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from the that's-a-lot-of-rogue-engineers dept.
Four More Companies Caught Cheating Emissions Standards
From The Guardian :
Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda and Mitsubishi have joined the growing list of manufacturers whose diesel cars are known to emit significantly more pollution on the road than in regulatory tests, according to data obtained by the Guardian.
In more realistic on-road tests, some Honda models emitted six times the regulatory limit of NOx pollution while some unnamed 4x4 models had 20 times the NOx limit coming out of their exhaust pipes.
"The issue is a systemic one" across the industry, said Nick Molden, whose company Emissions Analytics tested the cars. The Guardian revealed last week that diesel cars from Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo and Jeep all pumped out significantly more NOx in more realistic driving conditions. NOx pollution is at illegal levels in many parts of the UK and is believed to have caused many thousands of premature deaths and billions of pounds in health costs.
The article goes on to state that the toxic emissions levels are anywhere from 1.5 to 6 times higher in road use than in the lab tests. Of the 200 cars tested only five had emissions levels that matched their test results. This is a rather distressing fact. It seems that we the public have been lied to (again) for many years now. The "clean diesel" might just be a myth.
Given that these manufacturers come from all over the world, how is it possible that this is an accident? Is there so much incest in the automobile industry that the code from one manufacturer has permeated the industry and the rest of the manufacturers are just waiting to get caught?
VW Says Rogue Engineers, Not Executives, Responsible for Emissions Scandal
Volkswagen's US CEO testified Thursday that the decision to use emissions cheating software was not made at the corporate level. Instead, it was "software engineers who put this in for whatever reason," Michael Horn told a congressional panel that is investigating the scandal.
What's more, Horn told US lawmakers that the German automaker was withdrawing its application to sell 2016 autos with 2.0-liter diesel engines because they don't comply with US emissions standards. Horn testified that the 2016 vehicles were equipped with the same type of software that allowed millions of VW diesel vehicles to cheat pollution tests. "As a result, we have withdrawn the application for certification of our model year 2016 vehicles. We are working with the agencies to continue the certification process," Horn told the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
The timing is perfect to throw the engineers under the bus.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RamiK on Monday October 12 2015, @10:28AM
The real problems are:
1. They held off electrification and cleaner combustion cycles from being developed and deployed:
1.1. Toyota spent a decade+ on hybrids that didn't take off since everyone else just cheated.
1.2. Tesla lost investors and sales keeping it a niche since the impression was car manufacturer can produce zero emissions effortlessly and without impacting fuel efficiency in a moment's notice.
1.3. Subaru spent half a decade at getting a cleaner cycle at the expense of their fuel economy which hurt their sales when everyone else just cheated and made it look like they have both.
And so on...
2. Manufacturers moved their factories outside the US, Germany and Japan to second and third world countries since they didn't need the high tech quality controls. Fuji took loses staying in Japan despite it's plants getting flooded in one of the tsunamis. Detroit died since there was no need to even assemble in the states now that Mexico's plants could keep up with regulations...
3. There's probably half a decade to a decade worth of lost industrial robotics income and R&D through manufacturers producing ancient tech using manual labor since it's viable now that's you're in a third world country and don't need the precision and quality of modern designs only robots can guarantee.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Monday October 12 2015, @04:56PM
When I have made comments like this, about various processes at businesses where I have been retained to be an outside expert, I am sometimes looked at with amazement and asked why I don't want to make them money.
One VP at a place I won't name looked at me like he had a brain blue screen and was slowly rebooting his thought processes but had been stymied by chkdsk running before he could abort it, again.
My suggestion to fix various problems in the design process, because of numerous customer complaints about the costs of continued T&M billing for projects that just were not ending due to numerous problems...this idea of mine was simply not valid. No, the business plan required those problems! Those problems were some of the only reasons customers kept paying them to come out and fix things!
In my favorite example, the owner of the company was in sales, and the "senior vice president" was also sales. There were not enough sales, but plenty of trips across the country to various MS conferences. The engineers were not billing enough; sales were down. They were not going to hire new sales people, though. Personality and ego issues, you see. No, their business plan was to get inexperienced IT people involved and charge full price for them; Everyone had senior in their title! No one wanted to pay the full costs for a non-seniorly skilled person, so the executive staff saw to it that there were only people with senior in their title on staff.
They tried to remove titles all together, in order to help reduce the resentment of the truly more skilled people had expressed... they didn't like be measured the same way by clients in the same regard as some of the less skilled people. Having "junior" or dropping the "senior" was not an option because clients would expect to pay less for those people unless the projects were fixed bid, but if no one had a title those problems would go away! (Fixed bid NEVER happens because of that one time a bunch of beginners were put on a project and it took way longer and they lost a lot of money because they should have done it by the hour...when all you have are beginners.. everything is a project)
Except for those customers that start asking for proof about accreditation and certification and demonstration of skill and such... what irritants.
Knowledge is power and training costs money; experts seem to demand more salary than we'd like to pay them so....
Braindumps for everyone! Download some off a pirate site and give everyone a copy and the training is at no cost and everyone can learn how to be experts! This was the official executive management plan to improve client relationships! Now they can all be seniors and be compared against the industry standards as being certified!
When I see things like that happen up close, with the "executive leadership" telling me that I can go run my own damn business if I they don't like the advice I offer, I can easily see how a company's top management can blame their most valuable resources for the problems that are institutional. The vile leadership at such firms probably don't even cast an image in the mirror to reflect on. It is easy, then, to conclude that the only real people to blame for such problems are the ones they can see for themselves.