October 7, 2015 • 37 mins
In part one of this two-part episode about the computerization of cars, Lauren and Joe are joined by CarStuff hosts Scott Benjamin and Ben Bowlin to discuss the Volkswagen emissions "defeat device" scandal.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, Hey, and welcome to Forward Sinking, in the
podcast that looks at the future and says till I
find the righteous one Computer Blue. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm
(00:21):
Lauren volc Obam, and our usual host Jonathan Strickland is
not in today. He is on a fabulous vacation. However,
like the head of a hydro, we have spawned two
co hosts in his place. Allow us to introduce to
you Mr Benjamin Bollen and Mr Scott Benjamin of the
show car Stuff, our esteemed colleagues. Yes, can you guys
(00:43):
introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what
you do? Okay, let's see. Well I'll go first and
I'll describe you Scott, and then you could do you
could describe me. I'm uncomfortable already. Yeah, I want to
make it weird and complicated. That's like you're on Forward Thinking,
you're fetting in final Ready. So we host a show
called car Stuff where we cover everything that floats, flies,
(01:07):
or drives. And earlier you guys had talked to us
off the air because you are covering something that is
a particular interest to us, right, Scott, Yeah, that's right.
We're gonna talk about, well, among other things, we're gonna
talk about the Volkswagen recall and the possibility of manufacturers
toying with the electronics and our vehicles to uh more
(01:28):
than just you know, shutting off emissions controls. It was
a little bit more devious, a little more manipulative than that.
And this is actually going to be a two part
episode that we do with our guests Ben and Scott,
and so they will be around with us next time
to continue this discussion. But the broad topic that we're
going to address is how the Internet of Things is
going to be affecting vehicles. We've talked on the show
(01:51):
a lot about the best ways that it might you know,
the ways computers and cars can help make us safer,
can improve the performance of cars. But what about the
other side. There's the possibility that the cars of the
future might be a little too smart for their own good.
They might be smarter than we'd like them to be,
smart enough to have hidden agendas. Could your car have
a hidden agenda? That's what we want to talk about today. Also,
(02:15):
full disclosure here, as you guys probably not since you
if assuming that you listened to the first four seconds
of this podcast. We are sponsored by Toyota, but they
give us free rein to create this podcast, you know,
from ideation straight up through editing the final product, and
you know we're going to be talking about one of
their competitors at a very large competitor of theirs in
(02:35):
the world market is Volkswagen. But our our statements here
are entirely our own and we will as always work
to be as unbiased as possible. Right, this factors in
other companies aside just from VW, so right, oh yeah, absolutely,
Ultimately it's going to be a broader discussion. But we
just wanted to let you know they didn't ask us
to talk about this. We're not just trying to pick
(02:56):
on Volkswagen. I love the hidden agenda stuff. Just for
the record, this ties into another show that I do.
And I'm thrilled, Tom thrilled to be here. So thanks
for having us, uh stuff. They don't want you to
know which Scott you have appeared on before, and actually
you two have also appeared on before, Joe and Lauren.
(03:17):
That's it, separately, separately exactly well to my knowledge, I
don't know. The separation surgery has gone very well, so yessn't.
I didn't know how to bring it up. I didn't
know how to bring it up. So okay. So this
VW emissions scandal, what is it? What makes it a scandal? Yeah? Well,
this has something interesting to say about the role that
(03:39):
computer technology plays in the cars we have today. So
here's the basic story. And I know Scott and Ben
you guys will have a lot more to say about
this than I will, so feel free to inject as
we go along. Well, but the basic idea is that
in September it was revealed to the public I believe
through an announcement from the e p A that many
(03:59):
diesel powered vehicles or so called clean diesel cars manufactured
by Volkswagen over the years, I think since two thousand
nine until this year, have gone to market. We're bought
and are currently being driven with a defeat device, that's
what they've been calling it, designed specifically to cheat at
(04:19):
emissions testing. And one notice that the story is still
developing as we record this. Some new information may come
to light or may change things after we record this episode,
but we're going to try to be as accurate as
possible for what we know today as of October one,
these are the facts. Yeah, we're going to talk about
maybe some possible fixes, you know, what they're what they're
(04:42):
considering doing, But right now it's all speculation at this point,
because we won't know for at least another week what
the attentive plan is and whether or not that plan
will be accepted. Even so, why would you design a
device inside a car to cheat at emissions testing? Essentially?
I think it's that when you design a car, when
you're engineering really any kind of machine, you've often got
(05:03):
really important concerns and conflict. And in this case the
concerns and conflict or intention were performance and environmental friendliness. Yeah,
that's right. And in the marketplace, VW was really quick
to say, we've got these clean d they call, you know,
for the term clean diesel, over and over again. Right,
and this is this is the important part, and we
(05:23):
have to kind of step back and look at it
this way. They were, they were doing it so well
back then, you know, back in two thousand and eight,
two thousand nine, that the other manufacturers were thinking, how
how are they doing this? How are they getting everything
that we're trying to get out of our diesels, but
we can't. How are they successful in doing that? And
they thought, well, they've been doing it over in Europe
for so long, maybe that's maybe they just have these
(05:43):
these uh, these in house secrets that they know how
to do this, and people look at them and kind
of reverse engineer them and try to figure out how
how it all works. But it turns out it was
this defeat software that was causing them to you know,
allow three things that you know, it's like a it's
like a balancing act. Um, it's economy, it's emissions, and performance.
And you know, the consumers they care about maybe two
(06:06):
of those three. They hear about, well, fuel, economy and
performance because they want to car this fund to drive.
And I know people also want to do the right
thing and they want to you know, have a clean vehicle. Sure,
but if they can get that out of a diesel
vehicle that you know, it's uh more efficient I guess
than a gas lean car typically, Um, you know they're
gonna go for that. They're gonna go for that option.
And VW is gaming the system by by saying, like,
(06:30):
you can have all three in our car. Whereas the
other guys, you can't. You can't do that. And to
clarify for the people who might not be familiar with
the benefits of gas burning versus diesel, traditionally with the
diesel car, your main benefit is fuel economy, right, sure,
well there's a few, you know, I can tell you
three points like pros cons if you want to about diesel.
So the pros of diesel, and I'm having to refer
(06:52):
to my notes and not a diesel driver, but uh,
typically they have high build quality. Uh, they're they're built
really really strong, and the reason is because there's a
lot of high pressure involved, Right, they're more durable. Yeah,
much more durable. So they're they're a well built engine,
typically better built than a gasoline engine would be. Um,
and they also have a better fuel economy, as we said,
(07:12):
because it's just a more efficient way to do it.
Oh yeah, it's the fuel. Diesel itself is more energy
efficient than gasoline when you burn it. I read a
statistic that said that you get like thirty percent better
mileage per gallon about on diesel. That sounds about right, yeah,
and uh, but that's again that's all playing with that
that balance of performance fuel economy and emissions. And the
(07:34):
the last pro that I'll mention here is there's lots
of torque, so you know, at the low end, these
cars are a lot of fun to drive, you know,
when you're accelerating from the lights or whatever, they're a
thrill and uh and if you use it in uh,
you know, a heavy duty application like a truck or something,
it's great for towing. It's great for pullints stumps out
of the ground, you know that kind of thing. Would
it be good for getting out of the snow? Yeah, exactly,
forgetting out the snow, that's right. So the cons on
(07:57):
the other side, I'll just give you three quick ones
so that you know and kind of get that out there.
