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from the smoking-guns-pollute-less-than-diesels dept.
Hackaday reports:
In an interesting turn of events last week in a German court, evidence has materialized that engineers were ordered to cheat emissions testing when developing automotive parts.
[February 21], Ulrich Weiß brought forward a document[1] that alleges Audi Board of Director members were involved in ordering a cheat for diesel emissions. Weiß was the head of engine development for Audi, suspended in November of 2015 but continued to draw more than half a million dollars in salary before being fired
afterprior to last week's court testimony.Volkswagen Group is the parent company of Audi and this all seems to have happened while the VW diesel emissions testing scandal we've covered since 2015 was beginning to come to light. Weiß testified that he was asked to design a method of getting around strict emissions standards in Hong Kong even though Audi knew their diesel engines weren't capable of doing so legitimately.
According to Weiß, he asked for a signed order. When he received that order he instructed his team to resist following it. We have not seen a copy of the letter, but the German tabloid newspaper Bild reports [Deutsch] that the letter claims approval by four Audi board members and was signed by the head of powertrain development at the company.
[1] Forbes has all content behind scripts and is AdBlocker-phobic. archive.li's copy
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DECbot on Wednesday March 01 2017, @12:36AM (10 children)
Don't fire employees right before they testify to authorities when they have a signed letter directing them to break the law.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 01 2017, @01:12AM (4 children)
> Don't give signed orders to cheat, only clear hints that tests need to pass for the company to retain enough profit for everyone.
FTFY
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Wednesday March 01 2017, @01:25AM (3 children)
Don't give signed orders to cheat, only clear hints
Like this [youtube.com]. "This emissions testing thing has an irritating talent for disrupting our arrangements... perhaps it would be better if it were... taken out of the picture".
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday March 01 2017, @03:11AM
I knew this would be Mitchel and Webb before clicking the link. "Do you mean anal sex?"
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:27AM (1 child)
Although this is portrayed as comedy, I have empirical experience of people who talk like this. And yes, others obey.
I think every one of us who "have it in us" to "do the job right" run up against this type. It sure seems those best at "getting the job done", regardless of quality of workmanship, seem inevitably to rise above the ones who do a conscientious job.
I have faced this all my working life. Even in my extremely restricted role of retiree, I still face it when trying to interface to "the suit". Many people out there seem to have no idea of tomorrow's cost of fixing all the crap that *will* wrong. All these problems ( "We will solve Tomorrow's problems Tomorrow") in order to get a signature out of someone *today*.
My latest example is several production runs of equipment has just been manufactured and shipped, with a heavy EMI ferrite core hanging on by its flimsy leads to a connector. Many of these shipped units are now arriving on RMA for repair. Vibration during shipment. Our first impression with our customer was a dead unit. We knew about the problem. We did nothing. Yesterday's timely signature has now come home to roost. The hands have already shaken, and bonuses paid.
Now the stuff is coming back to our shipping dock. No one would listen to the assemblers who knew last year of what was to come. When one is that high up, investors don't seem to give that much of a damn whether the product works or not... rather just did it sound good during a presentation. My own observation is this is what happens with "investment groups" which hire managers who have none of their own dogs in the fight. They just go around popping off other people's money in exchange for impressive presentations and expensive dinners.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:35PM
I'm relatively young, but I have experienced this even while working part time while in school. It is inevitable, a serious of small "right at the time" steps will always lead you to a big fuck-up.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday March 01 2017, @01:22AM
With a smoking gun like that, I hope these are the first executives to actually feel justice. As in, they actually lose something tangible. Like freedom, or the the vast majorities of their wealth. Personally, I like throwing their asses in Chinese prison for 3-5 years.
But it was only an executive explicitly stating that an employee should break the law. We may not have enough to obtain justice.......
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @02:28AM (3 children)
This isn't the first story I've heard of similar circumstances - key person who knows where the bodies are buried gets mistreated by management who know they are vulnerable to the guy and are then taken down by the revelation of the bodies. Its like the people who are at the top have a distorted view of their own ability to influence others. Maybe they have gotten away with being utter shits for so long that they forget that it was leverage that let them get away with being utter shits rather than some sort of god-like ability. So they figure that even without leverage people will still just bend to their wills. The audacity of dopes...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 01 2017, @12:10PM (1 child)
It's a product of them surrounding themselves with sycophants who stroke their ego all day long and filter out anything that might contradict their internal bubble's narrative. The more that happens, the more their ability to withstand criticism withers while their belief in their own superiority waxes. Ultimately they lose touch with reason and do consider themselves gods.
Further out from the loci of power and decision-making the phenomenon yawns into the less absolute but still self-defeating phenomenon of the echo chamber. People close themselves off to all messages but those that agree with what they believe. In both cases, in the end they never see the end coming because they don't want to.
Freedom, progress, and success are intimately tied to honest, respectful debate in the agora.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:11PM
That's why I read Breitbart.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Thursday March 02 2017, @08:21PM
Erin Brockovich and the (then) record setting class action win. Key evidence in that case was provided by the guy they fired for opposing what they had planned. He took the executive memos ordering it with him when he left.