On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:40:39 -0700, trader_4 wrote:

Otherwise it ran the car with emissions that according to the news
last night was 10 - 40x above the limits.

Notice that they had from 5 to 45 times the LIMIT (which is a lot!).

The lower/higher numbers were due to city/highway mode, I think.
(I assume the city numbers are the higher ones?)

The variation in the low and high figures themselves was due to the
different vehicles tested.

They didn't look at the code, EPA went after VW to explain the huge
differences between dyno testing emissions and emission on the road.
VW couldn't explain it and finally admitted what they had done.

I think, as someone mentioned, and as the news noted, the code is
actually covered by the DCMA (it would be nice to find a cite).

It wasn't so much that VW /couldn't/ explain, but that they wouldn't
explain it. They only admitted guilt when both CARB and EPA said they
would not certify 2016 diesels because they couldn't be certain of the
manufacturer's own certification process.

Only then, when VW knew their stock price would take the hit, did VW
finally confess. And even then, they didn't confess to the fact that
it's not half a million vehicles, but more than twenty times that
number!

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:37:03 -0400, Mayayana wrote:

It's the difference between *maybe* risking their
bonus and definitely risking years in jail.

I must agree, unfortunately.

At this point, we don't know WHO was involved.

Please post when anyone finds out WHO the guilty PEOPLE were.

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 16:04:25 -0500, Dean Hoffman wrote:

The Justice Department reached an agreement
with GM over the faulty ignition switches. Prosecution
is deferred and the GM execs promise to be goodie two
shoes. http://preview.alturl.com/ctzff Over 100
people died.
I don't think Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy
are running the Justice Department.

You have to keep in mind that there are DIFFERENT laws when
safety is involved (NHTSA) versus the environment (EPA).

The NY Times, I think it was, discussed the difference, which
essentially said that the EPA actually has more power to fine
them than does the NHTSA.

We should look up the details, but, my point is that the laws
and maximum penalties are totally DIFFERENT for safety violations
versus emissions violations.

Inexplicably, the emissions violation laws appear (at first
inspection) to be more stringent.

Go figure.

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:32:46 -0400, Mayayana wrote:

I'd forgotten about the GM issue. It's hardly
surprising these things happen when the executives
in charge have no liability. Even the companies
often find the deals to be profitable. If a company
cuts corners to save $100 million and gets fined
$20 million, with no arrests, then that seems to be
a good business plan.

Again, let's remember the laws and maximum fines are very
DIFFERENT for emissions laws versus for safety laws.

Different laws.
Different agencies.
Different penalties.

You could be arguing that we should make the laws more consistent
between SAFETY violations and EMISSIONS violations; but the fact
is they are very different - so - you can't really compare them
that way and be fair.

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:34:25 -0700, trader_4 wrote:

Except that isn't what the EPA says VW did and it isn't what VW admitted
to doing. If it was just the car reacting to the dyno, why would VW
admit that they did it deliberately?

Try reading the news.

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 17:32:46 -0500, Mayayana
wrote:

| The Justice Department reached an agreement
| with GM over the faulty ignition switches. Prosecution
| is deferred and the GM execs promise to be goodie two
| shoes. http://preview.alturl.com/ctzff Over 100
| people died.
| I don't think Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy
| are running the Justice Department.
|

I'd forgotten about the GM issue. It's hardly
surprising these things happen when the executives
in charge have no liability. Even the companies
often find the deals to be profitable. If a company
cuts corners to save $100 million and gets fined
$20 million, with no arrests, then that seems to be
a good business plan.

My dad had a 1976 Chevy pickup. It was one of those
with the gas tank outside of the rails. GM was supposed to
allow an extra $1000 as trade in value as part of a settlement
with the government. That deal smelled bad from the
beginning.


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On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:40:39 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Tuesday, September 22, 2015 at 5:22:33 PM UTC-4, Ashton Crusher wrote:
On 22 Sep 2015 10:07:28 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Mayayana wrote:
I'm more curious about how the EPA didn't
figure it out earlier. Reports say the EPA saw a
discrepancy between testing and on-road
results. But they've been haggling with VW
all this time and somehow never thought to look
at the software. Is the software accessible to
EPA? Do they have developers who could
understand it?

