GM pleads guilty but no criminal charges for employees in ignition switch recall
No GM employees going to jail for failure to fix an engineering problem:
General Motors will pay $900 million to settle criminal charges related to its flawed ignition switch that has been tied to at least 124 deaths. Problems with the ignition switch could shut off the car while it was being driven, disabling the airbag, power steering and power brakes -- and putting drivers and passengers at risk. GM had already admitted that its employees were aware of the problem nearly a decade before it started to recall millions of the cars early last year. That delay is the basis behind the criminal charges.
Sounds like the FORD Pinto...
Volkswagen Busted for Cheating on Emission Benchmarks
Is it time for a DriverGater movement? Cheating on gaming benchmarks has been the raison d'être of the GamerGater movement. All of the major graphics chip manufacturers have been caught cheating on performance benchmarks by including code in the driver to detect benchmark runs and take visual shortcuts that produce better numbers but worse quality.
Now Volkswagen has been caught using the same tactics - to detect when their vehicles are being benchmarked for emissions and to release less nitrogen oxide pollution but operate less efficiently, giving false results.
The recall covers roughly 482,000 diesel passenger cars sold in the United States since 2009. Affected diesel models include the 2009-15 Volkswagen Jetta, 2009-15 Beetle, 2009-15 Golf, 2014-15 Passat and 2009-15 Audi A3.
Friday's notice of violation was the Obama administration's "opening salvo" in the Volkswagen case, said Thomas Reynolds, an E.P.A. spokesman. The Justice Department's investigation could ultimately result in fines or penalties for the company. Under the terms of the Clean Air Act, the Justice Department could impose fines of as much as $37,500 for each recalled vehicle, for a possible total penalty of as much as $18 billion.
Related Stories
Volkswagen has issued a statement regarding the emissions cheating incident:
Discrepancies relate to vehicles with Type EA 189 engines, involving some eleven million vehicles worldwide. A noticeable deviation between bench test results and actual road use was established solely for this type of engine. Volkswagen is working intensely to eliminate these deviations through technical measures. The company is therefore in contact with the relevant authorities and the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA – Kraftfahrtbundesamt).
To cover the necessary service measures and other efforts to win back the trust of our customers, Volkswagen plans to set aside a provision of some 6.5 billion EUR recognized in the profit and loss statement in the third quarter of the current fiscal year. Due to the ongoing investigations the amounts estimated may be subject to revaluation. Earnings targets for the Group for 2015 will be adjusted accordingly.
Volkswagen does not tolerate any kind of violation of laws whatsoever. It is and remains the top priority of the Board of Management to win back lost trust and to avert damage to our customers. The Group will inform the public on the further progress of the investigations constantly and transparently.
From The Register:
To put that in perspective, Volkswagen's profits for the last financial year were €10.85bn (US$12.1bn), so the firm is banking on having to pay out at least half of its profits, and possibly a lot more. The EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) has already said that the company could be liable for up to $18bn in fine and fix costs, and that was when only half a million cars were thought to be dodgy. As a result, the wheels have fallen off the company's stock price. Shares have nearly halved in value since the firm admitted using the emission-control software, and they are likely to fall further as the scandal unfolds.
Volkswagen's CEO Martin Winterkorn has already issued a public apology for his firm's conduct, and his position is looking increasingly untenable. Rumors of his forced retirement are already circulating, although these are being denied at present.
The case could also have an interesting knock-on effect in the software field. Technically, Volkswagen's software was covered under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, meaning tinkerers couldn't have examined and altered the code. The EPA has been lobbying with car companies to make sure the DMCA continues to make engine management software off limits to tinkerers. But based on its experience with Volkswagen, the agency may be changing that stance.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been quick to pounce on the DMCA connection.
The BBC reports that this affects 11 million vehicles worldwide, although many of those have passed local emission controls satisfactorily. Neverthless, the same or similar software is believed to be fitted in all those vehicles. The EPA found the "defeat device", the device that allowed VW cars to emit less during tests than they would while driving normally, in diesel cars including the Audi A3 and the VW Jetta, Beetle, Golf and Passat models.
Update: Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigns.
