Lambo with blue flames at W.O.T.
As seen on Top Gear.
EPA will find a melted exhaust probe.
Hmmmm...
(Oh yeah, Lambo is owned by Audi which is owned by VW which is owned by Porsche which is owned by VW... Uh oh...)
US eco watchdog's shock warning: Fresh engine pollution cheatware tests coming
Car makers have been warned by regulators that all light vehicle models in the US will be inspected to make sure no manufacturers are gaming air pollutions tests, Volkswagen-style. A week ago the The US Environmental Protection Agency revealed that Volkswagen had used engine management software to detect when a motor was …
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Friday 25th September 2015 21:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Suggestion for the 'greater good' approach...
VW's billions should be redirected to best, most effective, use to most effectively address NOx or similar pollutants.
Maybe retrofit hundreds of Bunker-fueled ships to burn cleaner diesel.
Maybe add better scrubbers to dozens of coal powered stations.
Maybe re-engine tens of thousands of public transit buses.
Seems a waste to worry about a relatively minor exceedance, when the exact same VW money could be used VASTLY more effectively to address the same issue in a more clever, more effective, way. These cars will be rust within a decade anyway. Not effective to worry about them.
To be clear, same price to pay by VW.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 06:00 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Suggestion for the 'greater good' approach...
It is not the size of the "exceedance" which is at issue here. It is the fact that it is deliberate and well designed with the sole intention of defrauding the public and the regulator.
Based on the article it looks like NOx and fuel efficiency tests in the USA are separate. I start to wonder does it have a "defeat profile" for those too. Some of the numbers they have been posting are difficult to believe and I never managed to hit anywhere near them when driving VW as a rental.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 13:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Suggestion for the 'greater good' approach...
defrauding the public and the regulator
A tiny subset of the public that care about the NOx their car emits, I would suggest. I don't drive a VW diesel, but if I did, I wouldn't give a hoot about what came out of the exhaust. I accept some people are, but nobody I know lies sleepless at night fretting over their emissions.
But I suspect this is the end of diesel cars. The marginally better economy and much greater torque is now offset by much greater cost and complexity. Diesels always needed a heavier, stiffer block, then they needed turbochargers, intercoolers, high pressure injectors, then we had particulate filters, now they'll need urea dispensers (or detuning). Add in the pain of real world testing (so the good old days of makers removing the wing mirrors on test cars, taping the intakes, dumping the spare wheel, etc, etc) and the diesel game looks to be up.
It's a pity - in terms of tractability and real world performance a good turbo diesel is delight to drive, and for years the hippytwats have been insisting that CO2 is the great satan, but now apparently things have to change, over fairly trivial NOx emissions. Bloody Germans.
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Monday 28th September 2015 07:32 GMT Byham
Re: Suggestion for the 'greater good' approach...
If a set of metrics are developed and values for them defined for passing acceptance tests, then whatever is being tested will be built or managed to pass those tests. This is the same whether you are talking about passing exams rather than being educated or the structure of a bridge or even engine performance in tests. There is no such thing as the 'spirit of the test' in business. I would expect that every single manufacturer has in some way 'gamed' testing. The only way to get around this is to define a better test. Being vague about what is being tested doesn't work as eventually the reason for failure has to be passed on. However, the methods and validation of results should be as close to the 'real world' as possible then the test gaming becomes less worthwhile.
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Tuesday 29th September 2015 12:37 GMT Tom 13
Re: If a set of metrics are developed
All true but there's another aspect of this the enviroweenies don't want to talk about. The EPA in the US (and I suspect their cousins in other countries) didn't give a damn about the physics and engineering when they developed their metrics. They picked a number out of the air based on questionable research and assumed that some inventor somewhere on the planet was going to develop a way to meet the standard that was also going to meet their increasingly stringent MPG (or KPG for their cousins) standards.
The odds of cheating occurring go up in direct proportion to the impossibility of the task.
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Friday 25th September 2015 21:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not gonna happen...
Light vehicles only? Almost certainly the right time to go back and sample all vehicles of the last few years from all manufacturers (where liability can attach) while we have a window rolled down. May even give justification to the fines. Gaming any enforcement regime occurs far too often across all businesses to expect that Volkswagen is the only player.