UM fuel typically cost more. It's like a dollar more
per gallon when you go to the pomps. That's you know,
fluctuates tremendously because we're talking if we're talking about diesel,
the majority of those cars are going to be in
the European mar true, that's right. So UM also there's
us the the higher cost of emission component maintenance, so
(08:21):
you have more underneath the vehicle and part of the
fuel system and part of the exhaust system, and that's
really what we're getting at with this podcast. But and
then the last one really is that they're expensive to
purchase initially, So you're gonna pay more for a diesel
powered vehicle at the at the showroom that you're gonna
pay for the gasoline counterpart. Yeah. And also a distinction
between gas powered vehicles and diesel vehicles is when they're
(08:44):
releasing pollutants into the atmosphere, you're typically getting different kinds
of pollutants, right, correct, So with a gas powered car,
you're more like you're gonna get a lot more carbon emissions,
but with a diesel powered car, you're gonna be entering
the territory of nitrogen oxides, right, the NOx emissions, yes, exactly,
and that that's critical. And when you start talking about,
you know, the components that I was talking about in
(09:05):
the exhaust system, so that's part that's gonna wrap into
the fix as well, which I don't know if I'm
ready to talk about that yet or not, But typically
on a diesel powered vehicle, you'll have a lot of
what they call exhaust scrubbers after after the exhaust leaves
the engine and before the tail pipe, Yeah, gets a
sponge and cleans off every little bit. Now there's a
(09:26):
little scrubbing bubbles, get in there and do a little
you know, I mean, these these cars, I mean, I
don't know how far we want to go with this
right now, but you know, VW did install what they
called lean nitrogen traps and nitrogen oxide traps and those
are on the early two lead T D Island t
t t D I engines. And then later in about
two thousand twelve, and this is this is critical for
the fixed later that we'll talk about. But later in
(09:48):
two thousand twelve, Uh, they had a more sophisticated system
that is called selective catalytic reduction or SCR systems. And
we can talk about that in a little while. But um,
you get the idea that there's more to break underneath,
more to maintain, more to uh kind of if you're
the manufacturer, more to toy with. Yeah, right, Well, we
should get back to the specific story about Volkswagen. I guess. So,
(10:11):
so what exactly happened with these defeat devices in the car.
Many of these vehicles, like we said, we're shipped to
market in a condition where the car could be environmentally friendly,
meaning low emissions of harmful gases. In this case, we're
talking primarily about nitrogen oxides or knox or it could
have good driving performance and better fuel economy and better
(10:34):
uh engine life back to that, but not both at
the same time. You could essentially flip a switch inside
the engine to decide at any given time which one
you wanted to highlights. Yeah. The idea was that the
software would determine when the vehicle was in for testing,
for emissions testing, and it would be able to I
(10:57):
mean it did that via a lot of parameters that
this thing is reads. The car is kind of aware
of where it is. It's it's reading where it is,
it's deciding that, Um, I'm and in a situation where
someone's checking the tailpipe emissions of this vehicle right now,
I'm going to alter that. I'm gonna alter what I
do in order to make it make it meet those standards.
But then once we leave this test bay's gonna go
(11:18):
back to being the the fun, performing, you know, good
fuel economy vehicle that I was before I pulled into
this bay. So we gave those cars to conflicting personalities.
That's a good kid while the teachers looking right, that's
a good way to put it, that's right. Yeah, And
and there's another factor that we should mention here which
would be a motivation for Boltswagen's decision in this regard,
(11:40):
and that is the evolving standards for emissions, like government
regulation of this, which are posted way ahead of time,
so they know there's they know that they've got to meet,
you know, ex set of of of standards and then
it goes up from there, and they're they're very aggressive.
But also that's a that's a herculean feat to try
to change the emission standards of an entire line of vehicles. Yeah,
(12:06):
as sure as and you know, it's a feat for
a fleet. When when you when you look back at
all this though, I mean, and now we can do
that with vision, right when we look back and see
that here's Volkswagen saying we've got clean diesel cars that
people love to drive because they're fun there, they're fuel
economy or they've got great fuel efficiency rather and um,
and they meet emissions. They're great cars, you know, A
(12:27):
yeah exactly. Because the other manufacturers are looking at what
Volkswagen does and they're saying, well, how are they doing this.
We're trying, We're getting close, but we don't have, you know,
the the grasp on this market, like the W has.
It seems like it's magic or some kind of trick
the geniuses. Are they cheating? And while we're asking questions,
how far off were these emissions? Like what's the matter
(12:48):
of degree here? Oh, it's pretty nasty. I had read
in one report at least that the the in O
X emissions were maybe ten times to forty times above
what they were supposed to be forty times yeah, the
allowed amount, and there are about eleven million of these
cars on the road worldwide. The Guardian estimated that the
fleet could have contributed up to nine dty thousand, six
(13:11):
hundred metric tons of nitrogen oxide emissions every year since
two thousand and six, which, if it helps, is a
little bit over two billion pounds, although I'm not sure
personally if if two billion pounds is an easier number
for anyone to grasp, then you know, the numbers in
this whole thing are just staggering. Or if they when
they start talking about the amounts that they're going to
(13:32):
find v W, you know the E p A can
find them. I think it's thirty seven hundred per vehicle,
which in a lot of cases, that's more than the
car cost new um plus you know, just the Okay,
it's five hundred thousand vehicles four d two thousand to
be precise in the United States, in the United States,
but the numbers come out to billions of dollars. Now,
even if they're gonna do these fixes that we're gonna
(13:52):
talk about in a while, um, some are easy, some
are difficult, and that you greatly varies the amount that
this thing could cost. Swagon and maybe can I just
talk for three minutes about something here? Is maybe one
of the biggest blows to Diesel, uh, Diesel's reputation here
in the United States that they've had for thirty or
forty years. Maybe maybe, And it's this can't be understated
(14:17):
enough or overstated enough. Which way is that? What's the
what's the old staying this can't be overstated that? Yeah,
that's it. Yeah, this can't be overstated enough. And diesel
is already a really small market, right. I think it's
under one percent of the overall US car exactly right.
And I'll tell you why that is because a lot
of people, you know, look, look at what we're doing
here in these kind of scraps their heads, like, well,
(14:37):
you have spend doing diesel for a long long time,
why is it so popular there and not here in
the States. If you go back to the late nineteen
seventies and the early nineteen eighties, General Motors made a
critical mistake here. They built a bunch of V eight
diesel engines that they put into their Oldsmobile cars. And
I don't know everything that was put into, but um,
a lot of the old mobiles had these great, big,
(14:58):
old V eight engines that were or diesel power that
were every stereotype of diesel. Uh you know that you
can have. They were loud, you know that knocking sound
that they make, you know, like a like a truck idling.
Um they were. They were loud, they had they were
just belching clouds of black smoke everywhere. They were. They
were dirty. Um, they were difficult to work on. And
(15:21):
I think I heard somewhere and I didn't read a
lot about this, but they said that the technicians weren't
necessarily given the proper training to to repair them because
they weren't diesel diesel technicians. So um, they got then
a further bad reputation for being engines that were uh
you know, well not only difficult to work on, but
that they were um general motors didn't know how to
(15:41):
fix their own engines because the the crux of this
whole thing, and that really was just like a death
blow for diesel in the United States. It just didn't
work out after that point. And now here's here with
the scam. Now here's a here's a bigger problem though too,
because this ties into something that we'll see later on
in the podcast spoiler alert, is that when early adoption
(16:02):
technologies are you know, I don't want to say in
their infancy, but early into their popularization, if something goes wrong,
if one thing goes wrong, then it's very often a
death blow. And that's what happened with diesels. Well yeah, yeah, sure,
but but okay, to argue the other side, diesel has
been around for a hundred years at that point, you
know what I mean, Okay, popularize, You're right, So it
(16:24):
just has never caught on here. It's just never been
the way we do it basically because they poison the well,
that's true, and you know a lot of people still
remember that, and people who owned those vehicles would never
buy another diesel, and family members that they talked to friends, whatever.
They had a terrible association with diesel power, diesel power
cars from that situation, I guess we'll call it, you know,
(16:46):
back in the late seventies early eighties. Well, that's really interesting.
But one thing that I want to bring us back
to is something you were talking about when we were
talking about the specifics of the defeat devices in the
Volkswagen vehicles. Because when you look at what these devices
had to do, in order to know when to switch
(17:07):
on the good behavior mode, they had to look at
a lot of different, uh, different conditions right there. They
looked at how the steering wheel was being used, and
different conditions that you would have to have been very
sensitive to in order to know that it's time to
be on your good behavior. Essentially, what I'm getting at
is that this was very obviously intentionally programmed. There's no
(17:32):
there's no way you can pretend it was an accident
and accidentally write cryptotes. Yea, the software engineer who developed
all this knew what was going on, and then not
just the one person. This is way bigger than that.
