back to article VW’s case of NOxious emissions: a tale of SMOKE and MIRRORS?

Karma must be a great comfort to those who believe in it. The assurance that nasty deeds will be accounted for, eventually, must make all the shit we have to put up with worthwhile. Take Martin Winterkorn, forced to resign his role as head of Volkswagen this week, amid revelations that his company had been systematically …

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  1. Your alien overlord - fear me

    "We knew they were a bunch of hoods and believed it would benefit our readers to break through their bullshit." - pity websites aren't like magazines of old. Nowadays it's all 'Apple is the greatest thing ever' just to get invited to their shindigs (el Reg the notable exception - I take it you don't like the wine and nibbles Apple lays out).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'Greater Good', or emissions trading

      Take VW's billions (fines and anticipated costs) and redirect them to other sources of NOx or similar emissions in the same regions. Billions would buy a vast reduction, orders of magnitude more than this fleet of cars.

      We might achieve vastly more effective reductions by approaching it from the widest possible view.

      Scrubbers on coal powered stations. Convert ships away from Bunker fuel. Re-engine old buses.

      There's a couple orders of magnitude more effective improvement on the table if we're clever about it.

      1. Swiss Anton

        Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

        I wouldn't start counting the chickens just yet. From my understanding VW passed all the tests that they needed to. If this is the case then the US authorities won't be able to fine them a single cent, though I wouldn't rule out some sort of out of court settlement in the 100's of millions, rather than the billions that some are speculating about.

        True VW's reputation is now dented, but compared to what happened to Toyota, I suspect that for the most part VW's troubles will soon pass, especially if other manufactures have also been doing the same.

        1. a_yank_lurker

          Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

          I suspect the VW "cheat" is common to all vehicles. The problem is two fold. The test requires the engine to be manipulated electronically with little or no real load. Done incorrectly there is the risk of engine damage and very angry owners who will want someone's head. Thus I suspect all the engine control software has some sort of throttle control to protect the engine during testing. The second part is your average bureaucrat is so dim that talking to a brick is difficult because of the vastly higher intellect of the brick. The issue is then to determine, under reasonable test conditions, what should constitute failure. Here our esteemed dim-bulb does not grasp it is not that the test must replicate actual driving but gives some valid indication of the emission profile under various loads. These what happens when US shysters who last took any science when they were freshman in high school (about 14/15 years old) write essentially an engineering test protocol.

          1. DrTechnical

            Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

            Which "US" shysters are you referring to?!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

              Which "US" shysters are you referring to?!

              Yes, don't confuse terminology. I reserve that term exclusively for Silicon Valley CEOs and Wall Street bankers. And maybe NSA officials.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

          From my understanding VW passed all the tests that they needed to. If this is the case then the US authorities won't be able to fine them a single cent, though I wouldn't rule out some sort of out of court settlement in the 100's of millions, rather than the billions that some are speculating about.

          As a matter of fact, another idea just struck me. If VWs dramatically reduce their emissions while stationary (i.e. a test environment), is that actually so wrong?

          If you live anywhere a decent size city I am positive you're familiar with the great parking lots called "motorways" where you spend more time parked (stationary) than moving. That strikes me as an EXCELLENT place to field lower emissions. Alternatively you could kill the engine, but I'm not sure if starting an engine is that environmentally friendly compared to keeping it running (diesels seem to smoke mostly on startup, but that maybe cold start only).

          That fact that they threw out a mea culpa and so took the hit is a sign that there is indeed a fire belonging to the smoke and I'm not defending anyone cheating, but stationary emissions are an important value for cities IMHO. Maybe worth separating out?

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

            Are you not familiar with the stop/start systems that are becoming increasingly common on newer cars?

            My car cuts the engine the instant that I put it in neutral with the footbrake on and it is stationary.

            As soon as I press the clutch, or the vehicle rolls the engine restarts.

            It only does this once it is fully warmed up, and the stop/start tech stops the engines with the engine cycle at the ideal place for a restart.

            Then it displays in front of me a figure declaring how much CO2 is has saved using this trick.

            1. Montreal Sean

              Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

              I often think that engine start/stop systems are another way for manufacturers to make money.

              You are adding a lot of wear and tear to your starter, and I'm betting those starters have some fancy doodads that result in a higher replacement cost for the customer.

            2. herman

              Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

              Yes, the auto stop/start is the worst fscking thing when you are driving in a city, with the engine spluttering when you try to make a right-hand turn or needs to take gap into a traffic circle. It is an awful and downright dangerous misfeature. Whoever thought of it needs to get 7 lashes with a wet noodle.

              1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

                Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

                I haven't driven a single start stop vehicle that would stop the engine unless the handbrakes is applied and the clutch depressed (Old rep mobiles BMW's, Mercs and Audi's which have usually done 150 thousand miles plus)?

                Which stop start cars are doing this?

                1. Jonathan Richards 1

                  Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

                  > Which stop start cars are doing this?