(Score: 1) by WalksOnDirt on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:25AM
VW can't claim this is a mistake. I'd like to see some people in jail for this, as well as large fines for the company.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:40AM
They've already admitted it.
They just haven't said exactly who did what, when.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:46AM
We demand krauts in klinks.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:08AM
I agree. I'll start to believe that the government is actually doing something about this problem when the people responsible for it go to prison (an American prison, not a German one), the company is found guilty of a criminal offense, and that it gets fined so heavily that it affects its profitability and stockholder value in the near future.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:00AM
It will be a monetary penalty. The share holders will pay it.
Nobody is going to prison. Thats my prediction.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:23AM
If history is anything to do with it the fine will be aboe 1% of the profits they made from their illegal actions.
By issuing more stock and giving it to the victims, the shareholders are punished, but the company remains solvent. Issuing an $18 billion fine will simply mean that a lot of people will be out of a job.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:21AM
The board should be off to jail, the shareholders should be punished by forcing the company to issue more stock which would be given to the victims.
But no, if anything happened it would be some schmuck heading up a low-down department on $120k a year.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:39AM
When they see or read about the performance hit these cars will take once the cheatware is disabled, you have to wonder how many owners will just ignore the recall until the day they decide to sell the car.
They got away with it since 2008 (when the 2009 model year came out), 7 years.
The statute of limitations probably restrict the number of cars they could be fined for to only a couple years of sales.
Still, you have to wonder how the hell they thought they could get away with this forever. In a world that can't keep a secret, this had to be known by thousands of aficionados and insiders.
Richard Corey, an executive officer on the California Air Resources Board, credited “dogged detective work in the lab” for the discovery of the software, which he said resulted in the admission from Volkswagen that the company was using the devices.
E.P.A. officials declined to reveal why they chose to initiate the investigation.
Somebody Disgruntled is my bet. Probably doesn't matter, as long as the EPA developed their own proof.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:48AM
There's nothing wrong with cars and the DMCA [soylentnews.org], and yet even the EPA has to go CSI on this.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:50AM
Class action lawsuit for sure.
Actually, that's funny. People know VWs are junk, and yet they bought them. And then a lawsuit. Haha.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @01:57AM
The statute of limitations probably restrict the number of cars they could be fined for to only a couple years of sales.
No statute of limitations on an on-going conspiracy. Any act furthering the original crime starts a new clock.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:27AM
Unless they're in California or one of the other states that still does emissions testing, I"m not sure it would matter to them. Around here you don't need to get your emissions tested on cars manufactured after 2009. So, cheating or not, the car owner doesn't need to care
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:35AM
But they will care when VW is forced to turn on emissions controls ALL the time, and suddenly their car's performance sucks. The only reason VW would cheat is to achieve better performance or better mileage. When those go away, the owner will notice.
If they service their vehicles, the dealer likely will apply all service bulletins, especially mandatory recall work, and the load new
engine computer software. Its not like they have to change out a huge parts list. Its literally a software load, or worse case a computer chip replacement.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:48AM
That's a fair point. Although, I'm not sure how VW could do that in cars they've already sold. The mechanics not working for them aren't going to be particularly eager to upset their customers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Adamsjas on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:58AM
I think he means that Dealerships will apply all service bulletins automatically, especially when they are free to the owner.
Of those people who do service their cars, lots of them do it at dealerships.
Other competent repair chains may check for recalls, but may not have the capability (equipment or training) to load new power train computer software. Joe's garage? Not likely.
There are a other people who drive off the lot and never think twice about getting the car serviced until something goes wrong.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:12AM
> Around here you don't need to get your emissions tested on cars manufactured after 2009.
You know... if you had just said "in washington state, 2009 and newer cars don't need emissions testing" we would (a) know which state you were talking about and (b) not know you live there. But you were narcissistic - nobody cares that around *you* such-and-such happens, they only care where it happens - so you made us go google it.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Sunday September 20 2015, @09:24AM
(Score: 1) by Soybean on Monday September 21 2015, @02:07PM
> Somebody Disgruntled is my bet.
Nope. It was a clean air group [bloomberg.com] trying to prove to that clean operation was possible in europe where VW and BMW had been having problems meeteing requirements. They expected to find the US vehicles were great because our emissions regulations are better than europe's. Oops.
