This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea:
1) He was the central figure in engineering the device.
2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA.
3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise of improved performance, but really to cover his own ass when the software got stuck in "testing mode" and deteriorated engine components.
4) He lied to the US government when confronted and led efforts with conspirators to bury.
I am going to guess that his relatively short 5-year plea also comes at the price of turning state's evidence on his often mention "co-conspirators".
I'd say it's probably a little preliminary for us to assume that only a single engineer is going to wind up behind bars for this, just because he's first in doesn't mean he's last out!
Yes, he's guilty but get the rest of the crooks too.
This brings Enron to mind. Yes the accountants did all the bookkeeping and they are guilty but the fraud was run from the executive suite.
What this guy did was a result of what the executives wanted not the initiator. Not just that, it went on and on and on...
To me, it's irritating that the 1st person to make the news is the engineer when clearly he's just part of the scandal. He probably had the least to spend on attorneys so he was the first to fall.
The 2008 financial crisis destroyed millions of hard workings people's retirement savings, jobs, and recent college graduates hopes of finding a job. No one went to jail over that. This is clearly a case of someone not having the right lawyers and political connections as engineers are people who actually create value as is often the case they can be successful without those two.
Neoliberal ideology makes the claim that prison is necessary to dissuade working class people from committing crimes. Whereas embarrassment and the tort system is sufficient for dissuading the management classes. Since we live in a neoliberal system it stands that this guy will go to jail and his bosses will perhaps pay fines.
Who exactly should've gone to jail over the 2008 financial crisis? Something bad having happened does not automatically mean that someone did something wrong.
People don't like to hear it, but some of the biggest perpetrators were lower level employees at mortgage mills that were lying on mortgage applications and putting false information on them to get them approved. While in some cases it may be that the executives were specifically instructing employees to lie on this way, most likely they were just being far too overzealous and putting too much pressure on the employees.
Additionally, people who lied on their mortgage applications were also to blame.
Then of course at the top on the securities side, there were those that knew about these shady practices but went ahead anyway. So ya, some execs should be on jail probably, but even more low level sales guys and sub prime borrowers should as well.
If you are going to do something risky and you are smart, you will usually, from the start, hedge your bets and plan for failure. It's just good practice. And it's not done by giving instructions to the person, but by selecting the right person with the right values, skill set and intentions for the job, so there is no paper trail and plausible deniability.
In this case just as with Jerome Kerviel, the fall guy story has to be believable when you dig, so that he can take the heat and the people responsible for setting up the system within which he operated, the people who took the decision to promote him and give him the resources to create the problem, walk away scots-free.
For example, newspapers receive thousands of pieces from hundreds of writers, the way the editorial line is kept is not with the editor telling the writers "we want you to stick to these positions and PR this line", but by the editor picking the writers who happen to really believe in the positions they want to promote on that day. Then he can say "conspiracy theories! of course we don't tell our writers what to write! this is totally independent journalism!". The editor is absolutely responsible for the editorial line and positions of the paper and by judicious selection can absolutely act in the interests of his backers/shareholders/directors, without asking his journalists to corrupt their standards.
What about this would back your claim that he isn't a fall guy? Whether he exclusively decided to cheat or not, there are still people that could have stopped him.
This is for media attention. It might be VW or it might be someone else that is making this "scandal" go on. Besides, VW itself is a fall guy; other companies are also doing some odd stuff: http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a29293/v...
Individual engineers don't make product decisions at big companies like Volkswagen. When I worked as an engineer at a big company, I couldn't even use a different text editor.
This even sounds somewhere between 2 to 3 levels above team lead. As a team [lead] in automotive you are mostly only responsible for a very small part of the system, and "diesel competence" sounds more strategic. Although titles are often manager, senior manager and then director of something, so it's hard to tell what leader is. But I guess it's far more an executive position with > 200 people below than an an "actual engineer".
His responsibility is probably above zero, but I'm having a hard time decisions of this kind aren't reviewed by many peers across company layers. Unless he lied about the purpose of his work and nobody could decipher his claims... still odd (reminds me of the Kerviel bank fraud)
If he lied about his work, and none else caught it, it brings up other questions about the integrity of VW vehicles. e.g. How valid are their safety testing results (could someone in the org have submitted vehicles for crash tests that weren't representative of the production config?)