No. The software is a black box both to vehicle owners and the EPA. Not
only that, but under the DMCA it would be illegal for vehicle owners OR
the EPA to attempt reverse-engineering it from the object load.

How the test is faked is just a technical issue.
How the EPA didn't figure it out seems to be the
important issue. They only found out because they
threatened to hold up sales and at that point the
VW execs admitted what they were doing.
(Have they disclosed everything? Surely if there's
more dirty dealing they're not going to tell if they
don't have to.)

Gaming the system is a longstanding tradition among car manufacturers and
I am _sure_ that if the source code were made public that all manner of
interesting games would be found.

... Then of course there's the question that begs
to be asked: How could all of those executives,
in a company whose clientelle tend to be liberal
environmentalists, have possibly decided it was
a good idea to be so dishonest and shortsighted?

THAT is the best question of all, yes. But that is a question that
needs to be asked by stockholders, and I have a suspicion that the next
annual meeting at Volkswagen will be interesting.

There should be arrests. Either way, it's likely
to be a serious, perhaps fatal, blow to the company.
If it were Chevy I'm sure rednecks would come out
of the woodwork to support "the company that denies
global warming". But VW customers are almost a
cult following, and mostly liberal.

Arrests will do nothing. What has to happen is that vehicle control code
needs to be documented and available to the vehicle owner and to the
government inspectors.



I don't see the logic of this. The purpose of the code is to produce
a specific level of emissions.

The purpose of the whole emission systems is to keep emissions under
the EPA limits. The purpose of this code

We are talking about two different codes. The code I'm talking about
is the "real code" that doesn't have any special switches in it. The
code you are talking about is code someone slipped into the "real
code" to turn off the emissions controls.


was to first determine if
the car was currently being emissions tested, and if so, then to run
the car with the full emissions control protocol to meet the test.
Otherwise it ran the car with emissions that according to the news
last night was 10 - 40x above the limits.



As the EPA found, and I doubt it was
hard, the on the road emissions didn't match what was produced during
dynamometer testing. How would anyone realistically look at the code
and be able to figure out that it "worked" as far as controlling
emissions?

They didn't look at the code, EPA went after VW to explain the huge
differences between dyno testing emissions and emission on the road.
VW couldn't explain it and finally admitted what they had done.


That is my point exactly. They looked at what came out the tailpipe.
Looking at "the code" isn't going to tell them anything, it's not like
it's just a 1980 15 line BASIC language do loop to count how many
times the wheels go around in a minute where you could look and see
they were inserting an extra 10% every 120 seconds with two extra
lines of code. It's undoubtedly got thousands and thousands of lines
of code, much of it interrelated, much of it doing periodic "turn this
off and see if sensor X reacts" to verify sensor X is still working.
If sensor X is not working turn the CEL on and depending on the fault
code it might make it flash. No one is going to be able to look thru
that and find some hidden loop aimed at fooling the system unless the
author of the illicit code wanted to be caught and put in "ILLEGAL
CODE - NEXT 12 lines!!!" And even if this presumed code looker found
something suspicious, so what? If the car passes both the emissions
test and ALL on road verifications what do you think EPA should do?
Fine them for writing code that's looks funny to EPA but still meets
emissions standards?

On 9/18/2015 8:19 PM, Ewald Böhm asked:
My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for emissions?

From the NY Times: "The software could silently deduce that an inspection
was taking place based on the position of the steering wheel (cars hooked
up to emissions meters don’t make turns), the speed of the vehicle, how
long the engine had been running and barometric pressure."

Don. www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom).

On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:19:10 +0000 (UTC), Ewald Böhm
wrote:

Apparently Volkswagen/Audi cheated on the USA emissions tests since
2009 to 2015 by turning off the EGR to lower nitrogen oxide emissions
ONLY when the car was being tested for emissions.

REFERENCES:
http://blog.ucsusa.org/volkswagen-ca...cle-recall-887
http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedM...EPA-Tests.aspx
http://hothardware.com/news/vw-inten...-482k-vehicles
etc.

