VW emmisions

[tim.....]

they have thousands of engineers, that wont tax all of them

Eh

How could someone factor the result that VW got today, into a decision taken

6+ years ago?

tim

[Vir Campestris]

No, it wouldn't. It can emit a bit at the beginning before it spots the steering never moving, or the non-driven wheels not going round, or even it not actually going anywhere (accelerometer? GPS?) then switch modes.

Andy

[hunar]

You said best, not all of them.

It should have been obvious that someone would eventually work out what was going on and that the shit would hit the fan very spectacularly indeed, like it did, when they did.

[Albert Zweistein]

STFU Wodney.

[tim.....]

OK I'll give you that

They'll put their second best engineers onto this secondary issue :-)

But VW took the risk, and Germans are usually very law abiding.

The idea that other companies didn't do it, just because they shouldn't, doesn't stand to scrutiny

tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

Back in the day a USA export MGB would come with a set of carb needles that gave flat spots everywhere, and an air pump.

The purpose of the air pump was to pump fresh air into the exhaust, thereby lowering the *percentage* of unburnt hydrocarbons in the exhaust. The total emissions remained the same of course but that got the car past the California tests.

Frankly VW have done the same - except that the software ONLY 'switches on the air pump' (injects rather than takes the piss) when the car is on the test rig.

[hunar]

Yeah, that's what I meant. I certainly could have said that more clearly originally.

Yes, but IMO that was a completely stupid thing to do for the reason I just said. Someone was bound to notice what they had done eventually, even if it was just a competitor trying to work out how VW managed to pass the test without having anything like AdBlue etc on the engine.

That is very arguable indeed with some of the corruption that has been exposed, let alone what some have been caught doing spies wise etc during the cold war etc.

Even if you are only talking about what major german companies have done, there was quite a bit of the most flagrant flouting of the law between the wars particularly.

I never said anything like that. JUST that they are unlikely to do stuff that is going to see the shit hit the fan very spectacularly indeed when they are found out. And it is very unlikely that it would never be found out.

That's a straw man.

[Huge]

The cars are deliberately placed into a test mode, in order to prevent issues with traction control/ABS and so on caused by the fact that the tests are done on a rolling road, so the driven wheels are rotating and the non-driven wheels aren't. That test mode isn't supposed to modify the fuelling.

[F]

Panorama made the point that cars don't normally drive in a straight line for five minutes from cold.

[Tim Streater]

Note that harry, having been told before how cars might detect test mode, still didn't get it (just like with nuclear waste disposal).

Actually my car today did it. I nipped out of a junction a bit sharpish as someone was belting along the main road. There was a small amount of mud/water on the road just at that spot, so the front wheels spun. Beep beep went the light on the dash - it had detected that the front and rear wheels were rotating at different rates. Obviously not "test mode" in this instance, but the principle's the same.

[Clive George]

Traction control/ESP innit? And that's the bit which needs explicitly disabling for the rolling road tests.

[Tim Streater]

So the notion that the car is not supposed to "know" that it's being tested is inherently c*ck.

[Chris J Dixon]

and on that bombshell....

Chris