Yes - maybe engineer doing air-bags is doing the same. And also brakes... so on. These engineers are not to be trusted: we need more management oversight.
I don't think he's innocent, but I think there were others much higher-up than he was that were aware of this and actively contributed in the fraud.
Also, didn't VW do this in Europe, too? Are we to believe this guy in the U.S. is responsible for the emissions cheating in Europe, too? At the very least top EU execs would've been aware of it, even if he was the creator and the evangelist for the device.
As far as the U.S. federal government goes, I doubt we'll see anyone else charged. They've already settled with VW, and this guy taking the fall was likely part of the settlement. We may still see some states continue their cases against VW, but I wouldn't be surprised if the DoJ pressures them to drop their cases.
It requires quite some will power, because it means you're fired. So depending on your situation, that may a really tough decision to make; even though you absolutely understand that you're doing something wrong.
He is exactly the fall guy. Just a target for public persecution. The really responsible execs will get away as usual. Nothing to see the bad guy it's punished time to Move on.
there are many ways to shut someone up... Do you want to keep your family's life style? your kids at private school? your house? your car? then stay quiet. we will lawyer you up, you get a reduced sentence, will be out for good behavior in two years and we will keep you as a consultant with full pension and company benefits...just one theoretical scenario :)
many ways to influence someone in this materialistic world..
> This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea:
Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain ... um ... sure.
I really don't understand why this guy is signing a plea deal. This is a classic example of a case complicated enough that the jurors would almost certainly be unable to come to "beyond a reasonable doubt" (the standard for criminal charges in the US).
A couple of years ago when I sat for jury duty, during one of my last call-ins as it was, we'd been in the pool room for a good hour or so precisely because of the statistics you cite. The bailiffs were getting a bit antsy and kept leaving the room, only to return a few minutes later to answer questions from a few impatient jurors. As it turned out, there were something on the order of about 7 trials on the docket scheduled for that day, and the first 3 or 4 had already ended with a plea bargain by that point rather late in the morning. We were told they would usually schedule between 7 to 10 trials on average because most of the defendants would usually agree to a deal. They assured us we would be going to juror selection "soon" and went about their business.
The unusual thing was that the remaining trials also ended in a deal, and after staying for ~2+ hours, we were free to go. Out of my 3 months, I only ever sat on one trial but we did get called in quite a few times. I certainly didn't expect to be turned away because none of the scheduled trials actually went to trial.
As an aside, I had an opportunity at the end of my term to speak with one of the prosecutors (I was leaving my last session at the end of my term and ran into him in the parking lot as he was getting lunch) who expressed frustration with the drug laws for wasting taxpayer money and jurors' time. Very interesting discussion.
> Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain
Even with a slam dunk, prosecutors usually prefer a plea bargain. They have limited budgets, trials are expensive, and if you can get a guilty plea with an agreement on an acceptable sentence and get the defendant and a judge to sign off without the time and expense of a trial, that's a big win.
(And, if they were likely to lose at trial, its also a big win for the defendant where they aren't indigent and are paying for the defense out of their own pocket -- a plea deal is cheaper than a trial, and may get them a substantially better outcome in sentencing.)
I think he is high enough to be guilty but still a low level that he cannot "lawyer up".
So he seems a perfect person to push for plea bargain so they can build a good case against people actually responsible for this. At least I hope they will try to do that.
But, cynic in me says that this is the end: they will claim this multi-billion dollar scam was architected, coordinated, and executed by him and only him. Move on.
Probably a company culture that rewards excellence even when it's unethical. If you are driven to impress & succeed in an environment like this, stuff like this happens.
Really, the engineer is the fall guy. Yes he's at fault but what kind of QA system does a billion dollar car company have that one person carried on a sham for decades. No way he was alone! Top management needs to be grilled on what really happened. At the very least the VP of the division that manged the emission controls for the company needs to be charged with some felony.
I bet that If he would have said something early on he would have been called a hero. Now he's a felon.
This is a real learning moment for us techies. If you see something illegal, report it to the proper authorities and run don't walk out of the company. Companies will find a scapegoat to blame. "Hey you seem like a good choice as any," be ready for it.
