What Effect Will VW's Scandal Have On Robocars?

pRobotika writes: It's looking bad for Volkswagen, German car manufacturers and possibly even car manufacturers as a whole. But the revelations that VW put software in their cars to deliberately cheat on emissions tests could have even greater repercussions. Robocars' Brad Templeton looks at the effect for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. From the Robohub article: "There may be more risk from suppliers of technology for robocars. Sensor manufacturers, for instance, may be untruthful about their abilities or, more likely, reliability. While the integrators will be inherently distrustful, as they will take the liability, one can see smaller vendors telling lies if they see it as the only way to get a big sale for their business."

Parts fail, it needs to be planned for.

[Firethorn]

Sensor manufacturers, for instance, may be untruthful about their abilities or, more likely, reliability. While the integrators will be inherently distrustful, as they will take the liability, one can see smaller vendors telling lies if they see it as the only way to get a big sale for their business."

I like how he pretty much answers his own question. Car manufacturers aren't going to give those making parts for them an inch. They'll test everything, like they're used to doing. Now, a defective lot of parts getting through is a known hazard. But ideally speaking, self driving cars will be made with the same redundancies as planes - IE one failed part isn't enough to cause a hazardous condition.

More likely, VW's shenanigans are likely to cause governments to require more independent testing before ap

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[jdgoulden]

There's another twist to this. I once worked with a company that had developed a little sensor that would let you know if you'd left your infant in the back seat. They ultimately decided not to market it at all; the liability insurance required, should it ever fail, even once, dwarfed the modest profit it would have brought in. I understand LOTS of things don't make it to market, for that very reason. The number one cost in my aluminum ladder isn't aluminum, or transportation, or sales; it's liability insur

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[ganjadude]

and that is the reason we cannot have nice things

what ever happened to personal responsibility?

Re:Parts fail, it needs to be planned for.

[TWX]

what ever happened to personal responsibility?

Personal responsibility is whatever the court and/or jury decides it is. Sometimes the judgement is probably too far in favor of giving idiots what they don't deserve. Sometimes it allows a company that's negligent to get off lightly for something that they really should not have ever sold. Sometimes it works out as it should.

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[ganjadude]

companies should sell what people buy

if people are not responsible with what they buy (think those magnet balls which kids were swollowing, or chemestry sets) that should be on them and only them

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[dave420]

So everyone needs to perform a full audit of what they're buying, including purchasing something to test that it's safe/fit to purchase? I hope you have a lot of free time or vanishingly small respect for your own safety...

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[drinkypoo]

So everyone needs to perform a full audit of what they're buying, including purchasing something to test that it's safe/fit to purchase?

It's basically already like that for most products. I can't remember the last time I got something with more than three moving parts that actually did everything it was supposed to do correctly.

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[ganjadude]

risk vs reward isnt too hard

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[RespekMyAthorati]

If you know what the risk is. For some things, like cars and drugs, you don't until it is too late.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

Just get rid of the EPA. They've screwed up the diesel market and VW was hacking around it. The VW engines produce less nox per mile than a gasoline engine, but more per gallon, and the EPA is derp-tastically stuck on gallon which makes no sense to any rational being. Rather than price diesels out of the market, VW did the right thing for the environment and hacked around the EPA. Yeah, they got nabbed, but they didn't do anything wrong ethically, unless you favor regulatory compliance over the environ

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[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I didn't think the EPA had any authority in the EU where the VW scandal is having the most impact...

Re:Emissions testing needs to be fool proof

[Noah Haders]

This is absolutely false, posted by a well-known troll. Vdub cut engine power during car tests to meet emissions standards, then cranked it up to 11 to make it "fun to drive". The real-world emissions were 10-40x above epa standards. This is the unethical, because it relies on fraud to make money sacrificing the environment.

Passenger car emission standards are g/mi and are the same for all fuel types. Epa is exploring ways to combat this type of fraud. But any test they make needs to be objective and reproducible for all vehicles, so it may be hard to eliminate this cheat vector.

My biggest fear is that the rep of all diesel vehicles will be tarnished. This isn't fair; both Mercedes and BMW make diesels that meet all emissions requirements and are fun to drive. Diesel vehicles are more fuel-efficient than gasoline vehicles and are definitely part of the fuel mix for a low carbon future.

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[FrozenGeek]

Are we certain that VW is the only company cheating? Experience shows that there is rarely only one bad apple in the barrel.