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Friday 25th September 2015 21:56 GMT tony72
Excessive fines?
They're talking about an $18billion fine for VW in the USA. That's the same fine BP got for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. You know, the one where many people actually died, and where devastating environmental damage was done to the Gulf of Mexico, and countless people's businesses and livelihoods directly adversely affected.
Yes, VW screwed up, but emitting a bit of extra NOx, and cheating just a bit more than all the other manufacturers do as a matter of course on environmental tests - to me, it's not on the same level of screw-up as Deepwater Horizon. To me, something is out of whack here, if those numbers are right.
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Tuesday 29th September 2015 12:50 GMT Tom 13
Re: Excessive fines?
Depending on emissions, diesel cars sold in the US earned tax credits for purchasers in 2009 and 2010, both years subject to the recall. Even at $500 with standard interest and penalties that's going to be a fair chunk of change just to address that fraud.
Knowingly exceeding the limits puts you in increased damages. And if you are assigning fines on a per instance basis, those numbers are going to get big very, very quickly. Especially with interest if you are applying it from the time the violation occurred as opposed to the time it was discovered.
It strikes me that the only way VW and the rest of the car companies manage this, is charging that the EPA standards were set without regard to what is possible.
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Friday 25th September 2015 22:03 GMT P0l0nium
Laws broken ??
Its not clear to me that any laws have been broken here ...
If the rules said "You have to pass this test" then they did exactly that and the fault lies with the regulator for designing a stupid test that's easy to pass with an unclean engine.
And VW could argue that they didn't ship any "non compliant" vehicles because they ALL did the same thing and they would ALL have passed the stupid test.
I predict a plague of lawyers !!!
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Saturday 26th September 2015 08:08 GMT Neil Barnes
Re: Laws broken ??
The issue seems to be that the cars have been designed to meet the specifications. If the specification does not measure what it is intended to measure, that's a problem with the spec - which appears to be being addressed.
However, one point which occurs to me is what might occur in a few years' time. Requirements which are so tight they can only just be met with a car straight from the factory are going to be problematic three years down the line, when the car has done perhaps thirty or forty thousand miles (I've done three times that in the same time) and even with perfect servicing there is bound to be wear. It strikes me as unlikely that cars with a few years on them are going to be able to meet the MOT (and equivalent) tests. How on earth are the makers going to be able to sell a car which can't be sold in five years' time?
Daft as it sounds, if you don't have the 'must have a new car' gene, your best bet is to hang on to a car which has to meet only the older requirements.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 15:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Laws broken ??
How on earth are the makers going to be able to sell a car which can't be sold in five years' time?
This just pushes them more to electric vehicles. Which do still pollute, but they make it somebody else's problem, somewhere else, and if hippy simpletons believe that "zero emissions" crap, so everybody can be happy.
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Tuesday 29th September 2015 12:56 GMT Tom 13
@ Neil Barnes Re: Laws broken ??
The EPA standards and testing are rife with problems. There have been numerous objections to the "you may assume frictionless spherical horses" aspects of the testing and even more objections to the "you may assume we will find a source of unicorn farts" to their standards setting.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 09:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Laws broken ??
The article says, "the engines produced up to 40 times the permitted levels of the harmful compound when out on the road." Pretty sure that means the law broken was one that says the vehicle may only emit x amount of nitrous oxide per unit y. The test was just designed to be simple and cheap to run. It didn't bother to actually test road performance, but would be a reasonable approximation of road performance if the manufacturers didn't try to cheat the test.
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Tuesday 29th September 2015 12:59 GMT Tom 13
Re: IANAL
In the US, regulations have the same effect as laws. Congress never voted on the specific levels, but they did vote to put that responsibility to the EPA.
Yeah, personally I'd throw that out as a violation of the Constitution. But I'm realistic enough to know that ain't gonna happen any time soon. And that won't help anywhere but the US. The wealth redistributionists are all in this together.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 09:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
You might want to read the whole story about the mine collapses. The EPA was just the one holding the gun when someone finally noticed the dead body.