Note that this is also an American employee, and there is certainly still blame to assign at the head offices in Germany, to both technical employees and upper management.
Figure I might as well ask it here: how does it happen in Germany? If you go on reddit, you get inundated every day with tales of how strong their unions and labor protections are, and how seriously they take professional ethics and accreditation. Why didn't they feel they had the power to object to a plan like this?
Edit: I stand corrected; the DoJ release says he was working in Germany and so should have been covered by those protections:
"According to the plea agreement, from 1983 until May 2008, Liang was an employee of Volkswagen AG (VW), working in its diesel development department in Wolfsburg, Germany."
I suspect why it all happened is that emissions are invisible for the most part so it's easy to not see it as a big deal.
It's just regulations getting in the way.
The reality is that people's health are effected by the emissions now and for some time to come. I bet early deaths can be attributed to the extra pollution these cars put out and all of it could have been avoided.
> Why didn't they feel they had the power to object to a plan like this?
I can't speak for Germany, but managers in large companies in general view EVERYTHING as a check box. It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter how it's achieved, it doesn't matter if you're lying - if the box gets ticked then you've done your job.
I know people who worked on vw emissions in Germany that have been banned by vw / their sub contractor from ever entering the USA again. Probably in their own personal interest too. Curious to see what will happen to them in Germany..
Given the minimal information in this article you cant help but wonder if this is a blatant attempt at designating someone to take the fall for a larger conspiracy, or if higher-level indictments are on the way. At a company like VW decisions like this are never made at the engineering level.
It contains the complete 16-page plea agreement in it. I think that's pretty satisfactory.
In summation, the defendant is looking a 5 years prison and $250,000 in fines, as the defendants representation agrees the charges rate at least that much, plus possible restitution to any identified victims, but the court may agree that if he testifies fully and willingly it will be reduced. So yes, it looks like there's a wider-ranged investigation in progress.
Thanks for pulling that out.
I'm hoping these charges are just to squeeze him into testifying, building a bigger case against executives, and the sentence (prison especially) will be substantially reduced. He committed serious crimes but I have trouble believing he was a ringleader.
>decisions like this are never made at the engineering level.
True, but the law has long held an obligation to "fall on your sword" disobeying illegal orders, even if it comes at great personal cost. See the lack of success of the "just following orders" defense at the Nuremberg trials.
It's also the first principle of engineering ethics. Your first duty is to the public, followed by your client, followed by your employer. Which means that sometimes you will have to say "no" to your employer.
Yes. There can be consequences. You could lose your job. Acting ethically despite potential personal consequences is what is demanded of a professional engineer. If you're not willing to uphold the code of ethics, you shouldn't become a licensed engineer.
The licensing requirement is supposed to help people refuse unethical demands. The business needs a license, and anyone they would hire to replace him needs a license. The engineering professional association thus has some leverage to enforce standards. Probably not enough to entirely eliminate personal consequences, but they at least reduce the number of unscrupulous people you have to compete against.
With that logic you can blame a sales man for selling the car to a customer who planed to drive it in the US.
There is a undefined line between following orders and following the law.
The sales man does not know that it is illegal to sell the car. It is his own responsibility to not commit crimes. To not commit crimes one must know the definition of what a crime is. That definition can be found in the law book.
In the Law book one can find that the car in question is illegal to sell.
It would be very hard for him to find that information but it is still his responsibility.
Selling something you didn't know was illegally polluting is a large distance away, legally, from designing the system specifically designed to break the law.
Do you really think VW salespeople should go to jail for this? Should salespeople do their own emissions testing? Should they all buy multiple versions of the same car and crash it to see if it's really safe? How does that system work? VW has a clear set of emissions rules to follow because they build the cars, why should the salespeople be on the hook? This isn't Tesla, VW salespeople don't even work for VW.
"One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens"
He's proposing a Reductio Ad Absurdum argument, implying strict adherence to the "fall on the sword" principle causes prosecution of salespeople.
Because there's an implication, if you accept his argument, then you either reject strict adherence to the principle(modus tollens) or accept prosecution of the salespeople(modus ponens).
