Germany Detects Emissions Cheat Software In Audi Models (reuters.com) 93
The German government has accused Audi of cheating emissions tests with its top-end models, marking the first time the company has been accused of such wrongdoing in its home country. Reuters reports: The German Transport Ministry said it has asked Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) luxury division to recall around 24,000 A7 and A8 models built between 2009 and 2013, about half of which were sold in Germany. The affected Audi models with so-called Euro-5 emission standards emit about twice the legal limit of nitrogen oxides when the steering wheel is turned more than 15 degrees, the ministry said. It is also the first time that Audi's top-of-the-line A8 saloon has been implicated in emissions cheating. VW has said to date that the emissions-control software found in its rigged EA 189 diesel engine does not violate European law. The 80,000 3.0-liter vehicles affected by VW's emissions cheating scandal in the United States included Audi A6, A7 and Q7 models as well as Porsche and VW brand cars. The ministry said it has issued a June 12 deadline for Audi to come up with a comprehensive plan to refit the cars. Ingolstadt-based Audi issued a recall for the 24,000 affected models late on Thursday, some 14,000 of which are registered in Germany, and said software updates will start in July. It will continue to cooperate with Germany's KBA motor vehicle authority, Audi said.
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as they say on Top Gear.
But to be fair, we know that everybody does it.
What's the name of the car where they just push fresh air into the exhaust to lower the numbers? Think it's an American one. I forget.
Chrysler had Pulse Air, but the overarching names are Secondary Air Injection, PUMP Air or Smog Pump.
Several USA Auto Mfg did this, including Chevy and Ford.
Re: Audi, cars for cocks. (Score:1)
Actually pretty much every engine manufactured since the late 90s has a secondary air injection pump for the first minute of operation. It's intended purpose is to increase the o2 level in the exhaust gases in order to get the catalytic converter up to temperature faster, and thus reduce emissions faster. After 45 seconds or so, the SAI turns off.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_air_injection
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Not what a smog pump does.
It supplies O2 to the cats to burnoff unburnt hydrocarbons. Tiny volume of gas compared to the engine.
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If Greece is a country that is highly corrupt on practically all levels of society and government, and the statistical department of Greece has been repeatedly accused of faking statistics, which among other things made it possible for Greece to join the EU...
Whereas Germany is for the most part a highly uncorrupt, transparent country that would generate a shitstorm of epic proportions in society if the government was caught faking statistics...
How is Germany's criticism towards Greece hypocritical and friv
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The BBC and the New York Times, to name just a few reputable sources, disagree with your assessment that Greece used rules accepted at the time and were only changed 4 years later:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... [bbc.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09... [nytimes.com]
Practically no country in Europe has maintained the 3% deficit rule all the time. But I think it is not hypocritical to demand this of new applicants, it's just common sense. After all, if you can't even follow the rules at the beginning at least, as a special effor
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Every country has corruption in some way or form. This doesn't diminish the fact that Germany is one of the least corrupt countries in the world, place 10 with a score of 81/100. Vs Greece, place 69 with a score of 44/100.
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What's the name of the car where they just push fresh air into the exhaust to lower the numbers
This was the predecessor to the catalytic converter. The principle is that fresh air is pumped into a special superheated exhaust chamber (aka thermal reactor) to burn any fuel that didn't get burned in the combustion chamber.
Open Source (Score:2, Offtopic)
If only regulators would mandate Open Source firmware for any vehicles traveling on public roads. We could catch emission cheats and self-driving flaws. Puts me out of work, but whatever, it's probably the right thing to do.
Trade secrets (Score:2)
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The locked down ECU ship has, more or less, sailed.
Security by obscurity doesn't work for long.
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Name one that lasted past the warranty period before being hacked.
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must as I love open source doing this would expose tons of trade secrets wouldn't it?
Perhaps, but it may be the cost of doing business. If it's not acceptable then I guess automakers have to sell off their business and pivot to something else?
Putting some exceptions to the rules for luxury and high performance(and high tax) would be the obvious compromise. If the luxury tax is high enough and volumes low enough, then you could skip emissions testing entirely and not really have a measurable impact on the environment. If you killed a baby seal for every Bentley that would still only be 15,00
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Racers, coal rollers and other enthusiasts approve this idea. Anything that makes it easier to make power is good.
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What if the firmware only boots if cryptographically signed, and your country's government assigned automotive authority was the only one able to sign the firmware? To keep end users for loading environmentally unsound settings for their car? We could make this open source and bad for the end user at the same time.
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Not undoable, but neither is swapping in a whole aftermarket or alternate year/model ECU.
Re:Emissions mobile (Score:4, Interesting)
Going forward all emissions testing should be done with the car at maximum weight rating, driving up a steep mountain road. I'm sure they can make these devices small enough to put in a trunk. They could also do a lightweight test with just a driver.
That can and has been done. [wikipedia.org] The drawback is that the testing won't be done in a controlled environment, so the results may not be repeatable.
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If they could make the hardware small enough to be fitted to random consumer's vehicles they could gather results from the real world and set a maximum average emission level over the fleet. Tests could be done over a year with automatic fines for exceeding the limits.