I mean, there's so many checks and balances in building
a vehicle like this and getting the getting the software,
are getting the programmed correctly. Uh, that there's there's again,
(17:53):
like you said, there's no way that this was not intentional.
Can I do it? You guys? This goes all the
way to the top. But the thing this is going
to bring us to eventually on this topic is the
role of software design in governing our our machines as
a whole, but specifically today are our vehicles. But we
do want to acknowledge at first that this is not
(18:16):
necessarily always going to be a specific intentional program designed
to cheat, because there are a lot of situations where
real world performance is different than lab performance. Yeah, emissions
testing is by no means a perfect science. Yeah, absolutely,
there's the there's this thing that we run into on
(18:36):
car stuff pretty often, and anybody who has ever purchased
a car has uh, unfortunate often unfortunate knowledge about this phenomenon,
which is the the MPG that you see on the
sticker is rarely, if ever the MPG that you see,
you know, in your day to day driving. And that's
(18:57):
that's partially because going back to the earlier point about
lab tests, there are so many small intervening variables that
cannot simply cannot be accounted for. So this this doesn't
just go into efficiency, this also goes into emissions, right,
so you can see that it's not you know, I know,
it sounds like we're picking on vw UM and we're
(19:18):
just saying what they did, but it's not just VW Right.
Mercedes also has some issues with this as well as
BMW PUJOU and they in some reports they're swallowing around
fifty more fuel than their lab tests say they should.
So you're buying a car and then there are a
lot of misconceptions about efficiency, and I hope ladies and
(19:40):
gentlemen you can hear my air quotes around efficiency, but
there are there are a lot of misconceptions about how
much it actually matters and what what does this percentage
mean to me when the rubber hits the road. What
what we do know is that these tests are vulnerable
to various manipulations that could be completely accidental. And again
(20:05):
they don't really they don't really reflect what's actually going
to happen when you're driving Mercedes A S C and
E class BMW five three O eight. They're all way
off in terms of their actual performance versus their lab
stuff and I'm not saying that they're cheating. It doesn't
mean that they also have some sort of pernicious defeat device,
(20:28):
but it does mean that our methodology is probably not
as sound as it could no. And there's a little
side down here that I feel like I need to make.
But in the early nineteen nineties outside of Michigan, I
was in a city that had to have missions testing,
you know, and these a probe that they would put
up the tail pipe of the vehicle while they you know,
ran it through the REVS, and you know, did everything
(20:48):
that they had to do. Um my car failed one
year and it was a shock to me, and I thought,
oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to go through expensive repairs,
you know. And then I don't even know if that
will make the change, you know, make it legal, make
it fit. It could be a gas cap, it could
be a catalytic converter. The guy says, don't worry, and
he deletes the last test and says that he's going
(21:08):
to run a second test on the vehicle, and which
is allowed. You're allowed to do a second test, And
he holds the probe that's supposed to go in the
tail pipe about six ft away from the exhaust and
and the course the car passes with flying colors, and
so there can be cheating on several different levels. Wa
to let the manufacturers in on this technology. You just
measure in a different place. Yeah, we could save the
(21:31):
planet technology. Don't a good feeling. That was a free
b He was just doing that with the kindness of
his own heart. But but I mean it opens your
eyes that you know, well, maybe things aren't always the
way they see which was ah, boy, let's see that
must have been ah you know, that was probably a
(21:52):
Lynx station wagon Mercury Link and it was brown. Oh yeah,
it was it was it was yeah, yeah, some rust coloration.
Yeah no, no, it was a good shape, really good.
I bought that car for a dollar friend's father. Yeah
that's beautiful. That's like something straight out of the wonder. Yeah.
I need, we need, we need photographic evidence. You know
(22:13):
what I do have photographic evidence is a photo of
me shaking the hands with the guy and a dollar
being exchanged because a friend's father. It was just kind
of a corny photo, but a great photo of the car.
It's a good too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds beautiful.
Crap but it's not. Folks at home, look out for
our image gallery on the site of Scott buying a
car for a dollar through various layers of Google deep dream.
(22:37):
Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have
to go dig through some boxes in the basement and
find that photo. Yeah, that's I mean, we can. I'm
sure we can put it up and people will check
it out because people love the pictures of the cars. Yeah.
In the meanwhile, there, Oh yeah, we're gonna get back
to the topic. Sorry, guys, we've been hanging out. Oh no,
it's okay. It's it's like coffee talk, but with car. Uh.
(23:01):
So I read about a possible solution to some of
these problems with the mission tests being censors being fit
into exhaust systems and running as cars are on the
road at you know, just whenever someone wants to check
up on it, so that constant real time monitoring. Yeah. Yeah,
and that that's something that is technologically possible. That is
(23:21):
just simply a software tweak. Right. I think that is
how they actually detected it in this case. Right. They
hired these independent researchers to investigate it, and so they
drove the car around with the probe up the tailpipe. Sure,
get it out of the lab and see what it
see how it performs in real life, because that lab
situation is a fake situation, really, I mean. And and
(23:43):
that's the thing is they knew exactly the conditions that
the vehicle would be um exposed to, you know, when
during testing. And that's how they did it. They said
when when, when this happens, this will happen, and when
this happens, this will happen. And it's very logical how
they all lay it out of it. It's very smart.
It's very Yeah, it's just it's just a matter of
looking at all the data and making a smart decision
(24:04):
that hey, this well smart, I mean, it's a devious
Well well okay, it's in the lab, so so yeah,
make it meet these uh these standards. But in defense
of the lab stuff in general, I'm not saying what
they do is um crude or dumb or just flat
out wrong. They're doing the best they can. It's a
matter of fact, favorite piece of since we are officially
(24:26):
in Halloween month, favorite piece of car testing trivia. It's
about the crash test dummies. Remember that, Yeah, do you
do you want to do the auto I guess so.
I mean it's it's no secret. Really manufacturers sometimes would
use cadavers for crash test dummies. Yeah, that's how much
the realism matters. Yeah, so I I you know, I
(24:47):
mentioned that halfway because it's Halloween and uh for the
other half because it does show that these people are
working hard. It just means that VW worked even more
assiduously to outsmart them. That's the way it is, isn't
It's is like a cat and mouse game. Now I
have a question. I'm wondering if our what would you
call it, our performance reporting is getting more accurate over time,
(25:12):
like are when you buy a car and it says, oh,
it gets this MPG, it emits this much. Is that
more true than it used to be or less true? Well,
it's it's tough to use a broad brush on that
one because it can vary case by case, and as
you know, are modeled by model. Uh, there are some
(25:32):
cars that are known for being wildly inaccurate, you know, um,
even even in their most even in their most optimistic.
And then there's also uh, the age and the maintenance
record of a car that could affect it, especially if
it's been driving for just a few years ago. Wasn't
there a major reconstruction of the way that they met there?
(25:55):
They the way they reach those numbers, And I don't know,
I'm sorry, I didn't know we're gonna go here, but
I don't have the date in front of me. But
it was, well, I was working here. I believe that
they decided that the way we test cars is no
longer accurate. We need to do it in a different way.
And it adjusted every vehicle that they had in this
big database. It adjusted every single UM reading that they
(26:15):
had on them as far as you know, like what
they got the city, when they got in, they on
the highway, and it was all based on UM you know,
a new set of test parameters that they that they
had for them, like more like a real world situation, right,
trying to address this gap in testing results in actual performance.
So the problem is that in two thousand and one,
(26:36):
the gap between actual performance and test results was about
eight percent, right, eight percent discrepancy. This rose in to
about forty on average, which is you know, bad and
and a big increase in a short period of time. Right. Yeah. So,
(26:57):
and what they found is that there were it's similar to,
I guess the relationship between race car teams and race
car regulatory bodies, because the rules on race car teams
are pretty strict, right, but there are all these little
loopholes you can use to get around them, right where
you're not quite breaking the rules, but you're making them
(27:20):
practice yoga. Yeah. Well, it's like it's like fairy logic
all the time, Like as as long as long as
you kind of just say not entirely the truth, as
long as you don't out right lie, you're telling the truth.