You interpreted his comment as accepting prosecution of the salespeople, but I believe he intended you to conclude rejection of strict adherence to the principle.
I don't know if I entirely agree with the "fall on your sword" argument. Sometimes it applies, but not always. There's definitely a grey area. At some point, the leverage becomes coercive, and to deny that allows force to hide in the guise of distributed responsibility. It allows the corrupt to shift blame onto middlemen who are sometimes just as much the victims of force as those down the line.
Were soldiers on trial in Nuremberg? Seems to me everyone was at least a "middle manager". The comparison is hyperbolic and I don't see the similarity here. VW is German? Is that what we're working on?
I don't know really what the legal penalty would be, but I can see why someone might take the fall for a company if the company offered some big incentives.
This feels a bit like the guy on Better Off Ted who always gets paid to admit fault, claim he has a drug problem, and then go to rehab so the company can move on blame-free.
And now they only have to find a fall guy and ensure his family is well off after he goes to prison.
In this case, three DAs have already found that top execs (and more) were implicated:
> "This cover-up was deep, wide and long-lasting. It extended from front-line engineers throughout the corner offices ... and right into the CEO suites," Schneiderman said, adding that the "toxic corporate culture that produced this fraud must be stopped."
Something away from the scandal itself, non-American here and I don't get plea deals. I mean, normally, a trial can result in acquittal even if the defendant admits their guilt if there's very strong objective evidence(DNA records etc.) disproving it. There has existed previous cases where some new evidence surfaced years after a plea deal and the defendant, previously found guilty, was released. So, why does a plea deal result in no trial at all? Shouldn't there be an, even very hastened, trial even if the defendant pleads guilty? That seems to be result if we only consider the American Justice System and Logic.
If you ask someone involved in the court system, they will tell you that plea deals are actually vital within the current court system. The judiciary is, in general, so underfunded in many jurisdictions that it would be simply impossible to try every case. Plea deals lessen the burden on the courts.
Obviously, this shouldn't be seen as a defense of plea deals, merely an explanation of one of the incentives that currently exist for them.
Properly funding our court systems would remove this incentive.
There should probably be a restriction on offering plea bargains, basically eliminating "plead to a lesser charge". The DA should be allowed to prosecute no more than the charges they want you to plead to. Piling on charges is coercion, threatening a good chance of ruining your entire life vs. a guarantee of only ruining a little of it.
American criminal trials are so costly in terms of money and time that the process itself is a form of punishment. Sure, you could go to trial and find yourself not guilty, but then the prosecution files an appeal and you have to keep paying a lawyer. If there's a reasonable chance of you being found guilty, the prosecutor will be happy to strike a reasonable deal with you, so you can get it over with and carry on with your life (and your money). I think something like 90% of cases are resolved through plea bargaining.
> Sure, you could go to trial and find yourself not guilty, but then the prosecution files an appeal and you have to keep paying a lawyer.
In the US, the prosecution can't appeal a verdict in a criminal trial. In some cases, you could be tried for the same crime in a different jurisdiction though (likely with a different prosecution as well).
From skimming on Wikipediea, there are exceptions: you can be tried for the same crime as a federal crime and a state crime if it is criminal in both jurisdictions (although not as a federal crime and a Puerto Rico crime). You can also be tried for a crime multiple times if earlier trials were declared a mistrial (some exceptions apply).
> you can be tried for the same crime as a federal crime and a state crime if it is criminal in both jurisdictions
A federal crime and a state crime, even if based on the same act, are different crimes. (Usually, even if they have similar popular names, with substantially different definitions.)
> (although not as a federal crime and a Puerto Rico crime).
Puerto Rico is a federal territory, therefore that would be a "federal crime" and a "federal crime".
While Puerto Rico may have local government that looks a lot like a state in its relation to the federal government (and which is treated as a state under a lot of federal statutes), Constitutionally it is not a separate sovereignty like a State, but simply an appendage of the Federal government.
The judge has to sign of on plea deals; for all crimes above a certain level (differs between jurisdictions), you are not allowed to plea guilty while also maintaining your innocence.
There are some major issues with this though; there are many people who are likely innocent but plea guilty because they can't afford bail, and if they miss work they will lose their jobs.
