
Volkswagen, Offering Amnesty, Asks Workers to Come Forward on Emissions Cheating - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/business/volkswagen-offering-amnesty-asks-workers-to-come-forward-on-emissions-cheating.html?ref=business
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jacquesm
It's getting worse every day for VW it seems. First a limited range of diesel
engines, then a whole bunch more, then the gasoline engines. Now this very
transparent ploy at distancing. I hope they do realize that it isn't fooling
anybody and that if nobody steps forward it doesn't prove a thing. They're in
heap of trouble. It's interesting how those 'workers' had absolutely nothing
to gain except continued employment from this whole saga and the VW management
and stockholders had lots to gain.

If anything there should be whole slew of emails documenting this feature and
its reasons for existence and who authorized this. VW 'asking' is tantamount
to them saying they still don't know how this whole thing happened which is
fairly incredible.

It's quite something to watch an industry giant flail like this, when Mercedes
had their A-class debacle they got the story under control relatively quickly,
VW seems to go from a certain level of bad to something even worse every time
I read the news.

~~~
sounds
I think the key bit with this news is that they're doubling down on "the
employees snuck this by us. We had no idea. Absolutely no clue whatsoever.
Pinkie swear."

They may even be able to "find" an employee who has some kind of plausible
story.

The reality is that most auto manufacturers cheat on emissions tests in
europe. Mechanics who work on the cars know it. Even the regulators are
hesitant to reform emissions testing.

The silver lining is that perhaps an actual improvement in emissions is
happening, with the EPA adding road-testing to their emissions test suite.

~~~
Gibbon1
>"the employees snuck this by us. We had no idea. Absolutely no clue
whatsoever. Pinkie swear."

That's how I read the headline. Good thing I wasn't in mid sip when I read
it[1]. You can imagine what would happen to an engineer that tried to bring
that up. I swear you can smell that dynamic at a company within fifteen
minutes of walking in the door.

[1] Seriously this sort of stuff happens, the board members should be banned
from serving on a board of directors again.

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oxryly1
Amnesty? Pressuring employees to "snitch"? Are you kidding me?

This is just blatant scapegoating. Your cars cheated on emissions test because
you willfully ignored a decade of evidence! This is a case of pervasive
organizational intent. You saw no evil, heard no evil, and spoke no evil, from
the top management on down. Even the government regulators participated.

This is such bullshit.

~~~
calinet6
Organizations are not people. They have a mind of their own, independent of
individuals and yet controlled by the autopilot psychology of humans, unless
systemically organized otherwise.

Things like this happen every day in organizations all over the world, when
systems are not understood or willfully guided. It's just that most of them
don't make the news—they simply silently eat at productivity and joy of work
until a modern joyless inhuman organization is created. Everyone saw no evil,
heard no evil, and spoke no evil—and it still happens.

It's not pervasive organizational intent—it's pervasive organizational chaos.

~~~
oxryly1
> Organizations are not people. They have a mind of their own, independent of
> individuals and yet controlled by the autopilot psychology of humans, unless
> systemically organized otherwise.

Exactly.

> It's not pervasive organizational intent—it's pervasive organizational
> chaos.

Well, in this case the chaos adapted rather optimally to the physics of diesel
engines, the regulatory environment, and the emissions testing regime. I'd say
it's worthwhile to treat that as intent -- to create incentive to decide how
to act intentionally, rather than let chaos and circumstances form your
intent.

~~~
calinet6
Yes, Chaos as in the acceptance of the absence of systems to guide the whole
in the correct direction. Chaos and circumstance formed the intent without any
single person deciding; classic mob effect. There needs to be a system to
prevent that type of thing, and it's often very complex.

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100k
Shouldn't it be the US and German governments that are offering amnesty from
criminal prosecution for Volkswagen whistleblowers?

~~~
powera
Yeah. This seems like a calculated way for Volkswagen to make sure that nobody
comes forward with anything, to "prove" that nothing else is happening.