But according to various sources, this uh, this gap without
any action would grow to as high as fifty on
average by so there there is a definite and systemic
(27:45):
problem here. Legislators regulators are trying to address it, but
it's VW is just the most extreme and illegal example
of a gray area practice. But Scott, you said earlier
that there was a fix that VW was potentially working on. Well,
you know, we're still about a week away from really
(28:07):
understanding exactly what they're gonna do. And my initial thought
on this whole thing was that it was just gonna
be a quick software change, you know, that's you just
simply what you do is you would just make make
it seem like it's intestama at all the time, and
just it's a quick thing to do. You pull into
the dealership and it takes a few minutes maybe and
that's it. You're done. Um. It sounds like there's going
to be quite a bit more to do than just that.
(28:28):
It's not that simple, And um, I think part of
the reason, well I know part of the reason is
that if you do that, it's going to make the
cars basically undrivable. They're gonna be because trying to get
that low level of emissions is going to be so
restrictive on the cars that they're not going to perform
in the real world like they normally would. And I'm
sure that that's what the uh you know, those outside
(28:48):
testing agencies found when they you know, drove around town
with the probe up the tail pipe there of the vehicle,
and um, you know, realize that it's not something that
somebody would you want to drive after that point. So
I think that Volkswagen is looking at some hardware, uh,
you know, changes, some switchovers and that was good. That's
going to be incredibly expensive. I don't even know, And
(29:11):
you can't really put a number on it yet, because
you don't know exactly what they're gonna do, and then
how are they going to do it in a short
amount of time too, because you can't just throw parts
at this problem that don't really go on that vehicle anyways.
You can't say, well, we've got this that works on
this vehicle, put on here. You have to re engineer
this whole thing so that it operates correctly in the system.
(29:31):
Eleven million vehicles worldwide, eleven million, eleven million, and that's
half a million here, a very small amount, as you said,
it was what one percent? I think the United States
are diesel vehicles. Yeah, and that's yeah, that's all of
diesel vehicles and not just not just an at AUTI
two at least in the United States has some of it.
It's a particular four cylinder engine. Yeah, the Audi A
(29:54):
three I think from O nine to fifteen is affected
in this as well, So just just one of their
models in any United States anyways. But um, that's the
thing is that you know, once they do fix this
with whatever they do, you know, whatever parts they do
throw at it, is the customer gonna want to still
drive that vehicle because it's not going to perform the
way they did when they bought it. It's like they were, well,
they sold a lie. Really, I mean that's what it is.
(30:16):
A lot of people are saying that that phrase, are saying,
I was sold a lie by Volkswagen. And you know,
once they fix this, am I gonna want it? And
is anybody else gonna want to buy it back from me?
As well? I mean this hurts resale value to people.
This is this is so damaging to Volkswagen's reputation. It's
it's unbelievable that what this is going to do to them. Um,
I can I can tell you a couple of like
(30:37):
things that are possible. Maybe, um, you know, they just
switching onto software that's not going to really that's not
gonna really do it. So I mentioned earlier that some
of the early two lead t d I engines from
back in uh well would have been late two thousand eight,
but in two thousand nine model year cars the ones
that are first affected by this whole thing, you know,
the Golf, the Jetta, the Beetle and the Audi that
(30:59):
we just mention and Scott sorry, what does t d
I stand for? Oh? Turbo Turbo direct injection or in
a lot of people just say turbo diesel. Yeah, yeah,
but direct injection is a specific type of injection for
this for this engine. Please continue, Okay, alright, So, uh,
these early engines, I mean, it's possible that that software
(31:21):
that I just said, um, you know, they could make
the switch on it. That's a possibility for those early
early cars, the ones that were built after two thousand twelve,
and again you know they're early ones. Who's gonna want
to drive it because it's gonna be in test mode
all the time. It's gonna be very difficult. So I
think they're going to find a hardware solution around that.
But the ones that were built after two thousand twelve
or in two thousand twelve, um, they again that more
(31:44):
sophisticated system, the the the selective Catalytic Reduction system or
scr UM that uses a liquid urea solution that's injected
into the system that that further burns down the nitrogen
oxides that are part that are in the particulate filter.
UM way, it's reducing all the soot and garbage that
comes out of the engine after it's burned. And if
(32:05):
they retrofit cars with that if they have to put
a system like that in, then that's going to be
super expensive because I mean it's it's adding an entire
new system that you know is on some of the
bigger vehicles. I think they put that on the passat
and um, I don't know. It's it's also going to
require more maintenance if they do it that way, because
even the ones that have it right now, they have
(32:26):
to go in every ten thousand miles and have um
that urea replenished and the system cleaned out. So they're
gonna they say that, you know, if these new vehicles
are the ones that that they get this system, uh,
you know, retrofitted to them, I guess if that's with
the way they do it, they're going to require it
every five thousand miles. So this becomes, um, you know
a difficult thing for a car owner to have to
(32:48):
do that. I mean every five thousand miles they have
to go back to the dealership to have this this
serviced in some way. Add to that, the manufacturer has
to be the one pain for that serves. Yeah, that's right,
you're right exactly, And it just becomes a huge, huge
headache for Volkswagen and its owners. So I hope they
get this all straightened out and figure out what they're
gonna do soon, and it's something that's agreeable to everybody
(33:10):
because a personal note, I love Volkswagen. They're cool. I
drive a Volkswagen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, ultimately, I think
this is just an interesting case. I mean, it's interesting
to us for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's
gonna lead us to talking about how the Internet of
Things affects cars and smart cars, which we're gonna get
more into next time in the future of computerization of cars. Yeah,
(33:30):
but also it does just bring us back to this
engineering problem that we started with. Whenever you design a machine,
you've got forces that are intention you know, concerns that
you have to juggle. What are you going to prioritize?
And I do think it's inspiring to me to think
about all of the engineers who are working earnestly on
this problem to really solve it, to make great cars
(33:53):
that still don't harm the environment as much as as
they used to. They are fun to drive and perform well, yeah,
apps resolutely. The thing about something at this level of
sophistication is that it's always going to be a work
in progress. For instance, there's at this point no such
thing as a death proof car, but there have been
enormous strides in safety in proactive things, not just passive measures. Right,
(34:17):
And if you think about it, emissions in a larger
field kind of falls under this umbrella of safety. It's
ultimately supposed to be safety for everyone. Yeah, I mean
that the reason that all of this emission stuff is
so important is that it really does have a very
large impact on air pollution, leading to both climate change
(34:38):
and to poor health for a whole lot of people,
especially around cities. It's it's estimated that tens of thousands
of people die every year due to medical complications that
are rooted in this kind of air pollution, and nitrogen
oxides in particular lead to a lot of smog and
air pollution. Yeah, everybody needs there. I mean, we've all
got a stake in in fighting smog. Yeah. Yeah, this
(35:00):
delicious soup that surrounds us is pretty important. I've been
using air through this whole podcast. An official endorsement of
Air from Scott Benjamin. I do I like air. Do
do your air commercial right? I don't know if I
have an air commercial, but air breathe it. The proceeding
is not a paid endorsement by Scott Benjamin. Be warned
(35:22):
that air may have the following side effects lightheadedness, dizziness, jubulation.
Scott Benjamin and Forward Thinking to assume no responsibility for
any injuries or liabilities incurred through the use of air.
Did you say jubulation? Thanks? Well, here it Forward Thinking.
(35:42):
We love jubulation, but we also love hearing from you.
So this is gonna conclude part one of this two
part episode, but if you want to come back and
join us next time, we're going to talk about the
future implications that that emerge from this problem we observed
with this this cheating software and what means for the
smart cars of the future. We know they can be
(36:02):
smart and help us, but what should we be worry about?
All right? I like it. So if you would like
to get in touch with us, you can email us
at f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com.
You can visit our website at f W Thinking dot com.
You can go to our Facebook or Twitter feeds. Their
names are basically f W Thinking, UM and UH and
(36:23):
Scott and Ben. If people want to listen to your
show and hear more from you. How can they get
a hold of you. Well, we're car Stuff hs w
in on Facebook and Twitter, and you go to car
Stuff Show dot com and see our website where we
have all of our podcasts and that's kind of the
archive of everything um or you can send us an
email car Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Awesome.
(36:43):
Thank you guys so much. We hope to hear from
you and we will talk to you again real Listen.