FYI, the US BMW passed the road test.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:57AM
Gamergate didn't have squat to do with benchmarks, it has to do with the fact that those that are supposed to be reviewing products are in bed both literally and figuratively with those they are reviewing [youtube.com] giving us nothing less than those sponsored "see why millions are flocking to GNC!" 'articles' on Yahoo News. With mainstream journalism at least you can go to both the left and right websites and get a rough overview of what is up,with regular products you have mags like consumer reports that at least attempt to give us an honest overview, but thanks to gamergate we found out that nearly all of the top 50 "independent" gaming websites were in reality getting together on a secret chat room and deciding what to push and what to bury and even getting together to "ban" those that didn't play ball by putting them on a hiring blacklist.
As for TFA? It really does not surprise me, with US government all but toothless now wrt corps my guess is these companies will get a slap on the wrist which will be less than the money they made pulling the shit, thus making sure its worth doing again. If not you can be sure lobbyists will pad the right pockets to rip the teeth out of the EPA, thus insuring they won't have to worry about this in the future.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Sunday September 20 2015, @09:40AM
I was confused by that claim as well, but realistically, GamerGate never had jack to do with "ethics" in gaming journalism. If it had been, then the bulk of its activities would've been focused on documenting the theoretical misbehavior of journalists — not on harassing & threatening women in the gaming/development communities and trying to financially hamstring publications that say things that GamerGaters disliked.
AFAIK the closest GamerGate ever got to actually documenting even any potential misbehavior was noting the everyday occurrence of a writer having a relationship with somebody in another creative discipline. Now, it might have been a potential problem if the journalist had actually (as was claimed falsely by GamerGate) reviewed that developer's work, but the most he did was mention the game in a list with several dozen other indie titles.
As for the "secret mailing list", it turned out to be a load of over-the-top crap by Breitbart. In reality, GameJournoPro was a Google Group by Ars Tech writer Kyle Orland that has always been open to anybody that earns money writing about games, and he wrote an article addressing the various misrepresentations & allegations [arstechnica.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:50PM
> I was confused by that claim as well,
Its called irony. If they lived up their words, that's the kind of thing they would have been focused on.
Or maybe it was trolling and harry bit hook line and sinker. He is excitable that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2015, @01:28AM
Yes because it's not like they've made a website listing the misbehaviour of gaming journalists. Oh wait, http://deepfreeze.it/ [deepfreeze.it] The main operation has been to email advertiser's telling them that we think certain sites are rubbish and we won't buy their products if they put ads on those sites.
I’ll agree with you that the case against Nathan Grayson does get overstated, it wasn’t a review and was just an article about indie games. However Depression Quest did get mentioned more than any other game there. The correct response would have been a small disclaimer on the article stating that he had a relationship with the developer. That would have cut off any claims that this was about ethics. The completely fucking wrong answer was to launch a synchronised article campaign across 10 sites accusing gamers of being misogynistic nerds, calling them dead and then censoring any discussion of it across multiple websites.
Spend some time at any of the GG hub's and you find the main topics are the operations aimed at gaming sites, investigating further possible conflicts of interest, shit posting and hating on e-celebs. I don't know where you think we organise our misogynistic campaign to drive women from the internet while at the same time keeping it from the people in said campaign.
Seriously how the fuck do you think a bunch of people on twitter are going to stop females from buying and playing games? Walk into their house and slap the credit card out of their hand everytime they look at the Steam store?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Techwolf on Sunday September 20 2015, @01:03AM
Diesel take such a hit to encomity that when they meet EPA regs, they put out more tons of pollution per million miles driven. The EPA really needs to change the emissions to take miles driven as a factor, meaning a car/truck can only put out so much nitrogen oxide per mile instead of a current measurement of percentage that only make things worse.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Sunday September 20 2015, @01:25AM
Much truth to this.
I've a friend that just put in some commercially available defeat features into the computer on his diesel truck that raises the mileage by almost half again what it was getting with the factory settings. Huge bump in horsepower too as I recall.
