“VW Games Emissions Tests” — odd news of the day, or something more?

Last updated on: September 19, 2015 at 8:42 am by Jane the Actuary

“VW Games Emissions Tests” — odd news of the day, or something more? 2015-09-19T08:42:57-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Here’s an article from today’s paper: “VW cheated on U.S. pollution tests for ‘clean diesels’” (link to the LA Times as the article is only available online from that site, but also printed in the Chicago Tribune):

Turns out the increasingly eco-conscious buyers of the sporty German cars have been unwittingly pumping smog into the air — because of software VW installed to cheat on U.S. emissions tests.

The world’s largest automaker has admitted selling 482,000 such diesels since 2009, California and U.S. regulators announced Friday. The scandal could cost the company billions of dollars in fines and lawsuit judgments and threatens to stunt the development of all diesel vehicles.

VW’s software trick allows the cars to emit up to 40 times the legally allowed amount of nitrogen oxide, environmental officials said. The automaker will have to recall all the vehicles and modify the emissions systems at its own expense, regulators said. Additionally it could face a fine of about $18 billion, or $37,500 per car, federal environmental officials said. . . .

Volkswagen and Audi vehicles from model years 2009 to 2015 have the software, which uses an algorithm that automatically detects when the vehicle is undergoing pollution tests and changes the way it performs.

The EPA said the device senses the testing environment by analyzing a variety of data — steering position, speed, duration of engine operation and barometric pressure.

“These inputs precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure,” the agency wrote in its notice of violation to VW.

The test manipulation “is illegal and a threat to public health,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “We expected better from VW.”

Volkswagen admitted that the cars contained “defeat devices,” after EPA and the state air regulator demanded an explanation for the emission problems. . . .

VW will have to develop a fix to bring the cars into compliance with federal and state clean air, regulators said. Owners can continue to drive the cars — there is no safety issue — and can still sell them, regulators said.

But the automaker and regulators may have trouble getting consumers to bring their cars into get fixed — especially if the fix decreases performance or fuel economy, the main selling points for the cars.

Is this shocking? Shouldn’t be, as apparently, this is business as usual in Europe; here’s a Guardian article from February, “Car makers face ‘real world’ emissions tests in EU pollution clampdown” which reported that

Europe is to become the first place in the world to force ‘real world’ emissions tests on car makers, opening up a new front in the fight to tackle air pollution.

New regulations will introduce the tests to reveal what cars’ emissions are like when driving on roads and in traffic rather than in ideal laboratory-like conditions as is currently the case, the Guardian has learned. . . .

the current ‘New European Drive Cycle’ laboratory test for measuring these emissions is a quarter of a century old, and has been outpaced by technological developments in the car industry. Studies have shown that lab techniques to measure car emissions can easily be gamed with techniques such as taping up doors and windows to minimise air resistance, driving on unrealistically smooth roads, and testing at improbably high temperatures.

Campaigners say that car makers also use tricks such as programming vehicles to go into a low emissions mode when their front wheels are spinning and their back wheels are stationary, as happens in such lab experiments.

Note that gaming the system is old news; the news item itself is an EU plan to clamp down on it.

So what do you make of this?

The Times/Tribune reporter is likely accurate that most car owners won’t be interested in getting their car “fixed” if it actually means decreasing fuel economy or driving performance, in pursuit of better emissions — though that didn’t stop Times commenters from expressing their fury, calling for VW execs to be drawn and quartered (or at least given serious jail time, or in one case, calling for the treatment Hitler gave Rommel: “Give them a gun and make sure they follow through…lest direct family repercussions…”).

Now, certainly gaming emissions tests is unethical, though presumably at this point the automakers are all at the point that “everyone does it and everyone knows about it.”

Is it illegal? Possibly they are parsing a law that says something like “must achieve a result of X in a testing environment of Y”, and they’ve designed cars that do exactly this. Potentially it’s not about a regulation that limits emissions so much as one that requires disclosure.

But does this mean that the EPA’s determinations about what level of emissions reduction is achievable, or feasible at a given price point, are wholly unrealistic because automakers have been meeting these levels artificially?

Or are only European automakers guilty, based on different approaches toward ethics, that also reach as far as questions about bribery overseas.

Was the EPA truly shocked? Do they not read newspapers (or talk to colleagues in the EU)? Or were they merely shocked in the Captain Renault sense, that “gambling is going on here”?

Discuss among yourselves while I continue to write my “post-debate debrief.”

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