I mean, they even say you may still face criminal charges for coming forward.

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teddyh
I don’t understand what “Amnesty” would mean in this context. We are used to
_governments_ offering amnesty, but that is specifically amnesty _from
prosecution_ , and a normal citizen does not otherwise have much interation
with the state in their daily lives. According to the article, VW workers are
being offered amnesty from being “fired or [facing] damage claims”. However,
there are _very many ways_ in which VW could make workers’ lives a living hell
_without_ firing them, since employees by definition interact with VW all day,
every day. VW would have to enumerate every one of those bad things they could
do and promise not do it, which is, of course, impossible. This feels like an
empty promise.

~~~
lyschoening
There's no reason for anyone in upper management to trust this offer, but I
don't see why VW would harass any normal employees coming forward over this.
VW has a good relationship with its workers and a strong works council and
they need their full support at this time.

~~~
teddyh
If that were so obviously true as you make it out to be, VW wouldn’t have
_needed_ to even offer this “amnesty” to begin with – employees would have
felt free to come forward without fear of being fired. Since VW _did_ offer
this “amnesty”, this is clearly not the case. Therefore, somewhat
paradoxically, since VW _have made_ the offer, it is an empty one.

~~~
gohrt
Not quite. Before amnesty, we have a case where coming forward may meed
confessing to being complicit in misbehavior, which could be rightfully
punished. Amnesty says that that won't exercise that right.

~~~
teddyh
No it doesn’t. Amnesty, in this case, is limited to amnesty from being “fired
or [facing] damage claims”. Nothing else.

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deegles
Do they not have a source repository with commit history and code reviews with
names attached? Is that something unreasonable to expect from a multi-billion
dollar company?

~~~
dboreham
The code was supposedly written by a vendor or subcontractor, so it could have
been delivered in a "drop" to VW without commit history.

Also, the story seems to have been that the "cheat" was a special mode
explicitly programmed for test purposes and not something totally under the
covers. The "crime" was in enabling that mode under field conditions. That
change may not be covered by source code revision control, if it were made in
a config file outside of SCC.

In a field more of us here understand, it would be similar to coding a feature
in a server that dumps user passwords to the log file in plain text. Such a
feature would be useful for certain debugging situations, but it would be
disastrous to have it enabled on a production box. So you'd put a big all-caps
warning in the source code, documentation, example config files saying
whatever you do don't turn this on in production. Supposedly the engine
management developers did something along those lines, but the folks who built
the cars ignored the warning and enabled the mode anyway.

~~~
kbenson
That may be, but it ignores the fact that software was written for the express
purpose of not just identifying if a test was being ran, but then taking
action to change the results of the test has no real world use. Any case where
you would want to change engine performance has no reason to be triggered only
when testing. To get both included in production as-is and turned on requires
quite a series of consecutive mistakes to be considered accidental.

> In a field more of us here understand, it would be similar to coding a
> feature in a server that dumps user passwords to the log file in plain text.

No, it's like coding that feature but explicitly making it _turn off_ whenever
it detects a security review. How is that justifiable?

~~~
dboreham
Yeah, I like your continuation of my analogy. However, as I understand it,
from someone I know who worked in the automotive sector a while back, all
vehicles have a special emissions test mode. It exists for legitimate reasons
such as you don't want to have ABS turned on when on a dyno for safety
reasons. It probably also exists for less legitimate reasons arising out of
the history of testing practice -- essentially that the test never has been
truly representative of real road conditions, and everyone involved in the
testing process knew this. That being the case, all you need then is to add
one more flag to the list of "things to enable/disable under test conditions".
I agree that somewhere there must be some kind of record of when and who made
that configuration change though.

~~~
oxryly1
These details of emissions modes and engine control software configuration
could easily explain the defeat.

What remains is explaining how engineering managers higher up (all the way to
the top) could remain willfully ignorant of the fact that VW's diesel engines
"passed" emissions without resorting to exotic tech like Mercedes' bluetec
exhaust fluids. They knew there was some sort of magic in their engines that
set them apart, but they either understood it was cheating, or they never
asked any questions.

~~~
gherkin0
> What remains is explaining how engineering managers higher up (all the way
> to the top) could remain willfully ignorant of the fact

> What remains is explaining how engineering managers higher up (all the way
> to the top) could remain willfully ignorant of the fact that VW's diesel
> engines "passed" emissions without resorting to exotic tech like Mercedes'
> bluetec exhaust fluids.

How often do high level managers at a big company have a good handle on
technical implementation details of specific systems and what the implications
of those details actually are?

It's possible that these people either had non-technical backgrounds,
technical backgrounds in unrelated areas, or out of date technical backgrounds
(like they last worked with this stuff back when cars still commonly had
carburetors).

~~~
oxryly1
Martin Winterkorn (the VW CEO who resigned) was an engineer. Specifically, he
was an powerplant engineer who helped spearhead VW's diesel technology.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him go to jail.

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noonespecial
So this German company's management says it was those lousy employees that did
it and the employees say they were just following orders... wait, why'd my
Godwin meter just peg?

~~~
kuschku
No, the management was completely suspended. 10 board members and 2 CEOs were
suspended or resigned over this.

The new CEO and board just want to collect evidence whom of the board gave the
order (and thereby can be sued in court for damages)

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mapster
I hope they paste these amnesty notices in the board room and exec offices.

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draw_down
Oh give me a break. Company makes the money, company takes the responsibility.
Not the employees.

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mtgx
The best way for VW to come "clean" (sort of speak) out of this is to promise
to everyone, including the governments, that they will be replacing all of
their new models with EVs by 2025 (at least the street cars).

~~~
kuschku
Well, they already promised (a) to refit all the cars without performance
losses, (b) pay all fees and fines the car owners might face, (c) offer every
single of their models as electric by 2020.

Now, if the German government is going to make the cars exempt from the 0.26 €
per kWh electricity tax, they will be cheaper than gas, too.

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SherlockBeagle
Lying to a federal official can land you in prison. (Ask Martha Stewart)

Someone programmed these cars to 'lie' to the Feds. This caused damage to the
environment and these cars dropped in resale value as a result, erasing
millions of dollars of value from personal balance sheets.

Someone (not the shareholders paying a fine) should be held personally
responsible and face criminal prosecution.

~~~
kuschku
That’s exactly why 2 CEOs resigned and 10 top managers were suspended.

This amnesty seems to be – from what I get from the media – something the new
CEO wants to be able to collect evidence against his predecessors.

~~~
developer1
The new CEO wants to collect evidence? The new CEO is a puppet for the board
of directors. The CEO doesn't care, he's just there as a public face to play
pretend that the company cares.

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forinti
Either management is behind this, or they created the incentive for it to
happen. They can't escape their responsibility; nobody would do it without a
reason.

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datashovel
I think one of the biggest tells would be if the VW cars with the software
issues weren't equipped well enough to deal with the emissions regulations. In
other words, if the cars provably did not have the right equipment to meet
emissions requirements, AND had the software issues, I think this would prove
beyond reasonable doubt that VW was maliciously trying to circumvent the
tests.

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protomyth
I see Chevy when advertising their new diesel Colorado put great emphasis on
the validity of the testing it underwent.

I'm still at a bit of a loss on this whole rogue employee scenario. I'm a
little more concerned about the rest of the software if this is true.

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DougN7
I don't get it. How many people could possibly have worked on that software?
Surely less than a dozen. Why doesn't someone create a throw away email
account and send an email? Better yet, why didn't they before the software
shipped?

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jld89
It must be a witch hunt at VW right now...

Not that any witches exist of course, just for a scapegoat.

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johansch
I am impressed.