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for emissions?

The most important thing here is that puts an end to those incessant
and tasteless TDI ads on TV, with those offensive dirty old women.
Good.

On 9/22/2015 8:15 PM, Dean Hoffman wrote:

My dad had a 1976 Chevy pickup. It was one of those
with the gas tank outside of the rails. GM was supposed to
allow an extra $1000 as trade in value as part of a settlement
with the government. That deal smelled bad from the
beginning.


GM's answer to any problem was always to buy a new one. I no longer
drive GM cars and the associated problems.

Vic Smith wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:19:10 +0000 (UTC), Ewald Böhm
wrote:

Apparently Volkswagen/Audi cheated on the USA emissions tests since
2009 to 2015 by turning off the EGR to lower nitrogen oxide emissions
ONLY when the car was being tested for emissions.

REFERENCES:
http://blog.ucsusa.org/volkswagen-ca...cle-recall-887
http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedM...EPA-Tests.aspx
http://hothardware.com/news/vw-inten...-482k-vehicles
etc.

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for emissions?

The most important thing here is that puts an end to those incessant
and tasteless TDI ads on TV, with those offensive dirty old women.
Good.

There may be others cheating too, just not caught yet.
Big corp. mentality like VW cheating. They should be fined $$$
as an example and top guy should do some jail time as well.
VW chief said, "we screwed up" So they intentionally cheated.

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 19:52:57 -0600, Tony Hwang
wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:19:10 +0000 (UTC), Ewald Böhm
wrote:

Apparently Volkswagen/Audi cheated on the USA emissions tests since
2009 to 2015 by turning off the EGR to lower nitrogen oxide emissions
ONLY when the car was being tested for emissions.

REFERENCES:
http://blog.ucsusa.org/volkswagen-ca...cle-recall-887
http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedM...EPA-Tests.aspx
http://hothardware.com/news/vw-inten...-482k-vehicles
etc.

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for emissions?

The most important thing here is that puts an end to those incessant
and tasteless TDI ads on TV, with those offensive dirty old women.
Good.

There may be others cheating too, just not caught yet.
Big corp. mentality like VW cheating. They should be fined $$$
as an example and top guy should do some jail time as well.
VW chief said, "we screwed up" So they intentionally cheated.

Yeah, those disgusting ads on TV should have been a clue that VW was
an immoral company. A thorough investigation is necessary.
When the congressional Benghazi committee wraps it up in the next
10-12 years, they should take this up.
They'll get to the bottom of it.

On 9/22/2015 9:52 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:


There may be others cheating too, just not caught yet.
Big corp. mentality like VW cheating. They should be fined $$$
as an example and top guy should do some jail time as well.
VW chief said, "we screwed up" So they intentionally cheated.


I cannot imagine a big corporation intentionally doing something like
that and figure they would not get caught. Too many people work on
projects like that and superiors have to sign off. The cost t fix it is
in the billions and for what?

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 20:12:41 -0500, Vic Smith wrote:

The most important thing here is that puts an end to those incessant
and tasteless TDI ads on TV, with those offensive dirty old women.
Good

Apparently VW yanked *all* those youtube ads, completely.
Amazing how quickly that marketing team can move!

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 19:52:57 -0600, Tony Hwang wrote:

VW chief said, "we screwed up" So they intentionally cheated.

Actually, the USA chief said "we screwed up".
The Germany chief is just "endlessly sorry".

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 21:13:49 -0500, Vic Smith wrote:

When the congressional Benghazi committee wraps it up in the next
10-12 years, they should take this up.
They'll get to the bottom of it.

I realize some things are "political", but is *this* issue really a
"congressional" issue?

Isn't it simply that CARB & the EPA have procedures which are backed up
by force of law (admittedly, made by Congress), which VW broke?

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 22:19:48 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I cannot imagine a big corporation intentionally doing something like
that and figure they would not get caught. Too many people work on
projects like that and superiors have to sign off. The cost t fix it is
in the billions and for what?

I wonder, out loud, how many people inside of VW knew about this?

