On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:20:29 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:

It's true that the proof is in the pudding

I once looked that up, and it's the truth is in the /taste/ of the pudding!


actual emissions measurements tell the real story, but you cannot
realistically measure emissions under every possible driving circumstance

You'll notice they drove the three test cars from San Diego to Seattle.
Do you know why they did that?

Because the trucking engine manufacturers were caught cheating years ago,
where, after hundreds of miles of driving, the emissions would slowly
creep up as the cheat codes slowly lowered the emissions constraints.

The only way to tell if the VW cheat code did the same thing as Caterpillar
and Volvo did in the past, was to drive for a thousand miles or so. It turned
out that the cheat code was not the same as the ones previously used by
the trucking engine manufacturers, but, as you noted, the only way to
tell was to drive very long distances.

so at some point the test will need
to be simplified, and every test that is simplified will have a loophole.

This is true.

The problem here isn't that VW cheated; it's that we TRUSTED them not to
cheat, and then they still cheated. It's like trusting a house guest not
to steal from you. Or like trusting the pool boy not to steal chemicals
from you. Or trusting the electrician not to steal wires from you. Or
trusting the dentist not to steal gold fillings from you.

It's a trust issue (in addition to one big legal issue).

However, seeing source code allows you to figure out what that loophole is
when the measurements don't make sense, and of course it also allows you to
determine intent. Booleans with name like EPA_ENFORCEMENT and SMOG_MODE
might be a giveaway too...

In the official documents, even VW called the cheat setting of the switch
the dynamometer setting!