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But if you could easily est in a real environment, then you should be able to see major discrepency between testing and driving environment. If driving around a circular track doubles the readings compared to the testing environment, you can probably cry foul and investigate.
Steering Wheel? (Score:2)
The trigger for the violation was when the steering wheel was turned more than 15 degrees. That seems an odd trigger. It's not like the position of the steering wheel should affect the combustion in any way, nor would it be something a reasonable person would use to start a secret 'less pollution for the testing mode'.
It seems more like a major coding flaw rather than an intentional cheat. Like someone assumed that a set of values would be inside a range but when the wheel was turned, it gave an out of
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Keep in mind that there may be other more subtle triggers as well. That is, turning the steering wheel could be any one of a number of triggers that signals the system "Screw the pollution, crank up the POWER!". It may be that turning the wheel just happens to be the simplest and most reliably way to disable the "testing mode" while the car is being tested.
You're very generous in attributing this to a coding flaw (which, by the way, wouldn't make me feel any better), given the history of obviously intenti
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they measure emissions by putting the car up on a dyno rack
the steering wheel never moves, hence it makes it an easy way for the onboard computer to detect if a human is driving (i.e., there are steering wheel inputs), or if the vehicle is undergoing emissions testing (no steering inputs)
this was a cheat, and it's not the first time things like this are used
in the past, one company sensed an open door to run in "low emissions" mode...turns out when it's up on the dyno, the doors are normally open, so they c
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YMMV
I see what you did there.
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Testing is generally done on a dynamometer that is driven by the wheels of the car. If the car is front-wheel drive, you can't turn the steering wheel much without going off the dynamometer. Hence, the car can tell it's not being tested if the steering wheel is never turned much. Sounds like a "test mode" to me.
Re: Steering Wheel? (Score:5, Informative)
When you are testing emissions, you are doing it on a dynamometer - a big rolling drum. The car isn't moving. Thus, there is no reason to steer, and so the steering wheel won't be past 15 degrees either left or right. It's a perfect way to tell if you are testing, or actually driving. When you are on a real road, you are likely to turn the wheel past 15 degrees within the first 15 seconds of motion - pulling out of a parking space, backing out of a driveway, etc.
This isn't a bug - there is no reason for the steering to inform the tuning if the engine whatsoever. This is a deliberate cheat device.
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"So steering input can be a good indicator for when a driver is about to do with the throttle. "
Both throttle changes you just described occur *before* the associated steering changes. So no, the steering input is not a good (leading) indicator.
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On the one hand, yes, it's a deliberate cheat. This is clearly motivated by a desire to excel in synthetic testing with no real world justification at all. It is clearly the duty of people submitting to the test not to do such things.
On the other, it is (IMHO, YMMV, $0.02) the duty of the people performing the test to think about these things and perform an analysis as close to the "real world" scenario as possible. That doesn't excuse cheaters one bit to say that this is a laughable "test".
Moreover, there
Re:Steering Wheel? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how the VW cheat worked, and how Audi's does as well (aren't they same company?).
Basically, when you start the engine, it goes into "test mode" or the low pollution mode. There are a bunch of triggers that would take it out of test mode and into "normal high performance" mode. These are triggers that are believed if they occur, the car is not under testing. One of them is steering wheel - during the emissions test, it's not done on a road, but on a dynomometer, There's no reason to turn the wheel while on the dyno so it's assumed if the wheel hasn't moved it's to stay in test mode.
For Audi, another reason is acoustic management - when a diesel starts up, it makes a heck of a racket. However, if you inject a bit more fuel at start up, it quiets down at the cost of emissions (it's why the VW code references "acoustic management"). Since Audis are considered higher end vehicles, being able to do a nice quiet start is a plus.
And that's really the essence of the cheat.
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Electric cars. They have no emissions.
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Electric cars, for the most part. If you fill them up at work or home using solar or wind, they have zero emissions. If you fill them up from a commercial source that includes coal, they are still slightly better than fossil fuel cars, due to the actual operation of the vehicles themselves. Which is part of why electric cars, in general, require half the expense for repairs and maintenance.
Re: What cars *DON'T* cheat? (Score:1)
They have no tailpipe emissions, but they still have tyre wear, which is the predominant source of pollution in modern cars.
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Non-diesels.
They don't need to. It's much easier to make a compliant petrol car than a diesel one.
It's the shit in burning diesel that's the problem, which is why these engines aren't just "slightly over in one particular model" but the entire diesel engine industry are seeing things like FORTY TIMES over the limits when used in normal driving.
When I was a kid, my dad used to work as a mechanic. He explained the pluses and minuses of diesel vs petrol. And, pretty much, a "performance diesel" was unheard
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Speak for yourself you god damn law abider.
My car has a compliant ECU once every two years, for just long enough to get it smogged. Then the ECU gets flashed and the cats get put away for safekeeping.
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Thank you for polluting our common planet more than necessary.
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Your welcome.
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I question why that's necessary at all. Sure, the safety features and tech, I get that, but why are we all running things that beat car that were - in the 60's - the fastest racecars on Earth? So we can run the kids to school and then pop home for lunch? Why do road-legal cars even HAVE a speedometer that goes past 80, or an engine capable of doing so?
But manufacturers are still appealing to that metric above all others, even in huge diesel-guzzling SUV's that mums are buying to run the little darlings to their nativity play, to the point of breaking the law (in spirit, even if not the letter) to do so.
This guy is way too rational, he must be a robot, send him away! It never makes rational sense so not point in trying to see it rationally. Welcome to humanity. Where the only fact that matters is the fact that your stuff is better than the guy next to you! Don't even bother trolling these people either, they'll only look at you like you're the crazy one when you ask them if their corvette gets them to the grocery store faster lol. Those trend does have a habit of reversing itself whenever gasoline pri
But Why? (Score:1)
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Its disabled for the whole driving session once the wheel is turned once.
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Almost all driving is done with the wheel nearly straight.
And all dynamometer testing. Maybe they actually knew what they were doing.
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Perhaps turning the wheel turns off the test mode for 30 minutes or so?
Re: But Why? (Score:2)
Yeah, because it's super hard to implement a routine like "wheel turned past 15 degrees within two minutes of engine start = disable emissions until engine off"
You know many people with a mile long driveway that points right at their garage, who drive Audi? That simple logic above would work just fine for detecting a test scenario versus real world driving.
Re:But Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't switch back and forth between modes. It starts in their low-emissions mode and then switches to high-emissions mode once they detect that the wheel has turned more than 15 degrees. A car in normal driving conditions would thus trigger the high-emissions mode almost immediately, given that almost every drive begins with having to either get out of a parking space, turn onto a road, or change lanes to rejoin the flow of traffic. But a car that's just spinning its wheels in place so that it can be checked for emissions under controlled conditions? It'll never trigger high-emissions mode.
As for why they weren't smart enough to make it work like you thought? They couldn't. The low-emissions mode achieves its lower emissions by sacrificing performance. If they sacrificed performance every time they started going in a straight line, people would notice pretty quickly that something was up.
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A diesel in a drag race?
It does happen, you put propane and nitrous on a turbo diesel and woot, good times.
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A diesel in a drag race?
It does happen, you put propane and nitrous on a turbo diesel and woot, good times.
OK, if you need to put NOS and a modified engine in a diesel to go as fast as a stock petrol car... why not just get the petrol car. I mean to go as fasts as a mildly warm hatchback a diesel needs a 4L triple turbo engine with an 18 speed dual clutch transmission. I'll just stick with my petrol for performance as it's lighter, faster and cheaper (and lightness is worth more than power in racing).
Diesel is even starting to lose at LeMans, endurance racing was pretty much the only form of Motorsports that
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3/4 ton trucks run 11 second quarters with 'stock motor' plus, nitrous, propane and track tires. The full setup, more or less, quadruples power.
I don't think I've seen it done with post-smog diesels or cute little euro-diesels.
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If they sacrificed performance every time they started going in a straight line, people would notice pretty quickly that something was up.
Especially in Germany. My colleague's biggest complain about his A6 is that the cruise control can't be set above 200km/h
Re:This is the extremist world we live in (Score:4, Insightful)
You misread the summary.
"The affected Audi models with so-called Euro-5 emission standards emit about twice the legal limit of nitrogen oxides when the steering wheel is turned more than 15 degrees, the ministry said."
When the wheel is turned, the emission controls are turned off, and it pollutes more.
When the wheel is straight, it pretends to be less polluting.
This will continue to happen (Score:2)
honestly, instead of using the heavy hand of government to force motor companies to meet higher and higher emission standards, wh
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honestly, instead of using the heavy hand of government to force motor companies to meet higher and higher emission standards, why not just offer tax incentives/cuts/deductibles to consumers for buying the most 'clean' cars. That way you incentivize consumers to reward companies for buying greener vehicles, and companies feel the need to compete and build the best product.
The problem with this attitude is that the consumer has no way of knowing whether the vehicle is low emissions, or just cheating, on their own. They have to rely on something that's hopefully objective, which takes us back to testing. If you give consumers an incentive to buy a low emissions vehicle, the manufacturers will figure out a way to meet that demand, and as we've seen with their current willingness to cheat, that doesn't mean that they will necessarily be producing low emissions vehicles.
The real
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I don't know where you work, what your commute is like, and what gas prices are on your area, but in many (most?) places, monthly transit passes are on the order of $50. If you have a remotely long commute, its easy to burn through $50 in a lot of places.
The biggest problem with mass transit is convenience. You're on their schedule (and often they aren't, so you have to plan a bus or two in advance and waste 15-30 minutes on the other end just in case today is the day the bus is 15 minutes late.) You hav
schools (Score:1)
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A little trolly.
But kernel of truth. Germany used to do a good job teaching it's bottom quintile, where America fucks up. No more. They literally _can't_ do arithmetic anymore.
My entire extended family is German, including a few teachers at various levels. They and the people trying to find new apprentices, don't know what to make of it or do. Kids can't work as apprentice bakers because they can't double recipes.
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Who's been caught beside VW and Audi???