We're more on this topic and the future of technology.
Visit forward Thinking dot Com. Up by brought to you
(37:10):
by Toyota. Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, Hey, and welcome to Forward Sinking, in the
podcast that looks at the future and says till I
find the righteous one Computer Blue. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm
(00:21):
Lauren volc Obam, and our usual host Jonathan Strickland is
not in today. He is on a fabulous vacation. However,
like the head of a hydro, we have spawned two
co hosts in his place. Allow us to introduce to
you Mr Benjamin Bollen and Mr Scott Benjamin of the
show car Stuff, our esteemed colleagues. Yes, can you guys
(00:43):
introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what
you do? Okay, let's see. Well I'll go first and
I'll describe you Scott, and then you could do you
could describe me. I'm uncomfortable already. Yeah, I want to
make it weird and complicated. That's like you're on Forward Thinking,
you're fetting in final Ready. So we host a show
called car Stuff where we cover everything that floats, flies,
(01:07):
or drives. And earlier you guys had talked to us
off the air because you are covering something that is
a particular interest to us, right, Scott, Yeah, that's right.
We're gonna talk about, well, among other things, we're gonna
talk about the Volkswagen recall and the possibility of manufacturers
toying with the electronics and our vehicles to uh more
(01:28):
than just you know, shutting off emissions controls. It was
a little bit more devious, a little more manipulative than that.
And this is actually going to be a two part
episode that we do with our guests Ben and Scott,
and so they will be around with us next time
to continue this discussion. But the broad topic that we're
going to address is how the Internet of Things is
going to be affecting vehicles. We've talked on the show
(01:51):
a lot about the best ways that it might you know,
the ways computers and cars can help make us safer,
can improve the performance of cars. But what about the
other side. There's the possibility that the cars of the
future might be a little too smart for their own good.
They might be smarter than we'd like them to be,
smart enough to have hidden agendas. Could your car have
a hidden agenda? That's what we want to talk about today. Also,
(02:15):
full disclosure here, as you guys probably not since you
if assuming that you listened to the first four seconds
of this podcast. We are sponsored by Toyota, but they
give us free rein to create this podcast, you know,
from ideation straight up through editing the final product, and
you know we're going to be talking about one of
their competitors at a very large competitor of theirs in
(02:35):
the world market is Volkswagen. But our our statements here
are entirely our own and we will as always work
to be as unbiased as possible. Right, this factors in
other companies aside just from VW, so right, oh yeah, absolutely,
Ultimately it's going to be a broader discussion. But we
just wanted to let you know they didn't ask us
to talk about this. We're not just trying to pick
(02:56):
on Volkswagen. I love the hidden agenda stuff. Just for
the record, this ties into another show that I do.
And I'm thrilled, Tom thrilled to be here. So thanks
for having us, uh stuff. They don't want you to
know which Scott you have appeared on before, and actually
you two have also appeared on before, Joe and Lauren.
(03:17):
That's it, separately, separately exactly well to my knowledge, I
don't know. The separation surgery has gone very well, so yessn't.
I didn't know how to bring it up. I didn't
know how to bring it up. So okay. So this
VW emissions scandal, what is it? What makes it a scandal? Yeah? Well,
this has something interesting to say about the role that
(03:39):
computer technology plays in the cars we have today. So
here's the basic story. And I know Scott and Ben
you guys will have a lot more to say about
this than I will, so feel free to inject as
we go along. Well, but the basic idea is that
in September it was revealed to the public I believe
through an announcement from the e p A that many
(03:59):
diesel powered vehicles or so called clean diesel cars manufactured
by Volkswagen over the years, I think since two thousand
nine until this year, have gone to market. We're bought
and are currently being driven with a defeat device, that's
what they've been calling it, designed specifically to cheat at
(04:19):
emissions testing. And one notice that the story is still
developing as we record this. Some new information may come
to light or may change things after we record this episode,
but we're going to try to be as accurate as
possible for what we know today as of October one,
these are the facts. Yeah, we're going to talk about
maybe some possible fixes, you know, what they're what they're
(04:42):
considering doing, But right now it's all speculation at this point,
because we won't know for at least another week what
the attentive plan is and whether or not that plan
will be accepted. Even so, why would you design a
device inside a car to cheat at emissions testing? Essentially?
I think it's that when you design a car, when
you're engineering really any kind of machine, you've often got
(05:03):
really important concerns and conflict. And in this case the
concerns and conflict or intention were performance and environmental friendliness. Yeah,
that's right. And in the marketplace, VW was really quick
to say, we've got these clean d they call, you know,
for the term clean diesel, over and over again. Right,
and this is this is the important part, and we
(05:23):
have to kind of step back and look at it
this way. They were, they were doing it so well
back then, you know, back in two thousand and eight,
two thousand nine, that the other manufacturers were thinking, how
how are they doing this? How are they getting everything
that we're trying to get out of our diesels, but
we can't. How are they successful in doing that? And
they thought, well, they've been doing it over in Europe
for so long, maybe that's maybe they just have these
(05:43):
these uh, these in house secrets that they know how
to do this, and people look at them and kind
of reverse engineer them and try to figure out how
how it all works. But it turns out it was
this defeat software that was causing them to you know,
allow three things that you know, it's like a it's
like a balancing act. Um, it's economy, it's emissions, and performance.
And you know, the consumers they care about maybe two
(06:06):
of those three. They hear about, well, fuel, economy and
performance because they want to car this fund to drive.
And I know people also want to do the right
thing and they want to you know, have a clean vehicle. Sure,
but if they can get that out of a diesel
vehicle that you know, it's uh more efficient I guess
than a gas lean car typically, Um, you know they're
gonna go for that. They're gonna go for that option.
And VW is gaming the system by by saying, like,
(06:30):
you can have all three in our car. Whereas the
other guys, you can't. You can't do that. And to
clarify for the people who might not be familiar with
the benefits of gas burning versus diesel, traditionally with the
diesel car, your main benefit is fuel economy, right, sure,
well there's a few, you know, I can tell you
three points like pros cons if you want to about diesel.
So the pros of diesel, and I'm having to refer
(06:52):
to my notes and not a diesel driver, but uh,
typically they have high build quality. Uh, they're they're built
really really strong, and the reason is because there's a
lot of high pressure involved, Right, they're more durable. Yeah,
much more durable. So they're they're a well built engine,
typically better built than a gasoline engine would be. Um,
and they also have a better fuel economy, as we said,
(07:12):
because it's just a more efficient way to do it.
Oh yeah, it's the fuel. Diesel itself is more energy
efficient than gasoline when you burn it. I read a
statistic that said that you get like thirty percent better
mileage per gallon about on diesel. That sounds about right, yeah,
and uh, but that's again that's all playing with that
that balance of performance fuel economy and emissions. And the
(07:34):
the last pro that I'll mention here is there's lots
of torque, so you know, at the low end, these
cars are a lot of fun to drive, you know,
when you're accelerating from the lights or whatever, they're a
thrill and uh and if you use it in uh,
you know, a heavy duty application like a truck or something,
it's great for towing. It's great for pullints stumps out
of the ground, you know that kind of thing. Would
it be good for getting out of the snow? Yeah, exactly,
forgetting out the snow, that's right. So the cons on
(07:57):
the other side, I'll just give you three quick ones
so that you know and kind of get that out there.