Burning less fuel for the same mileage has to account for something.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Sunday September 20 2015, @01:29AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:02AM
Tonka truck, obviously.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:34AM
I believe you are referring to the dual wheel pick ups. The problem with those chips is they go WAY too far on the other end. Ever see those trucks pumping out lots of black smoke taking off from the stoplight? That is Mr. Small Penis flooring the petal showing off his mod up truck. Those chips can easily be done to do both, higher fuel mileage and horsepower, but not the ton of black smoke. They don't make them due to "customer" demand.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:46AM
I think the difficulty is that Heat engines are more efficient with a hotter heat source. Unfortunately, higher temperatures mean more NOx compounds are produced as the Oxygen reacts with the Nitrogen in the air.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:50AM
> Diesel take such a hit to encomity that when they meet EPA regs, they put out more tons of pollution per million miles driven.
Nice theory, got any numbers to back it up? I mean, you must have actually seen them yourself, right? You aren't just repeating some rumor you heard on some tea-party website, right?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Sunday September 20 2015, @01:42AM
Somebody in middle management wanted a fat bonus for meeting both performance and pollution goals. He told an engineer or three to make it so. When they tried to tell him about physics, he told them he didn't care how they did it but that they'd be fired and never work for anybody in the industry ever again if they didn't come through. And he gave them sucky reviews just to drive the point home. When they implemented the illegal code, the manager got his bonus, and then he found some excuse to fire the team anyway. He would have been very careful to not have had anything on the record indicating he had any knowledge of what was going on. If there's any incriminating evidence, it points squarely at the fired engineers.
Moral of the story: if your boss tells you to pull this kind of shit, don't. Get the fuck out of there immediately. If you can get your boss behind bars in the process, great. But don't stay and follow the orders, because you will be the one to wind up holding the short end of the stick.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:39AM
That kind of crap happens everywhere.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:15AM
Its just as likely it was the engine software engineer that dreamed up this fix, and sold it to his boss.
Remember, there is no physics or engineering involved here. Its all in the computer software being able to detect that the car is not currently undergoing an emissions test procedure. Then it turns off emission control features in the software, for some kind of improved mileage or maybe better acceleration or something.
So it could take exactly ONE GUY writing code with some knowledge about how the engine/transmission works to dream this up, hide it in the code. Or maybe a couple guys.
Or maybe it came fro the middle management type, as you speculate.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by eof on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:36AM
If your company asked you to develop software (or anything else) analogous to what was in the VWs, what would you do? I ask because so many people talk about evil corporations, but those corporations are comprised of people. Are there any circumstances under which you would choose to participate in illegal practices (I really need the paycheck; I'm so close to retirement; No one would believe me; Don't rock the boat....) I ask rhetorically; I don't expect anyone to confess to a crime or willingness to commit one.
For the record: I believe I would do my best to work within the organization to prevent illegal activity, but I would go public if that didn't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @05:03AM
> For the record: I believe I would do my best to work within the organization to prevent illegal activity, but I would go public if that didn't work.
Sounds like you don't have a wife, kids or anyone else that depends on you to support them. Because 99% of the time, whistleblowers get fucked. Even the ones who do eventually get a share of any court award are made unemployable and burdened with the threat of legal retaliation in the mean time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @05:12AM
What would I do? Not sure. A lot would depend on how the laws were written and while I'm an auto engineer, emissions are not my specialty. It may come out that the EPA regulations do not say anything about emissions except as measured by the specified test. If so, then it's reasonable to assume that this is a "take home" test and it's OK to match the car performance to the test. The same thing has been done for computer benchmarks for years, it's cat and mouse between the benchmark writers and the computer suppliers.
It is fairly well understood that adding more fuel to a diesel will increase power (diesel engines are unthrottled, so fuel quantity also varies the air/fuel ratio). At some point the "smoke limit" is reached and adding more fuel starts to make black smoke (and more power). Where the smoke limit is depends on details of the engine, how well the fuel is atomized, etc.
I believe that gasoline/petrol powered cars have had a "loophole" similar to this for many years -- when the throttle is floored, the engine computer calibration goes to full power. The emissions test (a specific driving cycle of accel, decel, constant speed, stops, etc) never requires full throttle acceleration. Since full throttle is never tested, the manufacturer is not required to meet any standard, the air/fuel mixture is enriched to "best power" (which is richer than optimal for emissions) and emissions increase. Can anyone conform this?