The companies that mined up there never bothered to take any safety precautions and when they were done mining, they just left the mines as is. About 25 years ago, the EPA tried to get funding so that they could clean up the mines properly. However, in order to do so, the area would also get labeled as a toxic waste site. Since the city didn't want the bad publicity that went along with being a toxic waste dump, they kept dragging the EPA through court. Finally, the EPA just gave up and decided to do the best they could with the money that they had available for the project. They still took reasonable precautions, but not as stringent as if they'd had all the money they wanted.
So, you could choose to blame the EPA for trying to clean up a toxic waste site and having it collapse in the process; or you could blame the mining companies that created the toxic waste site and just ran when there was no more ore to mine; or you could blame the city government that wasted a couple decades just to avoid getting labeled as a toxic waste site only to have it backfire on them. Of those three, I know which one I'm not inclined to blame.
http://gazette.com/fearing-stigma-colorado-contested-superfund-status-for-mine/article/feed/260587
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/08/25/in-reversal-colorado-town-with-toxic-mine-leak-to-seek-federal-cleanup-help/
http://gazette.com/geology-drainage-laws-decrease-odds-of-toxic-mine-spill-in-teller-el-paso-counties/article/1557504
http://www.mining.com/web/toxic-mine-waste-spill-into-animas-river-symptom-of-larger-problem/
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Tuesday 29th September 2015 13:06 GMT Tom 13
The EPA knew or should have know that the risks of the approved clean up method were more likely to cause a problem than resolve it. A retired geologist who moved to the area about 6 months before the operation started looked at the plan and predicted the dam would break 6-18 months after the EPA started the project.
YOU NEVER START A CLEAN UP THAT YOU KNOW WILL FAIL.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/08/letter-to-editor-predicted-colorado-epa-spill-one-week-before-catastrophe-so-epa-could-secure-superfund-cash/
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Friday 25th September 2015 23:12 GMT Mark 85
Make me wonder..
1) If the EPA is now promising to do it's job, what the hell were they spending all our tax money on? And what other bits of "protection" didn't they do their job on? Or maybe a half-assed job? Maybe they should all be fired, the buildings bulldozed and we start over?
2) I don't think the other manufacturers will be pissed or say a word... Chances are, most if not all are or have done a similar thing. VW got caught by some researchers who, if they'd used a differerent vehicle might have found the same or similar game being played. Since the mileage numbers usually seem (ok.. not seem.. are) inflated, why not the emissions tests?
3) I'm surprised they just didn't monitor the computer port and when the tester was plugged in, change the programmed management for the test.
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Friday 25th September 2015 23:27 GMT skeptical i
new jargon du jour?
So, will people who fit their performance to pass a test be accused of V-Dub'ing it?
Sample usage:
"Dude, how did you pass the urine test to get your new job after having smoked bales of reefer last month?"
"Easy, I got some of that detox-in-a-bottle at the head shop and V-Dub'ed the test."
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Friday 25th September 2015 23:33 GMT Mike Shepherd
"...This may involve manufacturers having to resubmit cars for testing".
If this puts the car into a different tax band, will the manufacturer also be liable for the previously lost tax on cars which were more polluting than claimed? If the faults are not corrected, will the manufacturer be liable for owners' increased car tax? If the faults *are* corrected, will they be liable to owners for the reduced performance and efficiency? What a tangled web!
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Saturday 26th September 2015 10:19 GMT Stuart 22
"If this puts the car into a different tax band, will the manufacturer also be liable for the previously lost tax on cars which were more polluting than claimed? If the faults are not corrected, will the manufacturer be liable for owners' increased car tax? If the faults *are* corrected, will they be liable to owners for the reduced performance and efficiency?
Add recompenses us for fines big cities will have to pay for pollution levels caused by cheating, the NHS for having to treat the consequences of this pollution and the people and relatives of those who suffered. Only problem is if VW and/or the industry paid this they would go all go bust.
I've got a funny feeling that isn't going to happen.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 00:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
LINPACK
If you are looking for an IT angle: Haven't several CPU vendors (or was it only Intel) done this with LINPACK benchmarks? If the compiler notices that this is the benchmark code (IIRC from comments in the code), take a shortcut at the expense of accuracy, because nobody will look at the results?