Plea deals happen a lot because of the sheer volume of criminal cases; from the prosecutors point of view they reduce the variability of outcome, as well as the work needed to get the outcome, which makes it possible to handle a larger caseload.
[edit]
Also as the paper posted by a sibling comment points out, jury trials in the US are incredibly resource intensive, and it is only in the last century or so that they have become so. 97% of federal convictions are from guilty pleas.
It's the same concept as insurance: it's often better to take a guaranteed loss of X, than 10% chance of a loss of 10X -- or even 8X, due to a loss aversion.
So, let's say that you're in a group of 10 people and one of them will suffer an 8X loss, but you don't know who. You each set aside X, and pay 9X to the guy who turns out to take the loss. (Refund of contribution plus 8X.) You pay X for the overhead of managing the arrangement. Boom, you reinvented insurance.
There are cases where the evidence is strong, but neither side likes the uncertainty of leaving it up to the trial, so they make the above tradeoff, and save on the costs.
As for your question about "why not have a mini-trial anyway", the prosecution is required to disclose their evidence at the allocution, so there (some level) is transparency about the basis for guilt; but if you have to commit to the regular trial with all its procedures and protections, then that defeats most of the purpose.
Often, people confusedly moralize about plea bargains, when their real objection is that the government could credibly claim to be able to get an 8X penalty at all, which seems excessive given the facts of the case.
A judge has to approve the plea deal, so usually this is a kind of a very hastened trial. Unfortunately sometimes it boils down to the rubber stamping.
The defendant has the option of pursuing a trial. If the defendant loses the trial, there is usually a more severe sentence.
The justice system in the US is "adversarial." The product of the process is the verdict. Any official information entered into the public record is a side product, not a primary.
In cases where a prosecutor thinks the public information is more important, they have the option of not pursuing a deal.
> I mean, normally, a trial can result in acquittal even if the defendant admits their guilt if there's very strong objective evidence(DNA records etc.) disproving it.
Curious what country you are in where that's normal. Definitely not in the US. If the defendant admits their guilt, there isn't a trial in the US at all, it's done.
Haha. Politics as usual. They really want us to believe an engineer was the mastermind of this scandal? An engineer can't make these decisions without approval from above. Is pathetic. Execs should go to jail or lose their jobs and pay multi-million dollar fines at the very least. But guess what's gonna happen? They will be discussing this as a bad dream when they meet up on a skiing trip in Swiss alps next winter.
Are you telling me that there is just this single person in the entire multi billion dollar company that could make this kind of decision without top execs knowledge that screws up the whole business operation and that there are no checks and balances in place?
If this is the case and top execs really had no clue - they all must go as they clearly have no idea whats going on and how to run a company.
Boy, If I were a high paid executive deliberately cheating on diesel emissions tests, the first thing I'd do is open a position called "leader of diesel competence" to take the heat should I get caught. What a ridiculous title and obviously shows the malicious intent of VWs management.
Yes, the engineer deserves to go to prison because he pulled the trigger. But his boss deserves just as much if not more prison time.
"Defeat device" they called it, not sure if they realized or ever will what it was they were defeating:
"We must be sure to prevent the authority from testing the Gen 1," the indictment said an employee wrote in German. "If Gen 1 goes onto the roller at the CARB, then we'll have nothing more to laugh about!!!!!"[1]
I imagine executives are technically innocent, in that they gave engineers very specific requirements within certain parameters, and asked them to get it done by any means necessary. And then the executives were more than happy to be kept in the dark about how it was done. I can't imagine that the executives would have even been technically competent to understand what had happened. But they also created a dead end set of objectives for the engineers to carry out, and no avenue for realism to work its way back up the channel.
You know what is rather strange. Germany, the home country of VW, has been very quiet when compared to the US and other countries. One one hand, I think that they want to limit the damage. VW is one of the pillars the German economy. On the other hand, VW did admit to breaking the law and the appropriate penalty must be given.
Vehicle emissions standards in Europe are much weaker than those in the US.
Even though a "defeat device" is technically against the rules, it seems unlikely that there will actually be fines or penalties for it. There isn't any environmental regulator in Europe with the same kind of powers that the EPA and CARB have.
