The Internet of criminal things

Posted Oct 5, 2015 19:45 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: The Internet of criminal things by dlang
Parent article: The Internet of criminal things

> In the case of VW, is the different fueling used because the throttle is constant and so it can satisfy the power requirements more efficiently? (a valid optimization, even on the open road) or because it detects something that's actually specific to the test?

It actually detected the test: "The 'switch' senses whether the vehicle is being tested or not based on various inputs including the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's operation, and barometric pressure. These inputs precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure..."

http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-...

The Internet of criminal things

Posted Oct 5, 2015 21:53 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

note that you are pointing at the accusation document, not the result of any investigation that actually see the code

If there is (as is alleged) a "dyno mode" vs a "road mode", the dyno mode would also kick in when doing other dyno tests (performance and economy come to mind)

unless the dyno mode is _very_ specific to the exact details of the EPA test, which seems incredibly unlikely (the test changes over time)

They have a number of fuel maps in the ECU that are used under different conditions, the accusation lumps them all together into 'road mode', but it's very possible that there is very little difference between some of the 'road mode' maps and the 'dyno mode' map. it all depends on exactly what the conditions are for switching.

The EPA thinks they have evidence that it's malicious, and at this point I don't think we will ever find out the real details. The new VW management wants to get this behind them and survive. Proving that this wasn't necessarily malicious would by a Pyrrhic victory at this point.

The Internet of criminal things

Posted Oct 5, 2015 23:46 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

The Notice of Violation is all we have right now. The investigation, as you know, could take years.

You can choose to consider the EPA incompetent or liars if you want. That seems a strange stance to take because even VW publicly stated in a conference call on Sept 3 that the Notice of Violation is basically correct.

And, even if you don't want to take the EPA and VW's word for it, why would VW's fuel maps look so radically different depending on steering input? There's simply no physics-based explanation for why their engine computer would demonstrate such strange behavior.

I'm also looking forward to reading the report. I expect it will describe a series of small and expedient decisions that resulted in this ECU mode. An evil boss telling his engineers, "write me a defeat device from scratch" seems implausible and difficult to keep under wraps. :)