                  1. Kia c'eed (stoopid name, sure). Mine has an "intelligent stop-go" feature that cuts the (diesel) engine when (a) in neutral, and (b) the clutch is not depressed, and (c) the car is travelling at something close to or less than snail's pace. Use of the hand- or foot-brake is not involved.

                  FWIW, I like it, once one has un-learned the reflex "Oh, sh*t, I stalled the car" reaction, followed by shoving one's left foot on the clutch, which restarts the engine. This is a manual transmission, obviously (six forward gears, count 'em!). I've no idea how it might work with an automatic.

                  1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

                    Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

                    "Kia c'eed "

                    That's what I drive. It has NEVER operated the Start/Stop mode unless I wanted it to. The car should not be moving with stick in neutral and foot off the clutch. You're not supposed to "roll" like that in normal driving because you are not in full control of the vehicle.

                    My beef with the system is that it seems to have some weird and arbitrary system of deciding the conditions are incorrect and it doesn't operate. eg, I've just driven 150 miles up the motorway non-stop, reached the queue at the end, ambient temp. is well above "frost" level and battery ought to be fully charged and yet I go into neutral, clutch up and Stop/Start is "disabled" for some reason. <shrug>

                2. Colin Bull 1

                  Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

                  My 2012 Citroen C4 has this mode. It cuts the engine when you have your foot on the brake and are more or less stationery. Perversly, when you put the handbrake on the engine restarts. Never been able to understand this.

                3. Martin Budden Silver badge
                  Facepalm

                  Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

                  I have a stop start car which can cut out at traffic lights, when cornering, even when doing 60mph. This isn't a design feature, it's just that the car is 56 years old.

              2. This post has been deleted by its author

            3. wayne 8

              Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

              "Then it displays in front of me a figure declaring how much CO2 is has saved using this trick."

              And you trust that figure is correct, becuase it makes you feel good?

          2. Mark 65

            Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

            Maybe they should road test the vehicles on a test track to confirm that the real-world figures are in line with what they find in testing.

        3. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

          Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

          I wouldn't start counting the chickens just yet. From my understanding VW passed all the tests that they needed to. If this is the case then the US authorities won't be able to fine them a single cent

          Believe it or not, cheating the test is covered in the legislation!

      2. BasicChimpTheory

        Re: 'Greater Good', or emissions trading

        @AC

        What has your post to do with the post you "replied" to?

  2. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Modern-day laptops

    They must still do something to them to detect if they're being tested and not follow normal behaviour, which is to rev the fans up to maximum so it sounds and feels like a hairdryer and shut down anyway within half-an-hour of web browsing or using Office.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I give up

    I had quite a long post here, but you'll be spared this because after hitting the "submit" button some cloudflare CAPTCHA showed up, and even with a correct CAPTCHA it had lost all of it. Maybe this will get through, if not I'll email you a heads up.

    Go fix this, El Reg.

    1. Gezza

      Re: I give up

      This happens all over the internet, not just the Reg. Long ago I realised that, after writing a complex and detailed missive to educate the masses, it was sensible to do a simple select all and copy before hitting the Post button. When it fell over, as with you, one could just control-V the content back in the freshly presented blank comment box.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I give up

        The challenge I see with that idea is that you'd have to do this every time you hit a submit button, which makes a mess of usability, and it may fail the second time too (depending of the stupidity level of the idiots configuring the barrier).

        Instead, maybe it's worth fixing the systems that seem to be too trigger happy? I know it's a novel idea, but that may actually address the problem.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I give up

          Textarea Cache Plugin for Firefox reduced my beaten-to-bits keyboard ratio extremly! It's the first plugin I install, long before NoScript and RequestPolicy.

          1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

            Re: I give up

            Opera has had text field caching since noughties. Not sure about current Webkit-based crap.

            1. DropBear
              Facepalm

              Re: I give up

              To be honest, Firefox saved my bacon a couple of times after the underlying site lost my post - to my great amazement, hitting "back" as many times as necessary to land on the original "post comment" page yielded the comment box with my text still in it. This is by no means something to rely on (fails way more often than succeeds) but is definitely something to try if you forgot to hit "Ctrl+C" (or worse - you did, only to realize the clipboard still contains whatever it did _before_ simply because fuck web 2.0 and "copy" was disabled of something)

            2. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

              Re: I give up

              Yup - I always use Opera.

              /smug

          2. cd

            Re: I give up

            For those who use Seamonkey, Textarea can be found on the list here, lots of other useful stuff as well... http://addonconverter.fotokraina.com/compatibility/

            Thanks AC, that works a treat.

      2. Sarah Balfour

        Re: I give up

        That's been my standard MO for fora/comments sections for years; these days, however, having a tablet as my main device and noticing that some refuse to allow you to copy, I tend to compose posts in Notes first.

        The worst is, ironically, Apple's own fora (yes, this is an iPad).

      3. What? Me worry?

        Re: I give up

        Lazarus From Recovery plug-in. works a charm.

      4. DrTechnical

        Re: I give up

        I have begun doing a text copy on finished messages before hitting that tricky "send" button. It's a real pisser when you've crafted your on-point reply, and POOF away it goes, into the aether, never to be created again, because there just isn't enough time in the universe, and that person really isn't worth your your scorn and derision anyway...

