Re: Naughty vw
Yep. One more glaring example of how and why we must not take for granted any major corporation. Question everything.
For those wondering how this thing worked (as it's not obvious to us here in the UK) let me explain.
Here in the UK when you have an MOT the mechanic switches on your engine, sticks a sensor up the exhaust pipe and leaves the engine idling for a period of time and this way the emissions from the pipe are measured.
Some would say that this isn't a very realistic test because the car is hardly being stretched just sitting their on idle tick over.
So in other countries, e.g. the USA more stringent tests are done. What they do is put the car on rolling rollers to better simulate actual driving conditions and then measure the emissions. However when they do this they just let the front or back wheels rotate. This causes problems with the car's fancy sensor systems like ABS and other stuff which interpret 2 out of 4 wheels rotating as some kind of problem and leads to the cars doing something as a result, maybe applying the brakes and so on.
As a result of this problem manufacturers developed a special "Test Mode" for the car which mechanics could use when doing emissions tests. The "test mode" disables the systems and sensors that would otherwise get confused by the rollers and thus make things safer for the mechanic.
It is that "test mode" that has been specially programmed or "rigged" to fix the emissions results. When the mechanic activates the "Test mode" to run the test, the car suddenly operates in a different way that puts out far less emissions.
Once the test mode is switched off the car returns to normal running.
This has allowed VW's and some Audi's to pretend to be very clean Green cars when in fact they are little different to rival cars.
This will be massive and has already hit the share price of the company. VW will likely face criminal actions and presumably anyone who bought one of these cars will be entitled to a refund as they are obviously not as advertised.
Doubtless expensive lawyers will be brought in and much money will pass hands to prevent mass refunds from happening. Expect it to be dumbed down to customers just getting a free software upgrade for their cars.
As with other scams like phone hacking or politician's expenses you have to think that this is just the first of many. If one manufacturer has gotten away with this for so long, then how many others have done the same thing. I assume investigations are underway with all manufacturers. So watch this space imo.
Bottom line, we can not trust the corporations and large companies that run our world.