EPA caught VW cheating - how does the car know it's being tested?

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!

Apparently 11 million cars are affected! Basically one in four cars in Europe also had the cheatware installed!

"the company said that 11 million of its diesel cars worldwide were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emissions tests."

How Did the System Work?

Boggles the mind. "Oh shit, we got caught"

Not all dynos work that way. I would expect such a dyno to drive the stability/ABS systems crazy, possibly SLAMMING on the brakes or other actions. (Most cars today are FRONT wheel drive, so the case would be the front wheels turning and the back stationary. For rear wheel drive trucks, of course, it is the opposite case. on these, it would be VERY hard to keep the truck on the rear wheel only dyno. If it started to drift to either side, the steering wheel could not get the tires centered back on the treadmill.) On such vehicles, it might be necessary to shut down the stability/ABS systems to even do these tests, which would clue in any test detection software.

As for how the software could tell, this gives me an idea! The dynos have some considerable inertia, but it is likely much less that the inertia involved in accelerating the car to 60 MPH. So, the software might detect VERY easy acceleration to highway speed as a sign of a dyno test. This might also look like accelerating down a long hill, but if it goes on too long, it indicates minimal wind resistance. If you are cruising at 60 MPH with 4 HP effort, that would be a DEAD GIVEAWAY you are on a dyno! The emissions test dynos probably cannot absorb the output of a big car's engine to give it the normal highway load. That can be a LOT of power that you have to absorb for several minutes.

Jon

WOW, that's QUITE a document!! Thanks for the link!

Jon

I have owned three VWs before, back in the 1960s and 1970s. First one was a 1961 VW van, second one was a 1963 beetle/car, and the third one was a 197

0 VW van. Air cooled engines, not enough power to get out of their own way, practicaly no heat at all in the winter time. The clutch cables break, the valves needed adjustment every three thousand miles. I have lonnnnng since sworn off of VWs, and all German vehicles forever!

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.

Over 100 people died. I don't think Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy are running the Justice Department.

I don't see the logic of this. The purpose of the code is to produce a specific level of emissions. 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? You can't, you can only tell if it "works" by measuring what comes out the tailpipe. Sure, a good code reader, if they had the time to look thru god knows how many lines of code, *might* spot a weird program execution loop but that it highly doubtful and certainly not a sure thing. And even if they did, it would not prove that the emissions out the tailpipe FAILED, it would only show that someone put some weird stuff in the code. You would still need to measure actual emissions to see if the car met the emissions requirements.

Oops! Right-o. What do you want to bet that the source code has this feature documented as a special low-torque mode to facititate getting out of snow banks?

It's true that the proof is in the pudding and actual emissions measurements tell the real story, but you cannot realistically measure emissions under every possible driving circumstance, so at some point the test will need to be simplified, and every test that is simplified will have a loophole.

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...

--scott

They test here in DE but plug into the computer to do it, not just sniff the tail pipe. Would guess our computer would be fooled too. Testing is also static without running load which I would assume EPA did.

| 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.

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.

| 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.

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.

Murder is illegal but people still do it.

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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!