TANSTAAFL

This is deep

An island by any other name would smell just as sweet.

I have followed this that closely, but are the other car companies really that vulnerable? VW has been touting clean diesel for a long time now and they are pretty much the only one other than maybe Mercedes.

If Germany bails out Greece they gotta bail out VW, no?

It might take more money to bail out VW

Obviously, I have no idea. The "all knowing" (lol!) market is pricing in (smaller) losses to the entire industry and I'm not exactly sure why, because normally this type of problem would enhance the valuation of the other manufacturers.

VW said they were setting aside around 6.5 billion Euros to cover the problem on eleven million cars. Yeah right...

Sometimes the crowd is right even when no individual has any clue.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/20...this-cow-weigh

wait, am I understanding this right. VW actually fitted a device in the engine that's sole purpose was to be used to cheat emission testing???? Like I get the software part, but there is actually a device used in the cheat too?

What is the difference in your mind between software to cheat and hardware to cheat?

From my understanding, the device sensed a testing situation and then lowered the performance of the engine to meet the emission requirements. This lowering of performance was so bad that drivers would never accept it for everyday driving, because it resulted in far less power and raised fuel consumption.

The level of commitment to doing something illegal being waaay higher. I mean I obviously dunno how making an automobile goes so I could be wrong, but I imagine way more people have to be involved and are in on it if there is an actual physical device installed as opposed to just code. Also the level of stupidity seems higher because I think the odds this eventually comes out approach 100%. It's a lot easier to hide code than it is something physical.

Yeah, like it'd be impossible to hide. Every VW mechanic would see it. Some would be like wtf? Pretty soon everyone would know. Hubris. They just figured they could say it was standard and that'd fly.

Yeti,

wtf

http://www.dailynews.com/health/2015...-relationships

https://www.yahoo.com/katiecouric/in...189184208.html

Had not heard of this idiocy prior to your post.

I dunno, doesnt really seem any different to me than cross stitch or putting together a puzzle or one of a billion other pointless mundane "creative" things people waste their time on and to relax.

Makes sense.

From my perspective they are both basically equal, but I understand why the physical component does seem more sinister than "just code" but the thing to understand is that modern cars ship with something like 100 million lines of code, so I actually think the software aspect here is likely way way worse overall than the hardware part. Who knows what else is in that source code?

I dont mean to imply that I think morally one is worse than the other. I think they are both equal. I just meant like the people involved and the level of commitment to wrong doing is much much greater with an actual device. I mean with just a software cheat it could be maybe only a handful of people in one department involved as the smallest possible number. With a physical device its got to be at least dozens, if not more as the smallest number and across multiple departments. I can accept plausibly deniability a lot more from people at the top if its just code. With an actual device? Jesus, how many people had to sign off on that or were at least peripherally aware? seems crazy to me.

People seem to think other manufacturers are doing similar things

Justin Bieber tho

Probably means I'm stupid, but I didn't know cars had software.

...
What do you think all of those sensors do in your car? They're just standalone parts not integrated into the you know.. The computer in the car. How do you operate a computer without some sort of OS which is software?

Most (maybe all?) cars aren't running an OS besides the ones that run the fancy dashboard screens they have now. I think Fords run some version of windows.

Otherwise they're extremely simple (comparatively) embedded software. They do a lot of things in the car besides emissions and there's basically embedded software in just about everything you use in your life.

Reading into this more, they do have an operating system, and tons of them use QNX, which is owned by BlackBerry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX