October 29, 2019 at 1:37 pm
It is possible that it was the culture force by VW management of the "Succeed or Be Fired" that caused the rogue engineers to think that it was necessary to cheat the system in order to keep their jobs.
October 29, 2019 at 1:39 pm
Ah Thunderbirds - a key part of my Saturday morning viewing , in glorious 405 line Monochrome . The advantage was you couldn't see the wires on the marionettes . But the real stars undoubtedly were the machines - my favourite was the Grablogger , after all what's not to like about an Atomic powered mobile factory designed to tear through the Amazon and convert the trees into wood pulp...
October 29, 2019 at 1:42 pm
After many months of not getting the car to be able to pass in their own lab, suddenly with no physical changes they managed to tweak a setting or two and make it pass. And the change came from the computer. EVERYBODY knew what happened. They knew or should have known. It is really that simple.
Of course if we had better regulatory control every consumer would have known as well. It is quite simple, require a car to be driven by a "normal" person to be able to get the rated gas mileage. and require the emissions test to occur under those circumstances.
Reality is that some regulators "knew" but couldn't prove the situation long before it came to light. The author of the article should be relegated to fantasy writing. Clearly news is not in his area.
November 8, 2019 at 2:39 pm
Maybe I'm just a tad cynical, but my first (and recurring) thought is that this is a classic demonstration of Test-Driven Development.
Think about it. Has anybody looked to see if there really is a regulation stating that the same fuel-air ratio will be used at all throttle settings, or is that just an inferred carryover from the days of mechanical carburetors and fuel injectors? If the test is that the engine needs to minimize emissions when being driven so gently that a soft-boiled egg could survive being taped to the gas pedal, then that's a single use case. And in an era where many cars have "dial a ride" modes so that drivers can electronically adjust the suspension behavior, what says that enthusiastic software developers can't add "make me smile" accelerations use cases?
Just sayin...
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