UM fuel typically cost more. It's like a dollar more
per gallon when you go to the pomps. That's you know,
fluctuates tremendously because we're talking if we're talking about diesel,
the majority of those cars are going to be in
the European mar true, that's right. So UM also there's
us the the higher cost of emission component maintenance, so
(08:21):
you have more underneath the vehicle and part of the
fuel system and part of the exhaust system, and that's
really what we're getting at with this podcast. But and
then the last one really is that they're expensive to
purchase initially, So you're gonna pay more for a diesel
powered vehicle at the at the showroom that you're gonna
pay for the gasoline counterpart. Yeah. And also a distinction
between gas powered vehicles and diesel vehicles is when they're
(08:44):
releasing pollutants into the atmosphere, you're typically getting different kinds
of pollutants, right, correct, So with a gas powered car,
you're more like you're gonna get a lot more carbon emissions,
but with a diesel powered car, you're gonna be entering
the territory of nitrogen oxides, right, the NOx emissions, yes, exactly,
and that that's critical. And when you start talking about,
you know, the components that I was talking about in
(09:05):
the exhaust system, so that's part that's gonna wrap into
the fix as well, which I don't know if I'm
ready to talk about that yet or not, But typically
on a diesel powered vehicle, you'll have a lot of
what they call exhaust scrubbers after after the exhaust leaves
the engine and before the tail pipe, Yeah, gets a
sponge and cleans off every little bit. Now there's a
(09:26):
little scrubbing bubbles, get in there and do a little
you know, I mean, these these cars, I mean, I
don't know how far we want to go with this
right now, but you know, VW did install what they
called lean nitrogen traps and nitrogen oxide traps and those
are on the early two lead T D Island t
t t D I engines. And then later in about
two thousand twelve, and this is this is critical for
the fixed later that we'll talk about. But later in
(09:48):
two thousand twelve, Uh, they had a more sophisticated system
that is called selective catalytic reduction or SCR systems. And
we can talk about that in a little while. But um,
you get the idea that there's more to break underneath,
more to maintain, more to uh kind of if you're
the manufacturer, more to toy with. Yeah, right, Well, we
should get back to the specific story about Volkswagen. I guess. So,
(10:11):
so what exactly happened with these defeat devices in the car.
Many of these vehicles, like we said, we're shipped to
market in a condition where the car could be environmentally friendly,
meaning low emissions of harmful gases. In this case, we're
talking primarily about nitrogen oxides or knox or it could
have good driving performance and better fuel economy and better
(10:34):
uh engine life back to that, but not both at
the same time. You could essentially flip a switch inside
the engine to decide at any given time which one
you wanted to highlights. Yeah. The idea was that the
software would determine when the vehicle was in for testing,
for emissions testing, and it would be able to I
(10:57):
mean it did that via a lot of parameters that
this thing is reads. The car is kind of aware
of where it is. It's it's reading where it is,
it's deciding that, Um, I'm and in a situation where
someone's checking the tailpipe emissions of this vehicle right now,
I'm going to alter that. I'm gonna alter what I
do in order to make it make it meet those standards.
But then once we leave this test bay's gonna go
(11:18):
back to being the the fun, performing, you know, good
fuel economy vehicle that I was before I pulled into
this bay. So we gave those cars to conflicting personalities.
That's a good kid while the teachers looking right, that's
a good way to put it, that's right. Yeah, And
and there's another factor that we should mention here which
would be a motivation for Boltswagen's decision in this regard,
(11:40):
and that is the evolving standards for emissions, like government
regulation of this, which are posted way ahead of time,
so they know there's they know that they've got to meet,
you know, ex set of of of standards and then
it goes up from there, and they're they're very aggressive.
But also that's a that's a herculean feat to try
to change the emission standards of an entire line of vehicles. Yeah,
(12:06):
as sure as and you know, it's a feat for
a fleet. When when you when you look back at
all this though, I mean, and now we can do
that with vision, right when we look back and see
that here's Volkswagen saying we've got clean diesel cars that
people love to drive because they're fun there, they're fuel
economy or they've got great fuel efficiency rather and um,
and they meet emissions. They're great cars, you know, A
(12:27):
yeah exactly. Because the other manufacturers are looking at what
Volkswagen does and they're saying, well, how are they doing this.
We're trying, We're getting close, but we don't have, you know,
the the grasp on this market, like the W has.
It seems like it's magic or some kind of trick
the geniuses. Are they cheating? And while we're asking questions,
how far off were these emissions? Like what's the matter
(12:48):
of degree here? Oh, it's pretty nasty. I had read
in one report at least that the the in O
X emissions were maybe ten times to forty times above
what they were supposed to be forty times yeah, the
allowed amount, and there are about eleven million of these
cars on the road worldwide. The Guardian estimated that the
fleet could have contributed up to nine dty thousand, six
(13:11):
hundred metric tons of nitrogen oxide emissions every year since
two thousand and six, which, if it helps, is a
little bit over two billion pounds, although I'm not sure
personally if if two billion pounds is an easier number
for anyone to grasp, then you know, the numbers in
this whole thing are just staggering. Or if they when
they start talking about the amounts that they're going to
(13:32):
find v W, you know the E p A can
find them. I think it's thirty seven hundred per vehicle,
which in a lot of cases, that's more than the
car cost new um plus you know, just the Okay,
it's five hundred thousand vehicles four d two thousand to
be precise in the United States, in the United States,
but the numbers come out to billions of dollars. Now,
even if they're gonna do these fixes that we're gonna
(13:52):
talk about in a while, um, some are easy, some
are difficult, and that you greatly varies the amount that
this thing could cost. Swagon and maybe can I just
talk for three minutes about something here? Is maybe one
of the biggest blows to Diesel, uh, Diesel's reputation here
in the United States that they've had for thirty or
forty years. Maybe maybe, And it's this can't be understated
(14:17):
enough or overstated enough. Which way is that? What's the
what's the old staying this can't be overstated that? Yeah,
that's it. Yeah, this can't be overstated enough. And diesel
is already a really small market, right. I think it's
under one percent of the overall US car exactly right.
And I'll tell you why that is because a lot
of people, you know, look, look at what we're doing
here in these kind of scraps their heads, like, well,
(14:37):
you have spend doing diesel for a long long time,
why is it so popular there and not here in
the States. If you go back to the late nineteen
seventies and the early nineteen eighties, General Motors made a
critical mistake here. They built a bunch of V eight
diesel engines that they put into their Oldsmobile cars. And
I don't know everything that was put into, but um,
a lot of the old mobiles had these great, big,
(14:58):
old V eight engines that were or diesel power that
were every stereotype of diesel. Uh you know that you
can have. They were loud, you know that knocking sound
that they make, you know, like a like a truck idling.
Um they were. They were loud, they had they were
just belching clouds of black smoke everywhere. They were. They
were dirty. Um, they were difficult to work on. And
(15:21):
I think I heard somewhere and I didn't read a
lot about this, but they said that the technicians weren't
necessarily given the proper training to to repair them because
they weren't diesel diesel technicians. So um, they got then
a further bad reputation for being engines that were uh
you know, well not only difficult to work on, but
that they were um general motors didn't know how to
(15:41):
fix their own engines because the the crux of this
whole thing, and that really was just like a death
blow for diesel in the United States. It just didn't
work out after that point. And now here's here with
the scam. Now here's a here's a bigger problem though too,
because this ties into something that we'll see later on
in the podcast spoiler alert, is that when early adoption
(16:02):
technologies are you know, I don't want to say in
their infancy, but early into their popularization, if something goes wrong,
if one thing goes wrong, then it's very often a
death blow. And that's what happened with diesels. Well yeah, yeah, sure,
but but okay, to argue the other side, diesel has
been around for a hundred years at that point, you
know what I mean, Okay, popularize, You're right, So it
(16:24):
just has never caught on here. It's just never been
the way we do it basically because they poison the well,
that's true, and you know a lot of people still
remember that, and people who owned those vehicles would never
buy another diesel, and family members that they talked to friends, whatever.
They had a terrible association with diesel power, diesel power
cars from that situation, I guess we'll call it, you know,
(16:46):
back in the late seventies early eighties. Well, that's really interesting.
But one thing that I want to bring us back
to is something you were talking about when we were
talking about the specifics of the defeat devices in the
Volkswagen vehicles. Because when you look at what these devices
had to do, in order to know when to switch
(17:07):
on the good behavior mode, they had to look at
a lot of different, uh, different conditions right there. They
looked at how the steering wheel was being used, and
different conditions that you would have to have been very
sensitive to in order to know that it's time to
be on your good behavior. Essentially, what I'm getting at
is that this was very obviously intentionally programmed. There's no
(17:32):
there's no way you can pretend it was an accident
and accidentally write cryptotes. Yea, the software engineer who developed
all this knew what was going on, and then not
just the one person. This is way bigger than that.
I mean, there's so many checks and balances in building
a vehicle like this and getting the getting the software,
are getting the programmed correctly. Uh, that there's there's again,
(17:53):
like you said, there's no way that this was not intentional.