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[Noah Haders]

if you *read* the fact sheet, you see that they were testing multiple car makes, and don't specify from how many OEMs. Mystery vehicle 'C' is a specific make, not a specific OEM.

I read in a news piece about the study that they measured cars from VW and BMW. I wouldn't be surprised if the VW cars are the ones that failed miserably and the BMW cars are the ones that passed or nearly failed.

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[postbigbang]

Mod parent up.

Seems most automobile makers will now be subject to advanced testing methodologies. I'm not so sure that this incestuous bunch will emerge untarnished.

If this gets a lot of engineering departments back to the drawing boards, we'll know soon by delays in 2016 models. Then the excrement will hit their stocks as they lose sales. Sit still and watch.

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[thinkwaitfast]

Just like aircraft manufacturers or anyone else who works on safety critical systems? Really?

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[TWX]

And this is why we need more regulation, not less. Car companies were given the option to tell the government that they met the rules. They didn't meet the rules but lied to fraudulently sell cars. I say, send a complete drivetrain system with a driveable chassis that conforms to the mass and approximate airflow characteristics expected in the finished vehicle, or rather, a fleet of them, and give the EPA the budget to both test the finished drivetrain in the unfinished vehicle and to make baseline measu

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[ganjadude]

more regulation led to low MPG rust buckets with no power in the 70s and 80s, we are only just getting over that horrible time in automotive history

we let ralph nader destroy the industry once, we dont need it to fall again

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[Noah Haders]

I will find it very amusing if a generation of European cars are essentially worthless now that the cheats that made them desirable are gone. German engineers are disproportionately smug in their abilities, but I think this one may have knocked them for a loop.

the fraudulent tests apply to VW, Audi, and Porsche, all owned by the VW group. BMWs and Benzes are fine, no worries, the german smugness will continue.

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[jrumney]

Are we certain that VW is the only company cheating?

Are we even certain that only diesel cars are cheating?

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[ganjadude]

remember the 70's and 80's and how bad the cars were? (going from 400 HP monsters to 80 HP rust buckets?

that was all thanks to the EPA. its only been the past 5-10 years that we have finally come back to a place where cars are fun again

do we really want the next vette to have 120 HP????

I dont

Re:Emissions testing needs to be fool proof

[TWX]

Cars from the sixties and seventies that were fun to drive were horribly wasteful on fuel when driven hard. Carburetors are like that. The point now, is that we have technology to sample the air pressure, air temperature, and exhaust mixture to try to achieve the most thorough burn possible, which is why the cars of today are more fun and more powerful than they were in the sixties and seventies. And I say this as someone that is mid-restoration on a seventies Mopar.

The tradeoff is complexity and cost. The cars are much more complicated because the systems that regulate fuel pressure, nozzle duration, spark duration and timing, and valve timing are much more complicated than an accelerator pump, a venturi, and a simple vacuum-advance distributor.

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[ganjadude]

oh no question that the tech has gotten better (and therefore more expensive) however I dont want to see a return to that period of time, which is what a lot of people making the argument for more regulation dont seem to understand

more regulation = higher costs, which in turn means people keep their cars longer, which means less efficient cars stay on the road longer

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[TWX]

I don't think that we'll return to the late seventies and eighties. It appears that American car manufacturers have perfected the two valve per cylinder pushrod V8 and the four valve per cylinder overhead cam V6, GM, Chrysler, and Ford designs are all getting gobs of power on-demand and excellent fuel economy when driven cautiously- the 3.6L V6 available in nearly every Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram is absolutely fantastic.

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[Noah Haders]

I dont want to see a return to that period of time, which is what a lot of people making the argument for more regulation dont seem to understand

don't worry, more stringent emissions -> more expensive prices on internal combustion engines, which lowers the cost differential with Model S's. zoom zoom!

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[gl4ss]

american v8's from late 70's to 80's are both fuel guzzling AND badly performing.

and the modern system is actually a lot SIMPLER to tune. if you want to pay for it you can get a custom ecu map in a day.

you make it sound like the carburetor is easy to get right. it's not. a fuel injection system is much more straightforward to setup. had you an aftermarket fuel injection system you would get your project tuned far better.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[kelemvor4]

Diesel vehicles are more fuel-efficient than gasoline vehicles and are definitely part of the fuel mix for a low carbon future.

You had me up until that part. Vehicles with combustion motors are not part of a low carbon future.

