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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday March 01 2017, @12:22AM   Printer-friendly
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 after prior 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


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:27AM (1 child)

    by anubi (2828) on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:27AM (#473226) Journal

    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]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @06:35PM (#473438)

    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.