Legal action in Europe against VW looks more likely to be from the consumer protection angle. That is, customers were mid-sold vehicles that claimed to be compliant with emissions limits but in fact are not.
The competition must have known that VW was cheating, yet not one "competitor" called them out on it.
The whole thing is a systemic failure. Regulations don't work. Regulators are generally lousy at their jobs (if they aren't working for the regulatees, they will be - I'm talking about the top regulators, mind you). The "free market" failed, because if everyone is cheating no one is cheating.
It's time we start working on a replacement, because what we've got now is busted.
It is hard to imagine that a large number of reasonable tech and business people would do it that blatantly for so long. After all it isn't Mafia nor government nor banks. I wonder whether it was done as some temporary "fix" back then, just to meet schedule/KPIs/etc., which just naturally became a "feature".
The way I see it, they probably did it somewhat incrementally. To some degree, they've ALWAYS programmed the ECUs "to the test", because isn't that basically what the authorities want? A system that meets standards X, Y, and Z, as verified by a test of X, Y, and Z? What got them into trouble was the fact that ECUs became more and more sophisticated, allowing them to gradually isolate X, Y, and Z into ever-shrinking "islands" of compliance. It was tolerated for so long that both engineering and management probably became accustomed to cheating the test to some degree, so when the standards became even more stringent, they basically saw nothing wrong with creating a special "clean" ECU profile narrowly tailored to the specific parameters of the test procedure. Granted, they knew they were cheating, but I think when you're inside the corporate bubble and everyone's operating on the premise that cheating has always been tolerated on the test, it becomes harder to be the guy that says "this is too much".
I did a small software project as a contractor for VW and it was just a mobile app, not integrated in the car. The hassle we had to go though was immense, it actually went up for decisions 2 levels below CEO. So I don't believe he is the only one or even the main responsible guy. I hope this is not the end with trials for VW executives.
If I were a German engineer, I'd be more than a tad miffed at the executives who are flushing down the drain the reputation earned by over a century of unparalleled excellence.
I seriously doubt this guy will serve jail time. I'm not saying that I think that he shouldn't, or that he should. It's just rare for white-collar criminals to serve time here.
There should be some executives losing their jobs and freedom, if this guy is pleading guilty to several felonies. He wasn't acting on his own initiative.
The CEO of Volkswagen international, the President of the US division and the heads of R&D for Audi and Porsche were fired/resigned almost immediately. Some of them were reported as engineers, because some of them were engineers. Engineer and executive are not mutually exclusive titles.
As for this guy, I'm having trouble finding more details, but as "Leader of Diesel Competence", he may very well be the technical manager directly in charge of the design of the engines.
It's almost always the little guys who take the fall. The banking crisis resulted in very few criminal charges...a lot of lower level employees lost their jobs and otherwise faced consequences, while the executives continued on as though nothing happened (they maybe took somewhat smaller bonuses that year, and acted chastened by the whole sordid affair, of course).
I suspect it'll be the same, though at least the CEO resigned over this. I'm sure Winterkorn remains a multimillionaire, and will continue to enjoy his freedom and lack of criminal record.
That's why I'm a little crestfallen that an engineer was first to be charged. By all means, charge the guilty & complicit, but I'm apprehensive the order could aide the narrative VW's execs tried to spin at first ('This company-wide scandal was clearly the work of exactly one rouge engineer') and help them get out scot-free.
most likely they are going after this like a drug dealing or racketeering outfit, from the bottom up, using plea bargain testimony to make the path easier as they go.
but if not, yeah, this would be a farcical miscarriage of justice if a bunch of engineers end up taking the fall for this.
"Engineer" at VW doesn’t mean he wasn’t in a managing position – VW almost exclusively promotes their engineers to managers, and rarely ever hires external talent.
ISTM this policy could ensure that no experienced engineer or manager whose time at other firms taught her to scrupulously follow the law and expect the same of colleagues, could join the team and expose their ongoing schemes. It's kind of like how the mafia works. One doesn't get "made" without a half a dozen murders to one's name, to discourage defection. When a young engineer starts at VW, she wouldn't be shown the truly evil shit, but she might be encouraged to cut a few ethical corners. Once she's done that a few times, they own her.