Do you think it was a small cadre?
Or basically everyone?

On 9/22/2015 10:38 PM, Winston_Smith wrote:
On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 22:19:48 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I cannot imagine a big corporation intentionally doing something like
that and figure they would not get caught. Too many people work on
projects like that and superiors have to sign off. The cost t fix it is
in the billions and for what?

I wonder, out loud, how many people inside of VW knew about this?

Do you think it was a small cadre?
Or basically everyone?


In a corporation that size, even a small cadre could have been 20 to 50
engineers. Someone had to come up with the idea, design, build, test,
and approve everything. The guys on the line installing would probably
have no idea, just another part. Higher level in engineering would know.

On Wed, 23 Sep 2015 02:37:55 +0000 (UTC), Winston_Smith
wrote:

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 21:13:49 -0500, Vic Smith wrote:

When the congressional Benghazi committee wraps it up in the next
10-12 years, they should take this up.
They'll get to the bottom of it.

I realize some things are "political", but is *this* issue really a
"congressional" issue?

Isn't it simply that CARB & the EPA have procedures which are backed up
by force of law (admittedly, made by Congress), which VW broke?

That was tongue and cheek. But a congressional committee can
investigate a ham sandwich if they please.

NoSpamForMe wrote:
On 9/18/2015 8:19 PM, Ewald Böhm wrote:
Apparently Volkswagen/Audi cheated on the USA emissions tests since
2009 to 2015 by turning off the EGR to lower nitrogen oxide emissions
ONLY when the car was being tested for emissions.

REFERENCES:
http://blog.ucsusa.org/volkswagen-ca...cle-recall-887
http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedM...EPA-Tests.aspx
http://hothardware.com/news/vw-inten...-482k-vehicles
etc.

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for
emissions?

It seems like everyone here is on a VW witch hunt.
I would expect VW to program it's black boxes to use the minimum fuel
for a given situation. If the car is on a dyno, there would be no wind
resistance to push
against so the fuel system *should* lower the fuel flow. I'd expect
the same behavior if I was rolling down a mountain grade. Sheeeesh!

Wow! Cluelessness at it's best!

Bob F wrote:
NoSpamForMe wrote:
On 9/18/2015 8:19 PM, Ewald Böhm wrote:
Apparently Volkswagen/Audi cheated on the USA emissions tests since
2009 to 2015 by turning off the EGR to lower nitrogen oxide
emissions ONLY when the car was being tested for emissions.

REFERENCES:
http://blog.ucsusa.org/volkswagen-ca...cle-recall-887
http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedM...EPA-Tests.aspx
http://hothardware.com/news/vw-inten...-482k-vehicles
etc.

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for
emissions?

It seems like everyone here is on a VW witch hunt.
I would expect VW to program it's black boxes to use the minimum fuel
for a given situation. If the car is on a dyno, there would be no
wind resistance to push
against so the fuel system *should* lower the fuel flow. I'd expect
the same behavior if I was rolling down a mountain grade. Sheeeesh!

Wow! Cluelessness at it's best!

Update 9/22: This morning VW announced that the cheating issue on diesel engines
is much more vast than initially expected. The company admitted to cheating on
11 million diesel engines worldwide.

.. wrote:
On 9/22/2015 10:08 AM, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2015-09-22, Scott Dorsey wrote:
This article is not exactly accurate.
...

The point is that government malfeasance, which can and does result
in massive death, rarely if ever goes punished. I don't know how much
additional pollution is being caused by VW diesels or if the effect
is even measurable given their relatively low numbers. I do know that
governments routinely lie, cheat, steal, and kill (sometimes en
masse) all in a day's work. There's no doubt that what VW did was
bad, but the outcry seems out of proportion given the routine
misdeeds of the State.

What a goof!

Really!!

Tom Miller wrote:
"Mayayana" wrote in message
...
Arrests will do nothing.

I don't see how you can look at it that way. If
executives were held crimially liable for corporate
law breaking then very little of it would happen.
It's the difference between *maybe* risking their
bonus and definitely risking years in jail.
As long as the corporation is treated as an able,
non-human party, and punished financially, that's
an implicit statement that we as a society recognize
no legal or ethical requirements for people doing
business.