Can I do it? You guys? This goes all the
way to the top. But the thing this is going
to bring us to eventually on this topic is the
role of software design in governing our our machines as
a whole, but specifically today are our vehicles. But we
do want to acknowledge at first that this is not
(18:16):
necessarily always going to be a specific intentional program designed
to cheat, because there are a lot of situations where
real world performance is different than lab performance. Yeah, emissions
testing is by no means a perfect science. Yeah, absolutely,
there's the there's this thing that we run into on
(18:36):
car stuff pretty often, and anybody who has ever purchased
a car has uh, unfortunate often unfortunate knowledge about this phenomenon,
which is the the MPG that you see on the
sticker is rarely, if ever the MPG that you see,
you know, in your day to day driving. And that's
(18:57):
that's partially because going back to the earlier point about
lab tests, there are so many small intervening variables that
cannot simply cannot be accounted for. So this this doesn't
just go into efficiency, this also goes into emissions, right,
so you can see that it's not you know, I know,
it sounds like we're picking on vw UM and we're
(19:18):
just saying what they did, but it's not just VW Right.
Mercedes also has some issues with this as well as
BMW PUJOU and they in some reports they're swallowing around
fifty more fuel than their lab tests say they should.
So you're buying a car and then there are a
lot of misconceptions about efficiency, and I hope ladies and
(19:40):
gentlemen you can hear my air quotes around efficiency, but
there are there are a lot of misconceptions about how
much it actually matters and what what does this percentage
mean to me when the rubber hits the road. What
what we do know is that these tests are vulnerable
to various manipulations that could be completely accidental. And again
(20:05):
they don't really they don't really reflect what's actually going
to happen when you're driving Mercedes A S C and
E class BMW five three O eight. They're all way
off in terms of their actual performance versus their lab
stuff and I'm not saying that they're cheating. It doesn't
mean that they also have some sort of pernicious defeat device,
(20:28):
but it does mean that our methodology is probably not
as sound as it could no. And there's a little
side down here that I feel like I need to make.
But in the early nineteen nineties outside of Michigan, I
was in a city that had to have missions testing,
you know, and these a probe that they would put
up the tail pipe of the vehicle while they you know,
ran it through the REVS, and you know, did everything
(20:48):
that they had to do. Um my car failed one
year and it was a shock to me, and I thought,
oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to go through expensive repairs,
you know. And then I don't even know if that
will make the change, you know, make it legal, make
it fit. It could be a gas cap, it could
be a catalytic converter. The guy says, don't worry, and
he deletes the last test and says that he's going
(21:08):
to run a second test on the vehicle, and which
is allowed. You're allowed to do a second test, And
he holds the probe that's supposed to go in the
tail pipe about six ft away from the exhaust and
and the course the car passes with flying colors, and
so there can be cheating on several different levels. Wa
to let the manufacturers in on this technology. You just
measure in a different place. Yeah, we could save the
(21:31):
planet technology. Don't a good feeling. That was a free
b He was just doing that with the kindness of
his own heart. But but I mean it opens your
eyes that you know, well, maybe things aren't always the
way they see which was ah, boy, let's see that
must have been ah you know, that was probably a
(21:52):
Lynx station wagon Mercury Link and it was brown. Oh yeah,
it was it was it was yeah, yeah, some rust coloration.
Yeah no, no, it was a good shape, really good.
I bought that car for a dollar friend's father. Yeah
that's beautiful. That's like something straight out of the wonder. Yeah.
I need, we need, we need photographic evidence. You know
(22:13):
what I do have photographic evidence is a photo of
me shaking the hands with the guy and a dollar
being exchanged because a friend's father. It was just kind
of a corny photo, but a great photo of the car.
It's a good too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds beautiful.
Crap but it's not. Folks at home, look out for
our image gallery on the site of Scott buying a
car for a dollar through various layers of Google deep dream.
(22:37):
Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have
to go dig through some boxes in the basement and
find that photo. Yeah, that's I mean, we can. I'm
sure we can put it up and people will check
it out because people love the pictures of the cars. Yeah.
In the meanwhile, there, Oh yeah, we're gonna get back
to the topic. Sorry, guys, we've been hanging out. Oh no,
it's okay. It's it's like coffee talk, but with car. Uh.
(23:01):
So I read about a possible solution to some of
these problems with the mission tests being censors being fit
into exhaust systems and running as cars are on the
road at you know, just whenever someone wants to check
up on it, so that constant real time monitoring. Yeah. Yeah,
and that that's something that is technologically possible. That is
(23:21):
just simply a software tweak. Right. I think that is
how they actually detected it in this case. Right. They
hired these independent researchers to investigate it, and so they
drove the car around with the probe up the tailpipe. Sure,
get it out of the lab and see what it
see how it performs in real life, because that lab
situation is a fake situation, really, I mean. And and
(23:43):
that's the thing is they knew exactly the conditions that
the vehicle would be um exposed to, you know, when
during testing. And that's how they did it. They said
when when, when this happens, this will happen, and when
this happens, this will happen. And it's very logical how
they all lay it out of it. It's very smart.
It's very Yeah, it's just it's just a matter of
looking at all the data and making a smart decision
(24:04):
that hey, this well smart, I mean, it's a devious
Well well okay, it's in the lab, so so yeah,
make it meet these uh these standards. But in defense
of the lab stuff in general, I'm not saying what
they do is um crude or dumb or just flat
out wrong. They're doing the best they can. It's a
matter of fact, favorite piece of since we are officially
(24:26):
in Halloween month, favorite piece of car testing trivia. It's
about the crash test dummies. Remember that, Yeah, do you
do you want to do the auto I guess so.
I mean it's it's no secret. Really manufacturers sometimes would
use cadavers for crash test dummies. Yeah, that's how much
the realism matters. Yeah, so I I you know, I
(24:47):
mentioned that halfway because it's Halloween and uh for the
other half because it does show that these people are
working hard. It just means that VW worked even more
assiduously to outsmart them. That's the way it is, isn't
It's is like a cat and mouse game. Now I
have a question. I'm wondering if our what would you
call it, our performance reporting is getting more accurate over time,
(25:12):
like are when you buy a car and it says, oh,
it gets this MPG, it emits this much. Is that
more true than it used to be or less true? Well,
it's it's tough to use a broad brush on that
one because it can vary case by case, and as
you know, are modeled by model. Uh, there are some
(25:32):
cars that are known for being wildly inaccurate, you know, um,
even even in their most even in their most optimistic.
And then there's also uh, the age and the maintenance
record of a car that could affect it, especially if
it's been driving for just a few years ago. Wasn't
there a major reconstruction of the way that they met there?
(25:55):
They the way they reach those numbers, And I don't know,
I'm sorry, I didn't know we're gonna go here, but
I don't have the date in front of me. But
it was, well, I was working here. I believe that
they decided that the way we test cars is no
longer accurate. We need to do it in a different way.
And it adjusted every vehicle that they had in this
big database. It adjusted every single UM reading that they
(26:15):
had on them as far as you know, like what
they got the city, when they got in, they on
the highway, and it was all based on UM you know,
a new set of test parameters that they that they
had for them, like more like a real world situation, right,
trying to address this gap in testing results in actual performance.
So the problem is that in two thousand and one,
(26:36):
the gap between actual performance and test results was about
eight percent, right, eight percent discrepancy. This rose in to
about forty on average, which is you know, bad and
and a big increase in a short period of time. Right. Yeah. So,
(26:57):
and what they found is that there were it's similar to,
I guess the relationship between race car teams and race
car regulatory bodies, because the rules on race car teams
are pretty strict, right, but there are all these little
loopholes you can use to get around them, right where
you're not quite breaking the rules, but you're making them
(27:20):
practice yoga. Yeah. Well, it's like it's like fairy logic
all the time, Like as as long as long as
you kind of just say not entirely the truth, as
long as you don't out right lie, you're telling the truth.