On the other hand, it ensures the managers, up to the CEO, actually understand what they're talking about.
No more dealing with managers not understanding anything about what they manage.
Doing this — only promoting your oen engineers to managers — improves efficiency by many times.
And the story of VW in the US started with the EPA violating the law and discriminating against VW for a few years, after which most likely even experienced talent would say "if they break the law to keep us out and protect their local industry, let's break the same law to get us in". (Read more about this in the SPIEGEL).
Just to play devil's advocate, maybe the requirements really are way over the line. In that case I wouldn't hold any grudges. Just because something is classified a felony doesn't mean it's morally wrong.
Edit: To clarify, I'm not suggesting this guy taking the dive for the execs is ok, just that someone lying about emission test results may not be as horrible as they're trying to make it sound.
I'd say that causing 11 million cars to spew pollution into the atmosphere against regulations is fairly repugnant from a moral perspective. It's not different than him going around the back of a chemical plant that produces toxic byproducts, and opening a valve that releases toxins into a river when he knows the inspectors aren't watching.
Regarding emissions, it's a tradeoff: increased engine temperature increases NOx emissions, but also increases fuel economy, decreasing carbon emissions. I was unable to quickly find a consensus on which type of emission is worse or how to weigh one versus another.
Regarding regulatory compliance, defeat devices are clearly unacceptable; if the regulated requirements are considered inappropriate for whatever reason, they should be challenged through political or legal process, not by detecting test conditions and altering behavior.
The emissions standards are already a dangerous compromise; we should have been making hard decisions about emissions 20, even 30, years ago...they've gotten stricter because they were disastrously lenient in the past, and we see the results of it.
The reasons someone lying about emissions tests are really as bad is it sounds:
- If one manufacturer lies, other manufacturers are forced to either lie, or lose customers in the market to the liar. Thus, dangerous cars become more common, car makers that try to do the right thing make lower profits and sell fewer cars.
- In this case, "clean diesel" lies likely led other manufacturers to waste resources on trying to make clean diesel of their own. Again, competitive advantage goes to the liar who doesn't actually have to make clean diesel; they just say they did, and sell boatloads of it.
- Emissions standards are already too lenient. Our planet's steadily rising temperature shows us this. No one here at HN (I would hope) would be arguing that climate change isn't happening or that humans aren't causing a significant portion of it, so the only sensible thing is to look at what causes it, and regulate it (somehow; I am not an expert on the subject of how emissions are regulated or should be regulated, but I know it's not really working, thus far...as autos are a significant portion of emissions).
So, if the requirements are "way over the line", how does one explain other auto makers complying with them? Are they all lying? There's been increased scrutiny, so it's likely to come out, if they have been. Wouldn't that be an interesting situation?
Diesel soot doesn't cause climate change, that's CO2 which is not regulated.
I think it's ridiculous (at least in Canada) that I have to pay $30 every other year to have my car emissions tested while city buses and trucks spew black clouds unopposed. Just feels like a useless cash grab.
Buses and trucks are also regulated and have to adhere to emissions standards, and get tested regularly; at least, in the US, they are regulated more heavily than autos (or, at least have more paperwork and legal obligations involved in driving them, and have a higher tax burden).
People riding a bus are, in aggregate, producing much less waste than if they were all driving automobiles...so, it's OK that a bus produces quite a bit more waste than a single automobile. And, I might even argue we aren't going far enough to incentivize people to take mass transit rather than driving themselves.
The cargo industry is responsible for a tremendous amount of emissions; freight ships account for millions of cars worth of emissions, in fact. That's definitely an area for improvement on a worldwide level. I'm in no way saying there aren't other sources of emissions, or that regulating auto emissions effectively will solve the problem. Merely that ignoring emissions from cars will exacerbate what is already the single biggest problem humanity faces going forward.
Right, but (per parent comment), you misrepresented the basis for the tradeoff behind the regulation -- you justified it by the need to prevent global warming, but the regulation pertained to NO2, not CO2, and satisfying the former typically makes the car less CO2-efficient.
So, you were justifying a GW-worsening regulation by the need to lessen GW.