Of course there are social and ethical considerations beyond the letter of the law--spewing out unnecessary pollution could be a real problem in some areas of the country. If the action against VW is based on this kind of concern (and not on the letter of the current law), then we can expect the regulations to be re-written to close loopholes.
(Score: 2) by schad on Monday September 21 2015, @02:06AM
They wouldn't ask. Probably what would happen is the execs would come up with some strategy like "bring our fuel-efficient clean diesels from Europe to the US." That would trickle down to my boss, who would ask me what we'd need to do to make that happen. I'd (have someone) look into the EPA regs to find out what emission targets we need to hit for the US market. Then I'd come up with an estimate for what the fuel economy would look like and provide all that information to my boss, who would pass it up the chain. Then, from what I understand of what the NOx regs would do to fuel economy, the execs would probably decide to move in a different direction.
I get asked to evaluate a lot of pie-in-the-sky projects. Most of them are stupid, as you'd expect, and my evals objectively demonstrate that fact. But sometimes I think something is a really great, important, whatever, in a way that I can't really capture. I've definitely felt the temptation to turn a "fail" into a "pass" for those projects. But I haven't done it. Nor have I ever gotten pressure to do so. Pressure from other teams, yeah, but never from my management chain. They always make it clear that they've got my back, and heavy pressure from other teams just means we need to be extra thorough, objective, and meticulous.
So I wonder if what we see here is an engineer making the point that others have: that the engine might actually produce fewer pollutants per mile driven with the "defeat device" in place. It's not so hard to imagine him deciding to ignore a stupid counterproductive rule, is it? He's honoring the spirit of the rule, he'd tell himself, and that's way more important than blindly adhering to the letter of it despite all sense.
I'm not saying our hypothetical engineer would have been right to make that call. Just that I can easily imagine myself in his place. And while I wouldn't make the same decision, I don't think, I can understand why a reasonable person might disagree with me.
For what it's worth, the one time I had a boss who asked me to be dishonest -- he wanted me to repackage used goods to be sold as new -- I carefully repackaged everything so that not even the most careful inspection would reveal it had been opened... and then wrote "USED MERCHANDISE" in permanent marker on it. Not anywhere obvious -- nowhere that would hurt the resale value -- but in a place that it would be noticed. As I discovered later that day, when my boss called me and fired me over the phone. I said I was glad not to work for a lying sack of shit that bilked his customers out of their money, and that he could keep my last paycheck.
An easy thing to do when it's a summer job and you were going to go back to college in a month anyway. I'm not sure I could do it now that I depend on my income to put food on the table.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:57AM
VWs actually did pass the tests. Its just that the agency wrongly assumed the cars did not know it was a test, when the car did. The vehicle never said it was giving a normal performance. Just think of all the great things that automotive software engineers who are that good will be able to deliver in future models!
GM, on the other hand and per usual, was getting people killed.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:43AM
I am guessing EPA got tipped off by a competitor trying to figure out why VW was getting such good numbers.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:27AM
Or an insider that got laid off?
Some car hacker trying to program a performance upgrade tune for one of these engines, and reverse engineering the factory code.
There are lots of companies that make these chips:
http://www.performancechiptuning.com/Volkswagen [performancechiptuning.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by overtech on Sunday September 20 2015, @07:53AM
from an article on the web:
The cars were first found to produce too much nitrogen oxides, or NOx, by researchers at West Virginia University who were working with the International Council on Clean Transportation, the EPA says. After the WVU analysis found irregular NOx levels in diesel Volkswagens, the EPA and the California Air Resources Board took up their own study.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Sunday September 20 2015, @01:12PM
For those who aren't into it [bloomberg.com].
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @07:08PM
The term "Malaise Era" pops up a lot; Murilee Martin originated it, and as you may expect, it gets its name from the word not used in President Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" speech, and is a term used to define cars manufactured between model years 1973 to 1983, inclusive. http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/05/what-about-the-malaise-era-more-specifically-what-about-this-1979-ford-granada/ [thetruthaboutcars.com]