Murder is illegal but people still do it.

But the possibilty of real prison time will make them think before doing the
crime.

Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 9/22/2015 10:38 PM, Winston_Smith wrote:
On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 22:19:48 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I cannot imagine a big corporation intentionally doing something
like that and figure they would not get caught. Too many people
work on projects like that and superiors have to sign off. The
cost t fix it is in the billions and for what?

I wonder, out loud, how many people inside of VW knew about this?

Do you think it was a small cadre?
Or basically everyone?


In a corporation that size, even a small cadre could have been 20 to
50 engineers. Someone had to come up with the idea, design, build,
test, and approve everything. The guys on the line installing would
probably have no idea, just another part. Higher level in
engineering would know.

And every one of them should experience serios prison time.

On 9/23/2015 12:56 AM, Bob F wrote:


Murder is illegal but people still do it.

But the possibilty of real prison time will make them think before doing the
crime.


But most criminals think they will never be caught so prison is little
deterrent.

Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 9/23/2015 12:56 AM, Bob F wrote:


Murder is illegal but people still do it.

But the possibilty of real prison time will make them think before
doing the crime.


But most criminals think they will never be caught so prison is little
deterrent.

We'll see what they think after a few hundred VW employees do some serious
prison time.

I bet white collar crime would be a lot more affected by serious prosecutions
than random murders. Maybe someday, we'll see it happen. This is not just a US
crime.

Bob F wrote:
Bob F wrote:
NoSpamForMe wrote:
On 9/18/2015 8:19 PM, Ewald Böhm wrote:
Apparently Volkswagen/Audi cheated on the USA emissions tests since
2009 to 2015 by turning off the EGR to lower nitrogen oxide
emissions ONLY when the car was being tested for emissions.

REFERENCES:
http://blog.ucsusa.org/volkswagen-ca...cle-recall-887
http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedM...EPA-Tests.aspx
http://hothardware.com/news/vw-inten...-482k-vehicles
etc.

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for
emissions?

It seems like everyone here is on a VW witch hunt.
I would expect VW to program it's black boxes to use the minimum fuel
for a given situation. If the car is on a dyno, there would be no
wind resistance to push
against so the fuel system *should* lower the fuel flow. I'd expect
the same behavior if I was rolling down a mountain grade. Sheeeesh!

Wow! Cluelessness at it's best!

Update 9/22: This morning VW announced that the cheating issue on diesel engines
is much more vast than initially expected. The company admitted to cheating on
11 million diesel engines worldwide.


Wonder about MB and BMW Diesel vehicles. I was looking at MB GLK-250
Diesel version when news broke out. Considering Diesel vehicle for next
new car purchase is on hold now. Also I am wondering about turbo charged
small engines on almost every cars, Ecoboost, Skyactive...,etc. Crap.

Wonder about MB and BMW Diesel vehicles. I was looking at MB GLK-250
Diesel version when news broke out. Considering Diesel vehicle for next
new car purchase is on hold now. Also I am wondering about turbo charged
small engines on almost every cars, Ecoboost, Skyactive...,etc. Crap.

I had a Mazda MX6 with a turbo. One was supposed to let the engine
idle for a minute before shutting it off to let the turbo wind down.
There might've been some cooling also.
An oil reservoir above the turbo with a flow restrictor would've
eliminated that requirement but that would've cost the manufacturer
money.


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On Tuesday, September 22, 2015 at 7:02:11 PM UTC-4, Winston_Smith wrote:
On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:34:25 -0700, trader_4 wrote:

Except that isn't what the EPA says VW did and it isn't what VW admitted
to doing. If it was just the car reacting to the dyno, why would VW
admit that they did it deliberately?

Try reading the news.

I have read the news idiot. WTF is your point?

On Tuesday, September 22, 2015 at 9:05:57 PM UTC-4, Ashton Crusher wrote:


We are talking about two different codes. The code I'm talking about
is the "real code" that doesn't have any special switches in it. The
code you are talking about is code someone slipped into the "real
code" to turn off the emissions controls.