    2. VinceH

      Re: I give up

      What CAPTCHA? Is it perhaps a special bonus part of the comment form for ACs?

      1. Fibbles

        Re: I give up

        It's a captcha from the CDN rather than the website itself. It seems to happen most often when using a mobile connection. Presumably cloudflare think you're a bot or part of some DDOS?

        1. Doctor_Wibble

          Re: I give up

          I got caught with this one recently - several times on a single post!

          I used to think CAPTCHAs were an honest spam-prevention thing but now I'm just convinced it's people trying to fine-tune their image recognition services for free - that or there's an unspotted cross-site hack somewhere and we just got conned into helping a spambot.

      2. DavCrav

        Re: I give up

        "What CAPTCHA? Is it perhaps a special bonus part of the comment form for ACs?"

        CAPTCHA = "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Commentards and Humans Apart". Maybe you are clearly one or the other, hence no need to test?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I give up

          CAPTCHA = "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Commentards and Humans Apart". Maybe you are clearly one or the other, hence no need to test?

          Oh great, now you're suggesting my typing is robotic. Thanks a lot.

          :)

        2. J. R. Hartley

          Re: I give up

          It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response.

          1. 404

            Re: I give up

            I've yet to see one that accepts 'FUCKYOU!' as a passphrase... emotional response, indeed.

    3. Bluto Nash

      Re: I give up

      I've gotten to the point the I copy my entries to my clipboard (not just on El Reg, but all forums I frequent) prior to hitting "Submit." Too many times where I had to go back and try to remember exactly how I had said something, and ended up with an entry less insightful, witty and germaine* than what I had originally posted.

      *YMMV - "eye of the beholder" and all that

      1. Jonathan Richards 1
        Headmaster

        Re: I give up

        germane ~== Germaine

  4. BobRocket

    Gaming the system

    It goes on in all industries at all times.

    A set of rules is proposed, interested parties try to skew/complicate the rules and something is implemented.

    The race is on to try to get as close to the edge of the rules as possible to gain competitive advantage, sometimes someone steps over the bounds.

    What I find interesting is that it was independents that found the breach and not the competition, surely any competitor would wonder how VW could claim such low emissions whilst keeping performance high.

    This assumes the competitors were themselves staying within the rules, perhaps they knew and were working on (or have implemented) stealthier versions.

    1. Martin 47

      Re: Gaming the system

      The obvious answer is that all manufacturers are doing it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Gaming the system

        Another possibility is that some manufacturers really can hit those performance and emissions figures, while others don't know how (or can't do it within budget).

        You see that everywhere - in my industry we see some of our competitors claiming that their product matches ours in some feature or performance metric, when it simply doesn't come close in reality - instead they carefully chose a method of measurement where the numbers came out.

        1. Blank Reg

          Re: Gaming the system

          If VW had been just a little over the limit then I might be willing to believe they were the only ones. But they are so far off that I doubt they are alone. Maybe the really high end diesels are ok as they can afford the extra bits needed to run cleaner, but I'm expecting the rest will be found to have been cheating as well.

          1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

            Re: Gaming the system

            Could be one, could be many. Pennypinching and management pressure are powerful factors. There's no easy way to know who has cut corners too much. Or stumbled way too deep into the software-defined-reality.

            Yes, higher budget helps to achieve goals in a decent manner, but still, high pricetag doesn't necessarily mean quality.

      2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

        Re: Gaming the system

        I'm waiting for the test results of other car manufacturers because I share that opinion insofar that there must be others ("all" is to grand an assumption IMHO).

        I suspect there are a few management boards waiting right now to hear if they dodged a bullet, got caught or are unfairly accused of doing the same (let's not rule that out, because there's now a party that must be "seen to do something" after having been caught sleeping).

      3. John Sturdy

        Re: Gaming the system

        And that normally honest engineers have gone along with it because they've conceded that the official standards are unrealistic?

    2. Fibbles

      Re: Gaming the system

      Of course they're all doing it. It'll play out like this: A huge media storm will be whipped up, politicians will demand answers and the foreign company will be fined ridiculously large amounts. Then when things have died down a bit, it'll be revealed that American companies were also fiddling their results. Of course by that point the public will be bored with the story and so Ford, Chrysler, etc will get away with a slap on the wrist.

      What? Me, cynical?

      1. Ian 35

        Not much diesel in the US

        "Ford, Chrysler, etc will get away with a slap on the wrist."

        Actually, it'll be rather different to that. The US car makers sell virtually no diesel cars, and diesel is rare enough that gas stations that sell it are signposted (there's a West Wing episode that hinges on this, as I recall). The US car makers are very happy for this to become a huge thing, because "diesel is dirty and the people that make diesel cars are foreign and dishonest" is precisely in their interests. VAG don't have big, slow-revving petrol engines of the sort beloved of US buyers, so selling premium petrol cars at sufficient margin is going to be hard for them, so the "here are some fast, clean, green, economical cars" was quite a good platform. Which they've just torched.

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