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from the Copies-Everything-Including-Cheating dept.
The US Justice Department (DOJ) on Thursday announced a $305 million civil settlement between Fiat Chrysler and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a lawsuit over illegal software found on certain diesel Dodge Ram models and diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee models.
[...] The settlement comes two years after the EPA accused Fiat Chrysler of installing undisclosed and illegal software on 104,000 vehicles, including 3.0L diesel Dodge Ram 1500 trucks and diesel Jeep Grand Cherokees between model years 2014 and 2016. The EPA claimed the software would sense when the vehicle was being tested under laboratory conditions and implement the full emissions control system so that the car could pass the EPA's emissions tests.
I guess the Volkswagen cheating was considered a feature by the Chrysler engineers, and they were just copying what the customers demanded?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday January 11 2019, @03:13PM
One does wonder just how realistic the standards are. Yes, the manufacturers should not have cheated. However, are the standards reachable with a reasonable investment? Or are they impossible pipe dreams?
One should ask the same question about numerous safety features. Two examples:
- Every car must be safe in a rollover incident, which leads to massive roof pillars that impede visibility. We're used to this, but if you ever have the luck to drive a car from the 50s or 60s, you will see how huge the difference is. So: how many fatalities occur due to the obstructed vision? How common are rollovers? Would some compromise - better visibility, slightly less massive roof pillars - be a better compromise? But rollover safety sounds good, and it's hard to measure accidents caused by poor visibility, so the "good intentions" automatically win.
- Cars in the US, Canada and some other countries must have a third brake light. This was based on a trial with New York taxis, where some had a third brake light installed, and this reduced the number of rear-end collisions. I was driving back in the 1980s, when this study was done, and seeing that third light was really strange and attention getting. So the actual comparison in New York was between ordinary, unremarkable taxis, and taxis with a weird new feature. Of course the weird-looking taxis were hit fewer times - people noticed them. If they were to repeat the study today, now that third brake lights are normal, I expect there would be little or no difference. But no one reviews old regulations - the things just accumulate like barnacles.
Those are safety regulations, but fuel and emissions regulations are just as bad, or even worse. Who picks the numbers? How are they justified? What cheating is allowed, using "fleet averages" and the like? Anyone want to bet that the real basis is corporate cronyism: big manufacturers lobbying for regulations that will hamstring their competitors?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.