AFAIK, there is only one set of code under discussion here, that's
the code that is in the actual VW cars that were cheating.



was to first determine if
the car was currently being emissions tested, and if so, then to run
the car with the full emissions control protocol to meet the test.
Otherwise it ran the car with emissions that according to the news
last night was 10 - 40x above the limits.



As the EPA found, and I doubt it was
hard, the on the road emissions didn't match what was produced during
dynamometer testing. How would anyone realistically look at the code
and be able to figure out that it "worked" as far as controlling
emissions?

They didn't look at the code, EPA went after VW to explain the huge
differences between dyno testing emissions and emission on the road.
VW couldn't explain it and finally admitted what they had done.


That is my point exactly. They looked at what came out the tailpipe.
Looking at "the code" isn't going to tell them anything, it's not like
it's just a 1980 15 line BASIC language do loop to count how many
times the wheels go around in a minute where you could look and see
they were inserting an extra 10% every 120 seconds with two extra
lines of code.

If competent investigators choose to actually do the
investigation, to find out what was happening, to look at
the code, they could show that the code was written to detect
when the car was being tested and to then do a different
emissions control algorithm. It's right there, in the code.
It would be much easier to decipher if it was documented and
labeled "cheat code", but it can still be done.



It's undoubtedly got thousands and thousands of lines
of code, much of it interrelated, much of it doing periodic "turn this
off and see if sensor X reacts" to verify sensor X is still working.
If sensor X is not working turn the CEL on and depending on the fault
code it might make it flash. No one is going to be able to look thru
that and find some hidden loop aimed at fooling the system unless the
author of the illicit code wanted to be caught and put in "ILLEGAL
CODE - NEXT 12 lines!!!"

Of course it can be found and determined. It's not trivial, but it
certainly can be done without the code being documented.



And even if this presumed code looker found
something suspicious, so what? If the car passes both the emissions
test and ALL on road verifications what do you think EPA should do?
Fine them for writing code that's looks funny to EPA but still meets
emissions standards?

If the car actually met the EPA standards, then I agree that
having the cheat code there might not violate the law. But the
fact is that the cars don't meet the limits by 10 to 40x. If you're
point is that it's not worth it for the EPA to be routinely demanding
source code, analyzing it all, deciphering it, etc, for all cars,
I agree with that.

On Tuesday, September 22, 2015 at 10:19:31 PM UTC-4, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 9/22/2015 9:52 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:


There may be others cheating too, just not caught yet.
Big corp. mentality like VW cheating. They should be fined $$$
as an example and top guy should do some jail time as well.
VW chief said, "we screwed up" So they intentionally cheated.


I cannot imagine a big corporation intentionally doing something like
that and figure they would not get caught. Too many people work on
projects like that and superiors have to sign off. The cost t fix it is
in the billions and for what?

That will probably come out at some point in the future. If I had
to guess, I'd say that like many things like this, they probably
didn't start out intending to cheat. They probably thought that
their TDI diesels could meet EPA without using the urea system that
MB and other manufacturers use. That would give VW a cost advantage,
a marketing advantage, etc. It may turn out that the cheating
started when they couldn't deliver on the promise and had a lot
already sunk into investment, bragging, marketing, etc. That's just
a guess, we'll have to wait and see.

And in this case I think the damage to VW will be way beyond
what it would have been to most other auto companies. A lot
of the VW buyers are the hippie, tree hugger type and half of
them are probably driving their cars to the junk yard right
now.

And in this case I think the damage to VW will be way beyond
what it would have been to most other auto companies. A lot
of the VW buyers are the hippie, tree hugger type and half of
them are probably driving their cars to the junk yard right
now.

They shouldn't be parking in the special parking spaces for
low emission vehicles. The Missouri welcome center on southbound
I-29 near Rock Port has the parking spaces next to the ones for
handicapped folk.
It looks like a waste of six parking spaces and sign material
to me.