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Saturday 26th September 2015 14:42 GMT mosw
Re: LINPACK
"Have some fun looking at how storage manufacturers love to not use exactly the right math on drive size too. Nothing new there."
Yes but imagine if the available capacity of the drive was 40 times less than advertised. I think VW went way beyond the number fudging that we know happens in most product testing.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 02:22 GMT thames
Re: Light vehicles only?
@Gene Cash - "So the huge SUVs, Hummers, giant Ford King Cabs, Dodge 1500 diesels, and other "look at the size of my dick" trucks all get a pass?"
Those are "light trucks" in American terminology. Heavy vehicles are the large commercial vehicles which haul freight around. Heavy vehicles are tested for emissions on the road. Light vehicles are tested on a dynamometer. Its relatively easy to tell if a vehicle is on a dynamometer because only one set of wheels is actually turning.
"I've seen month-old Ram diesels pump out smoke like a Chinese refinery. You can't tell me they're in EPA spec."
Or maybe they "passed" in the same way that VW did? I think we've only just seen the tip of the iceberg in this one. I would not be surprised if virtually everyone was doing the same thing.
The EPA wasn't doing on road tests for light vehicles because of limitations in their funding.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 04:41 GMT Henry Wertz 1
heavy vehicles diesels already get extra testing
"Light vehicles only? Almost certainly the right time to go back and sample all vehicles of the last few years from all manufacturers (where liability can attach) while we have a window rolled down."
Actually, under a 1998 consent decree -- due to excessive NOx emissions on their large diesel engines -- with Caterpillar, Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Volvo, Mack Trucks/Renault and Navistar, they already all do undergo extra emissions testing. Just like with VW, they'd pass the EPA test, but then got caught spewing out all kinds of NOx at other times. The info I found now says they would all pass the EPA test, but at highway cruise conditions switch to a seperate mode that allowed very high NOx emissions. (I could have sworn I remembered reading, circa 2000 or so, that a few were actually caught detecting the EPA test and failing most of the rest of the time, but they don't state that now.)
They were given big fines, told they then had to make up for those excess emissions by cleaning up the engines (to meet newer standards) a year or 2 ahead of schedule. They did get a minor concession -- during the extra emissions testing, the vehicles actually have a seperate "not to exceed" limit of 1.25x the limit they must meet during the standard EPA test. It sounds like (other than a few vague test parameters like air temp will be under 100 degrees fahrenheit, and that the engine is not being tested under a few unrealistic conditions like running it up to redline with no load on it) they are not told what these tests are, to ensure they try to meet emissions within the whole range.
I'll be interested to see what car cos (if any) raise a complaint about this extra emissions testing. My suspicion is that most car cos actually followed the rules, and any that put up a fuss about this extra testing most likely also cheated.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 10:07 GMT TeeCee
Snouts in troughs everyone.
after Martin Winterkorn stepped down in the wake of the emissions scandal.
Despite apparently knowing nothing about any of this horror story and this tale is backed up by his colleagues.
Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that if he was involved in something damaging to the company then, by their own rules, he'd be ineligible for the multimillion euro payoff he's in line for.
Then again, you could say that anyone in that position who's so fucking useless that this could happen on their watch without their noticing has damaged to the company by their own incompetence.........I'd certainly be taking that view if I were a major shareholder looking at this wanker walking off with his rich reward.
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Saturday 26th September 2015 14:48 GMT joed
hipocrisy defined
while they chase after little guy, their policies placed lower burden the bigger you got. The solution (at least here in US) - sell only "trucks". The result - hulking giants on highway (driver only most of the time), average fuel economy improving mostly on paper (windows stickers) and ballooning costs of safety devices necessary for all vehicles to keep occupants somewhat safe (probably not when hit by a giant). This and lack of choice for the few that would like something more sane (law of averages at play).
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Monday 28th September 2015 09:58 GMT enormous c word
Who else?
I would put good money on many if not most other manufacturers are doing this.
Interesting that this was *discovered* (actually suspected for years) in the USA (where few US produced cars are diesel) just as their auto industry is expected to go into a slump. I wonder who *dobbed them in*?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
