What happens when test cheaters get caught?
Louis Y. Ungar
Test Engineering, DFT and Management Consultant / Instructor and President at A.T.E. Solutions, Inc. and BestTest Group
Car makers have paid some heavy fines for trying to cut test, especially when it could have saved their customers a great deal of pain and death. GM paid out about $1.5 billion for having a faulty ignition that killed 124 people and injured many more. Toyota paid out $2.3 billion for the “unintended acceleration” that killed 93 people, and caused a panic among owners of Toyota cars. In all these cases and others the companies claimed that they did everything possible to test their products before they were sold, and these terrible cases were the minuscule cracks in their otherwise solid testing procedures. No one could prove that they cheated in their tests, but many opined otherwise.
Volkswagen (VW) was different. They used their test engineers to mock up a desired test result from their emissions tests, making it always pass regardless of the actual condition of the vehicle. A history of their management’s activities, including their failed attempt to blame the test engineers is shown in a Video here.
As far as I know, nobody died directly from this, yet the fine was much greater than the other cases, or was it? Volkswagen has settled the matter with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for what they calculate will cost $14.7 billion. But when we look under the hood of this settlement, we find that the deception is continuing. $2.7 billion of this sum will be used for the environment, and another $2 billion to “promote zero emission vehicles.” I can only guess that Volkswagen will use the money to design and produce their own zero emission vehicles, which they will sell for a profit. That is a punishment?
Let’s look at where the bulk of the money, $10 billion will go. Apparently, there are 11 million cars worldwide that “passed” the fraudulent tests, of which 500,000 are in the US. The $10 billion fund is ostensibly set aside to compensate those who suffered from the fraud. Volkswagen will repurchase cars for $12,500 to $44,000 (depending on age and condition VW will decide) from this money. Of course, these cars can then be resold (presumably with emission problems repaired), so this is not a complete loss. Also, not everyone will want to part with their cars at the price VW determines it is worth and will opt not to resell it. In that case, VW offers to fix the faulty cars at a cost of $5,100 to $10,000 that is paid from this fund. Naturally, the cars that pass a valid emissions test will not need to be fixed, but may still be charged $5,100 in VW accounting. For those that are fixed, one must wonder if they really cost VW $5,100 to $10,000. (If it only costs on the average $1,000 to repair the cars, VW takes back $4,100 to $9,000 per car repair from the fund.) The $10 billion is an upper limit, but I have read nothing about what happens if the entire $10 billion is not needed for these remedies. In that case, it is safe to assume that Volkswagen will eventually be free to reclaim it. By this reasoning, I suspect only a small fraction of the $10 billion will actually be used to help those defrauded, with the vast majority of the $10 billion returning to Volkswagen's pocket. In short, their punishment is to fix those cars that they should have fixed when they would have been found faulty by a non-fraudulent test.
To answer the question I raised in the title, it seems to me that in the case of VW, nothing really happened to the test cheaters, except of course to the test engineers who have probably been fired by now. Volkswagen management is continuing to mislead the EPA, but this time they are using their accountants and lawyers rather than their test engineers. There is still the question whether Volkswagen managers will have to go to jail. My guess is that they won’t, or if they will, it will be in a low security facility (often called “Club Fed”).
Another question for me is whether the test engineers have reconciled in their conscience what they did. For the rest of us, test engineering continues to be an honorable profession. When we fail, the entire organization fails. When will management realize this and learn that the cost of test and (honest) test engineers is a pittance compared to the money they are paying out now? When will we test engineers realize this and bring our concerns to those managers?
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Rather than being a test failing, the VW situation involved nothing less than brilliant design for test. It required someone to fully understand the test that needed to be defeated, the operating conditions of the test vs. normal driving and the operational shortcoming of the engine. The only bad part; it was against the law. As far as test engineers, both manufacturing and design verification. They were multiple levels removed from anyone who knew what was being done. If they had noticed an anomaly they would have been told "that is what we expect". As far as the preposterous notion that the Toyota Sudden Acceleration Problem was caused by "economizing on test", the issue has been thoroughly researched by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. See their 423 page report here. www.nhtsa.gov. There are also dozens of other studies, mostly academic. What do all these reports have in common? They all fail to make a single assertion that test, or lack of test had the slightest influence on the problem. It seems to me that rather than trying to use all these non sequitur examples to try to hold onto the past, that test engineers should instead embrace the advancement of technology.
Senior Test Engineer at Datest
8 年The Test Engineers at VW could have been part of the deception or were just subject to confirmation bias. Quite possible they did an emissions test and got the results they were expecting and did not perform any further testing to validate the bench measurements. Could the deception have been caught at test? Probably, the International Council on Clean Transportation discovered it with a fairly simple method, they measured the Nitrogen Oxide with the standard emissions test and then to prove that the emissions test results were accurate they measured the Nitrogen Oxides during a road test. The measurements differed by up to a factor of 40. So the VW Test Engineers were either complicit or complacent.
Engineer
8 年Well said! You said everything we Test Engineers were thinking. And it makes a great point, that as Engineers we not only have a responsibility to the public, to the company, AND to ourselves too, since we are the ones that get asked to cut corners and in the end are the ones that are blamed. We have to uphold some ethics like a doctor, if a patient asks for a bunch of unnecessary meds, the doctor can't just dish it out because they owe it to not only the patient (its not good for them) but to the doctor him/herself (if the patient dies or OD's he/she is responsible). Just look at the Michael Jackson case, that doctor should have walked away but instead gave into the patient demands, and took the patient's money might I add. There is a reason I have a better job now in a company that truly cares, unfortunately I'm not a Test Engineer anymore, but I still use testing in my new job everyday.
Excellent presentation on VW. It is interesting that Michael Horn attempted to BLAME the Engineers! Regarding Toyota , now that was a very interesting problem.
In need of restructuring your accounts ? Getting some analysis and reporting done on your business ?
8 年Nice article. Two quick thoughts : on the one hand, the sums proposed to compensate clients only apply to US customers. On the other hand, the damage done to the brand VW is significant and far more of a worry. In that respect the policy going forward, e.g. the goal set to make zero emission vehicles (read : go for electric), seems to be an expensive lesson learned.