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Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Tony Hwang wrote:

Wonder about MB and BMW Diesel vehicles. I was looking at MB GLK-250
Diesel version when news broke out. Considering Diesel vehicle for next
new car purchase is on hold now. Also I am wondering about turbo charged
small engines on almost every cars, Ecoboost, Skyactive...,etc. Crap.

The MB and BMW diesels both use the exhaust fluid. That's not to say that
they aren't cheating something somewhere in the control system, just that
the main reason why VW cheated isn't an issue with the MB and BMW diesels.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

| Update 9/22: This morning VW announced that the cheating issue on diesel
engines
| is much more vast than initially expected. The company admitted to
cheating on
| 11 million diesel engines worldwide.
|

I saw the NYT version of that. It casts the whole
issue in a somewhat less extreme light. It turns out
most of the cars are in Europe, where despite
environmentalist idealism being high, regulations are
light and testing is limited.

So while their scam in the US seems to be pure idiocy,
in Europe it comes across as something less extreme.
A questionable way to increase gas mileage rather than
an outright lie and illegal deception. Contemptible, but
not necessarily guaranteed to be self-destructive, as it
seems in the US.

Winston_Smith wrote:
On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 14:22:22 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

You would still need to measure actual
emissions to see if the car met the emissions requirements.

I think this makes sense.

The VW cheat code does NOT appear to do anything clever.

In the official EPA pdf letter to VW, they called it a "switch".

Basically, the cheat code determined that the car was not moving but
that it was running as if it was moving, so, under that circumstance
(i.e., under what the EPA called the "dynamometer" settings) VW
engineers simply reduced the fuel to the engine, which lowered the
NOx emissions.

Under all other circumstances, which the EPA called the "road" settings,
VW engineers let the car have as much fuel as it wanted, NOx emissions
be damned.

There was nothing sophisticated at all about it. It's like me stealing
money from my own relatives. It's easy to do because they leave their
wallet out on the kitchen table without checking.

The audacious part isn't how clever it was (it wasn't at all clever).

The audacious part is that we trusted them, just as you trust a house
guest, and they violated that trust, just as it would be as if a house
guest stole money out of your wallet.


Actually the fuel mapping would be the reverse of that. Running rich on
a diesel reduces NOx because the extra fuel cools the burn. Lean it out
and create more heat and you get higher NOx.

This is the reason why 99% of the VW owners bragged about getting better
mpg numbers than the EPA tests as well.

--
Steve W.

Bob F wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 9/23/2015 12:56 AM, Bob F wrote:

Murder is illegal but people still do it.
But the possibilty of real prison time will make them think before
doing the crime.


But most criminals think they will never be caught so prison is little
deterrent.

We'll see what they think after a few hundred VW employees do some serious
prison time.

I bet white collar crime would be a lot more affected by serious prosecutions
than random murders. Maybe someday, we'll see it happen. This is not just a US
crime.





Won't happen. I would bet there will be a software "patch" that will
erase the different testing maps, the cars will then meet the original
EPA standards BUT they won't be getting the high mpg numbers that owners
bragged about.

The folks who did modifications will likely refuse to bring their cars
in and the EPA will just issue a VIN list saying these cars are no
longer legal for road use in the US, registrations and insurance would
be revoked.

VW might just decide to leave the market in the US.

--
Steve W.

Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 9/22/2015 10:38 PM, Winston_Smith wrote:
On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 22:19:48 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I cannot imagine a big corporation intentionally doing something like
that and figure they would not get caught. Too many people work on
projects like that and superiors have to sign off. The cost t fix it is
in the billions and for what?
I wonder, out loud, how many people inside of VW knew about this?

Do you think it was a small cadre?
Or basically everyone?


In a corporation that size, even a small cadre could have been 20 to 50
engineers. Someone had to come up with the idea, design, build, test,
and approve everything. The guys on the line installing would probably
have no idea, just another part. Higher level in engineering would know.

The only real change is in the code map in the ECM. They basically had a
"normal" map for constant driving and a "test map" that only engaged
when undergoing tests. I would bet it took fewer that 10 people to do
the entire thing.

You need to consider that the engineers already know how to make the
engine run and get good mileage and wrote the software to do that.
However that programming didn't pass the EPA testing.

The actual program change is easy. It could be hidden just about
anywhere but is likely very simple.
Something like
IF the engine is running at XXX rpm but there is a connector in the OBD
test port, with no input from the steering rack and the parking brake is
set, add 2% fuel enrichment to the drive cycle.

Extra fuel cools the fuel burn and drops the NOx to legal limits. Car
passes.


--
Steve W.

| But the possibilty of real prison time will make them think before doing
the
| crime.

| But most criminals think they will never be caught so prison is little
| deterrent.

By that logic there is no role in society for
a criminal justice system. You paint it as
just black and white.

There's a far bigger group in between -- People
who will do immoral things only if they know there's no
risk and no one will see them. Those are two factors:
personal conscience and risk of suffering. Risk is also
related to one's position. A multi-millionaire executive
with a family has more to lose than most people.

Isn't public civility really a combination of personal
conscience and risk of punishment? That's why we
have locks on doors and windows. The doors can be
kicked in fairly easily. Windows can be broken. But the
need for force deters most people. They have to be
more aggressive and more intent on stealing in order
to break in. Most people will be stopped by their
conscience, their fear, their common sense strategy
to avoid suffering, or all those things, before breaking
into your house.

On the other hand, if you leave your laptop sitting
on your front steps, someone passing by doesn't
need to be aggressive or intrude. They can also
rationalize that maybe you meant to give it away.
A lot more people will take that laptop than will break
in to take it.

Much of what we do in shame we do with such a
rationalization. Our thinking mind lies to itself to
justify satisfying our impulse. Some people are better
at lying to themselves than other people. (Which is
the essence of true laziness.) But we all do it in
degrees. The less adept we are at lying to ourselves,
the less likely we are to do something we consider
wrong if there's a risk that someone else may bear
witness. We have to be lying to ourselves on the
level of psychosis to ignore the risk of punishment
or other ramifications.

The CEO of VW is so far refusing to acknowledge
guilt on his own part, but if he were risking jail time,
along with his sidekicks and yes-men, it's a good
bet the software cheat never would have happened.
He's almost certainly a man obsessed with wealth
and power to have got to where he is. Jail is the
opposite of that. He's almost certainly not fully
psychotic. He just imagines he's out to "win" at
something. That kind of obsession helps people to
lie to themselves. But it's likely that he wouldn't have
put his position at such risk if it meant risking all of
his chips for just a slightly bigger win. Even if he
doesn't feel shame, the threat of jail would probably
temper his obsession.

As things stand now, it's easy for the people at
the top to lie to themselves because the justice
system is pretending that the corporation itself --
a mere legal/financial/tax entity -- was the perpetrator
of the crime.

On Wednesday, September 23, 2015 at 10:34:30 AM UTC-4, Mayayana wrote:
| But the possibilty of real prison time will make them think before doing
the
| crime.

| But most criminals think they will never be caught so prison is little
| deterrent.

By that logic there is no role in society for
a criminal justice system. You paint it as
just black and white.


I agree, even if criminal convictions don't deter all
criminals, or even most criminals, it doesn't mean that
they are totally ineffective. Suppose they only deter
30%, so what, it's still reducing crime.

The other reason for criminal convictions is punishment,
regardless of deterrence. If you have no criminal laws
covering things like this, then it's open season and and
a whole lot of people who are already cutting corners,
going to the edge of what's legal or beyond, will just go
further.

On Fri, 18 Sep 2015 19:19:10 -0500, Ewald Böhm
wrote:

Apparently Volkswagen/Audi cheated on the USA emissions tests since
2009 to 2015 by turning off the EGR to lower nitrogen oxide emissions
ONLY when the car was being tested for emissions.

REFERENCES:
http://blog.ucsusa.org/volkswagen-ca...cle-recall-887
http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedM...EPA-Tests.aspx
http://hothardware.com/news/vw-inten...-482k-vehicles
etc.

My question is HOW did the car *know* it was being *tested* for
emissions?

The CEO of VW is stepping down.
http://preview.alturl.com/jxppg
It's too bad he's German. We might run
out of candidates for U.S. President.


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