(Your point about differing limits for buses vs cars is correct though, and the parent is wrong on that issue. But it would frankly be better if they were just charged per emission and each mode decides for itself whether the extra emissions are worth it.)
Sure, there's the argument that we're squeezing the balloon rather than reducing waste; the waste products can be tweaked to produce more or less of one or the other. My point is that as long as diesel continues to be propped up as a "clean" technology, based on fabricated data, we won't see migration to actually cleaner technology. Of course it's cheaper to make vehicles that are either poisonous or cause climate change (both, actually, no matter how you squeeze the balloon).
Diesel, it turns out, isn't all that "clean". I hate that it's so...I drive a modern turbo diesel vehicle, and have been very disappointed to learn about the tradeoffs and negatives of that technology (though I drive a big Ford diesel, which doesn't make some of the compromises that VW was making in its small engines, and does comply with EPA regulations without trickery, to the best of my knowledge).
Burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change and produce dangerous emissions that are toxic for living things. As long as we continue to allow auto makers and the fossil fuel industry to externalize those costs, alternatives won't be competitive and won't be able to replace those fossil fuel burning vehicles.
It is, in the sense that curbing CO2 emissions is the justification de jour for the current arbitrary fuel economy regulations for new cars sold in the US.
Here, it's more like: "you are free to drive the biggest and most fuel inefficient new car you like, that can be built without the government fining the manufacturer into insolvency."
The backdoor efficiency standards cause OEMs to spend more money on making lighter cars with smaller, more complicated engines, which end up being less durable and more expensive to repair.
You don't know how emissions should be regulated, but somehow you know the regulations aren't working b/c they are too lenient?
My hypothesis is that all of the diesel-powered cars sold in the past 20 years in the US could vanish tonight, and there would be no significant change in the planet's climate vs. had people continued to drive them.
The real motivation for strictly regulating diesels is their predilection to produce oxides of nitrogen and particulates, which contribute to smog and respiratory distress.
While one has to make allowances for the climate and traffic in a particular place (the LA basin is always going to be smog-prone, and probably should be able to set its own regs for mobile pollution sources), the point of diminishing returns for adding more pollution controls to cars probably past at least 15 years ago.
Emissions standards are too lenient? They are too strict if anything. They are as strict as they are mainly because the manufacturers want them that way. It's the best way to keep smaller competitors out of the market and it looks like you're being a good guy to the consumer and environment in the process.
I kind of agree with you actually. To refine my comment above, if you accept the premise that there's criminal culpability here, then it's morally unacceptable to send an engineer to prison but not the executives who directed or authorized him to produce a defeat device.
If, as you're saying, you don't accept that cheating on emissions tests is criminal in nature, then the issue should be settled through commercial and civil sanctions (which could perhaps include this engineer losing his license or charter, but more importantly should include those executives suffering severe financial penalties - perhaps that's a massive decline in value in their stock compensation's value caused by VW's mandatory exit from the US market.)
I don't think it's that VW can't meet the requirements, it's that they don't think it'll be as commercially successful.
I think it's the tension between emissions requirements and customer demand for powerful vehicles. As allowable emissions decrease over the years, which automaker will be successful shipping a vehicle that has less power than the previous model?
And that's the whole reason for emissions requirements, left to their own devices, automakers and customers weren't getting it done.
I'm not saying only Liang should be punished, but the guy has no upheld is professional obligations and so he should not be allowed to work as an Engineer any longer.
In California, Michigan, and most other U.S. states, engineers who work for companies as product designers have a so-called “industrial exemption”: they are not required by law to be licensed, or indeed to have professional qualifications of any kind. (See, for example, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 6747 and Mich. Comp. Laws § 339.2012.)
1) He was the central figure in engineering the device.
2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA.
3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise of improved performance, but really to cover his own ass when the software got stuck in "testing mode" and deteriorated engine components.
4) He lied to the US government when confronted and led efforts with conspirators to bury.
I am going to guess that his relatively short 5-year plea also comes at the price of turning state's evidence on his often mention "co-conspirators".
I'd say it's probably a little preliminary for us to assume that only a single engineer is going to wind up behind bars for this, just because he's first in doesn't mean he's last out!
More data here:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-gu...