vote you.

~~~
selimthegrim
This is HN, remember. Engineers are demigods here, freshly sprung from
Athena's head herself, but one step removed from Zeus.

------
oralhistory
It's going to be ridiculous that people will go to jail for this and not any
of the people responsible for the subprime mortgages.

~~~
edanm
So, I've been wondering about this. Who, exactly, would you want to see in
jail for "subprime mortgages" and on what charge?

I hear people say the general statement a lot, but I'm not sure who
specifically they're talking about.

~~~
oldmanjay
Obviously we need to jail all of the people who fraudulently accepted loans
they knew they couldn't pay back. Obviously.

