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VW’s case of NOxious emissions: a tale of SMOKE and MIRRORS?

Benchmark THIS, Mr Diesel Guy

Jiggery-pokery, hokey-cokey

I experienced this for myself for the first time in the early 1990s, working on one of those 1,000-page monthly PC magazines that people once used to hold doors open or stand on to reach that one inaccessible top cupboard in the kitchen.

We would test and review some 100 personal computers each issue, and the labs team would regularly report back to the editors that something was fishy with the test results.

This week, I bumped into a gentleman, who shall remain nameless (because I’ve forgotten his name), who admitted to working for one of the popular so-called “direct-selling” PC manufacturers of the day, which shall also remain nameless (because I’m scared of lawyers). He said they used to run in-house competitions to see who could build the fastest-benchmarking PC from the same set of components before sending them off to reviews editors at computer magazines.

Usually it would require just a little poking around inside the case in our labs to find what was going on, such as over-cached storage drives, customised video cards and devilishly hard-wired components that avoided the standard bus entirely. Jiggery-pokery in laptops was only a little more difficult to spot because they need more care when taking them apart.

Sure enough, once the manufacturers realised they could no longer stuff a PC with high-level components and send it off to a computer magazine claiming it’s one of their low-cost, entry-level machines without being unmasked, they switched tack. Software cheats were the natural next step.

With mods to the BIOS and hidden naughty bits tweaking the nipples of our benchmarking programs, the crappest of PCs could appear to run faster than a supercomputer. Sometimes you could watch the juddering gaming graphics and marvel at how awful they were, only to be delivered a video benchmark result that rivalled that of a Soho digital post-production suite.

Without exception, a threat to name-and-shame was enough to persuade manufacturers to withdraw the nobbled PC and instead send over a more representative example from their mass-produced assembly lines.

The thing is, we could spot what the manufacturers were up to because our test systems were independent from theirs. It was a system based on mistrust. We knew they were a bunch of hoods and believed it would benefit our readers to break through their bullshit.

Regulation of the car industry, as VW’s exercise in benchmark manipulation reveals, does the opposite: it puts its faith entirely in the manufacturer to do the right thing and, like VW’s Executive Committee, chooses to have “no knowledge” of anything untoward that might take place.

Having established an emissions test, the regulators just hand it over and rely on the manufacturers’ systems to report a truthful result. Without taking complete charge of how the test is run, or even challenging any of the impossible results that get returned, the regulators just politely ask the manufacturers: “Did you pass? Yes? Jolly good!”

To be fair, VW 'fessed up quite quickly and the official statement from the company notes that “the internal Group investigations are continuing at a high tempo”.

It is surely not right that the share prices of other car manufacturers should be sent plummeting due to the actions of some lone shark at VW.

Indeed, the whole sorry business might peter out for all I know as VW, diesel providers and the rest of the dominant oil-worshipping sector of the automotive industry works to “rebuild trust” and all that bollocks.

However, a quick admission of guilt immediately makes me suspicious. Why? Because that’s exactly what happened at the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007.

Cast your minds back to the second half of the Noughties and you may remember the whole banking industry tutting away at the indiscretions of “lone sharks” who had been lending sub-prime mortgages. Admissions made, everyone else observed how unsavoury it was and how important it was that other banks should not be tainted with the same brush.

Then Barclays got pulled in. Then RBS. Then HSBC. Then, one by one, all of the rest of the bastards too.

The VW cheat device affair could yet turn into a scandal of epic proportions – not just for the car industry but for the ability of every man, woman and child to inhale air without having their lives dramatically shortened in order to boost private sector profits.

This could be the final scandal that pushes the First World into the lap of the electric car lobby. That is, assuming any of us are still left breathing. ®

Alistair DabbsAlistair Dabbs is a freelance technology tart, juggling IT journalism, editorial training and digital publishing. He would like to offer his services to VW’s marketing department in its drive (heh) to regain the public’s trust. He has already devised a number of excellent slogans – including Low emissions? Only Choking! and the potentially award-winning Cough up for diesel – as well as targeting the younger market with his Dr Seuss tongue-twister adaptation: NOX in Socks.

Bootnote

The emissions test detector system is a standard feature of all modern cars. In the age of computer-controlled traction control and ABS, the car isn't programmed to cope with inputs that roughly translate as "my forward wheels are doing revs for 50mph but my back wheels are stationary and the intake manifold pressure is nowhere near where it should be at 50mph, WTF is going on?!" In that scenario, cars start doing all manner of amusingly unpredictable things which screw with the test results.

Hence VW, and everyone else, has a test detector mode built into the ECU, the engine's electronic brain. This is supposed to work by telling it, "You're on a test rig, just roll with it (see what we did there?) and behave normally." Instead, VW quietly tweaked the test mode. Here endeth the lesson from Vulture Central's backroom gremlins.

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