But according to various sources, this uh, this gap without
any action would grow to as high as fifty on
average by so there there is a definite and systemic
(27:45):
problem here. Legislators regulators are trying to address it, but
it's VW is just the most extreme and illegal example
of a gray area practice. But Scott, you said earlier
that there was a fix that VW was potentially working on. Well,
you know, we're still about a week away from really
(28:07):
understanding exactly what they're gonna do. And my initial thought
on this whole thing was that it was just gonna
be a quick software change, you know, that's you just
simply what you do is you would just make make
it seem like it's intestama at all the time, and
just it's a quick thing to do. You pull into
the dealership and it takes a few minutes maybe and
that's it. You're done. Um. It sounds like there's going
to be quite a bit more to do than just that.
(28:28):
It's not that simple, And um, I think part of
the reason, well I know part of the reason is
that if you do that, it's going to make the
cars basically undrivable. They're gonna be because trying to get
that low level of emissions is going to be so
restrictive on the cars that they're not going to perform
in the real world like they normally would. And I'm
sure that that's what the uh you know, those outside
(28:48):
testing agencies found when they you know, drove around town
with the probe up the tail pipe there of the vehicle,
and um, you know, realize that it's not something that
somebody would you want to drive after that point. So
I think that Volkswagen is looking at some hardware, uh,
you know, changes, some switchovers and that was good. That's
going to be incredibly expensive. I don't even know, And
(29:11):
you can't really put a number on it yet, because
you don't know exactly what they're gonna do, and then
how are they going to do it in a short
amount of time too, because you can't just throw parts
at this problem that don't really go on that vehicle anyways.
You can't say, well, we've got this that works on
this vehicle, put on here. You have to re engineer
this whole thing so that it operates correctly in the system.
(29:31):
Eleven million vehicles worldwide, eleven million, eleven million, and that's
half a million here, a very small amount, as you said,
it was what one percent? I think the United States
are diesel vehicles. Yeah, and that's yeah, that's all of
diesel vehicles and not just not just an at AUTI
two at least in the United States has some of it.
It's a particular four cylinder engine. Yeah, the Audi A
(29:54):
three I think from O nine to fifteen is affected
in this as well, So just just one of their
models in any United States anyways. But um, that's the
thing is that you know, once they do fix this
with whatever they do, you know, whatever parts they do
throw at it, is the customer gonna want to still
drive that vehicle because it's not going to perform the
way they did when they bought it. It's like they were, well,
they sold a lie. Really, I mean that's what it is.
(30:16):
A lot of people are saying that that phrase, are saying,
I was sold a lie by Volkswagen. And you know,
once they fix this, am I gonna want it? And
is anybody else gonna want to buy it back from me?
As well? I mean this hurts resale value to people.
This is this is so damaging to Volkswagen's reputation. It's
it's unbelievable that what this is going to do to them. Um,
I can I can tell you a couple of like
(30:37):
things that are possible. Maybe, um, you know, they just
switching onto software that's not going to really that's not
gonna really do it. So I mentioned earlier that some
of the early two lead t d I engines from
back in uh well would have been late two thousand eight,
but in two thousand nine model year cars the ones
that are first affected by this whole thing, you know,
the Golf, the Jetta, the Beetle and the Audi that
(30:59):
we just mention and Scott sorry, what does t d
I stand for? Oh? Turbo Turbo direct injection or in
a lot of people just say turbo diesel. Yeah, yeah,
but direct injection is a specific type of injection for
this for this engine. Please continue, Okay, alright, So, uh,
these early engines, I mean, it's possible that that software
(31:21):
that I just said, um, you know, they could make
the switch on it. That's a possibility for those early
early cars, the ones that were built after two thousand twelve,
and again you know they're early ones. Who's gonna want
to drive it because it's gonna be in test mode
all the time. It's gonna be very difficult. So I
think they're going to find a hardware solution around that.
But the ones that were built after two thousand twelve
or in two thousand twelve, um, they again that more
(31:44):
sophisticated system, the the the selective Catalytic Reduction system or
scr UM that uses a liquid urea solution that's injected
into the system that that further burns down the nitrogen
oxides that are part that are in the particulate filter.
UM way, it's reducing all the soot and garbage that
comes out of the engine after it's burned. And if
(32:05):
they retrofit cars with that if they have to put
a system like that in, then that's going to be
super expensive because I mean it's it's adding an entire
new system that you know is on some of the
bigger vehicles. I think they put that on the passat
and um, I don't know. It's it's also going to
require more maintenance if they do it that way, because
even the ones that have it right now, they have
(32:26):
to go in every ten thousand miles and have um
that urea replenished and the system cleaned out. So they're
gonna they say that, you know, if these new vehicles
are the ones that that they get this system, uh,
you know, retrofitted to them, I guess if that's with
the way they do it, they're going to require it
every five thousand miles. So this becomes, um, you know
a difficult thing for a car owner to have to
(32:48):
do that. I mean every five thousand miles they have
to go back to the dealership to have this this
serviced in some way. Add to that, the manufacturer has
to be the one pain for that serves. Yeah, that's right,
you're right exactly, And it just becomes a huge, huge
headache for Volkswagen and its owners. So I hope they
get this all straightened out and figure out what they're
gonna do soon, and it's something that's agreeable to everybody
(33:10):
because a personal note, I love Volkswagen. They're cool. I
drive a Volkswagen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, ultimately, I think
this is just an interesting case. I mean, it's interesting
to us for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's
gonna lead us to talking about how the Internet of
Things affects cars and smart cars, which we're gonna get
more into next time in the future of computerization of cars. Yeah,
(33:30):
but also it does just bring us back to this
engineering problem that we started with. Whenever you design a machine,
you've got forces that are intention you know, concerns that
you have to juggle. What are you going to prioritize?
And I do think it's inspiring to me to think
about all of the engineers who are working earnestly on
this problem to really solve it, to make great cars
(33:53):
that still don't harm the environment as much as as
they used to. They are fun to drive and perform well, yeah,
apps resolutely. The thing about something at this level of
sophistication is that it's always going to be a work
in progress. For instance, there's at this point no such
thing as a death proof car, but there have been
enormous strides in safety in proactive things, not just passive measures. Right,
(34:17):
And if you think about it, emissions in a larger
field kind of falls under this umbrella of safety. It's
ultimately supposed to be safety for everyone. Yeah, I mean
that the reason that all of this emission stuff is
so important is that it really does have a very
large impact on air pollution, leading to both climate change
(34:38):
and to poor health for a whole lot of people,
especially around cities. It's it's estimated that tens of thousands
of people die every year due to medical complications that
are rooted in this kind of air pollution, and nitrogen
oxides in particular lead to a lot of smog and
air pollution. Yeah, everybody needs there. I mean, we've all
got a stake in in fighting smog. Yeah. Yeah, this
(35:00):
delicious soup that surrounds us is pretty important. I've been
using air through this whole podcast. An official endorsement of
Air from Scott Benjamin. I do I like air. Do
do your air commercial right? I don't know if I
have an air commercial, but air breathe it. The proceeding
is not a paid endorsement by Scott Benjamin. Be warned
(35:22):
that air may have the following side effects lightheadedness, dizziness, jubulation.
Scott Benjamin and Forward Thinking to assume no responsibility for
any injuries or liabilities incurred through the use of air.
Did you say jubulation? Thanks? Well, here it Forward Thinking.
(35:42):
We love jubulation, but we also love hearing from you.
So this is gonna conclude part one of this two
part episode, but if you want to come back and
join us next time, we're going to talk about the
future implications that that emerge from this problem we observed
with this this cheating software and what means for the
smart cars of the future. We know they can be
(36:02):
smart and help us, but what should we be worry about?
All right? I like it. So if you would like
to get in touch with us, you can email us
at f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com.
You can visit our website at f W Thinking dot com.
You can go to our Facebook or Twitter feeds. Their
names are basically f W Thinking, UM and UH and
(36:23):
Scott and Ben. If people want to listen to your
show and hear more from you. How can they get
a hold of you. Well, we're car Stuff hs w
in on Facebook and Twitter, and you go to car
Stuff Show dot com and see our website where we
have all of our podcasts and that's kind of the
archive of everything um or you can send us an
email car Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Awesome.
(36:43):
Thank you guys so much. We hope to hear from
you and we will talk to you again real Listen.
We're more on this topic and the future of technology.
Visit forward Thinking dot Com. Up by brought to you
(37:10):
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