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[Kjella]

Passenger car emission standards are g/mi and are the same for all fuel types. Epa is exploring ways to combat this type of fraud. But any test they make needs to be objective and reproducible for all vehicles, so it may be hard to eliminate this cheat vector.

No. What they need to do is to create an objective and reproducible test, then a "sanity check" where the car is driven an ordinary, mixed road trip with a sensor attached to the exhaust pipe that can't in any reasonable way be distinguished from ordinary driving. The latter will obviously be somewhat variable due to the particular route, road conditions, environmental temperature, traffic and so on but I imagine it would be a fairly narrow band that could be considered normal. If it exceeds that, start in

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[ganjadude]

dont forget about the river they destroyed.

and had it been BP would have been all over the news, would have been congressional hearings, and massive fines, however since it was the EPA, crickets?

You're joking, right?

[PopeRatzo]

Tomorrow's Slashdot headline:

"How Will The Apple Watch Affect the Future of Self-Driving Cars?"

or,

"What Year Will The Self-Driving Car Cure Cancer? We Ask Travis Kalanick."

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[fustakrakich]

Or...

"How did The Self-Driving Car rescue the crew of the Kobayashi Maru?"

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[The Grim Reefer]

"How did The Self-Driving Car rescue the crew of the Kobayashi Maru?"

It accidentally drove through the wall of the simulation and ran into the server that controlled the Klingon ships?

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[fustakrakich]

'Accidentally'? No, it was premeditated [thechronicleherald.ca]

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[Black Parrot]

OTOH, we're getting a lot fewer Tesla and Bitcoin ads^w stories.

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[Cro Magnon]

OTOH, we're getting a lot fewer Tesla and Bitcoin ads^w stories.

Until we get a story about the new Tesla self-driving car, purchased with bitcoins.

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[delt0r]

You forgot 3d printing and solar energy breakthrough. So more like "3d printed apple watch with breakthrough solar panel makes Driverless cars unsafe".

Re:What's the REAL reason ...

[Tablizer]

Let the market...the consumer...not the government...decide how much pollution is too much

As the early history of industrialization shows, unregulated companies have no problems poisoning people for short-term profits. Aggressive business people tend to only think about 5 years out. If they believe the chances of getting caught is relatively low for the next 5 years, they'll often gamble to get here-and-now power and wealth. They are thinking with the "2nd head".

By the time 3-eyed babies appear, the perps or their trail may be long gone.

post-liability not always sufficient

[Firethorn]

By the time 3-eyed babies appear, the perps or their trail may be long gone.

Indeed, this is why I support some regulation despite my libertarian tendencies. It's entirely too easy to cause far more damage than you could every repay in seeking what amounts to a 'modest' profit. By the time it could be handled in a post-liability fashion, the person is already dead or broke. Leaving potentially thousands or even millions of people injured without the ability to seek redress.

As such, stopping them sooner rather than later is a 'once of prevention is worth a pound of cure' move.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC to save mod points

Cuyahoga! And actually some others before that. http://pratie.blogspot.com/200... [blogspot.com]

Fact is, a business will do anything to increase profits and to service the shareholders, and anyone who thinks that the invisible hand of the free market will take care of pollution, is not rational.

Imagine your gated communnity home here? http://static.panoramio.com/ph... [panoramio.com] And there is a lot of that kind of shit left over and still completely useless land long after the late 19th century min

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[Bing Tsher E]

So you want to moderate the discussion yet also express strong opinions within it? Fuck you. That's corrosive to the Slashdot discussion format.

Also, cherry-picking a few horror cases is a propaganda technique. Nice try, though.

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[Qzukk]

cherry-picking a few horror cases is a propaganda technique

And? What are you going to do about them? These are messes that the industrialists made. Are you even going to provide a counter-point of an unregulated mine that was shutdown in a clean and orderly manner? CAN you even provide a counter-point? Are you going to tell us what makes this time different? Tell us why, if we drop all the regulations now and start over just like back then, people will not do the same things they did back then?

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[Firethorn]

Hm... He also ignored my signature "I don't read AC" AC = Anonymous Coward.

I'm also a big mystified at who or what he's aiming the post at.

Re:What's the REAL reason ...

[Fwipp]

Exactly. Pollution is one of the most basic examples of an "externality" to a business.

The business is happy to make more profits and doesn't care if it pollutes.

If the consumer has the choice between a cheap car that belches smog and an expensive car that is relatively clean, the rational self-interested choice is to choose the cheap car. The direct benefit to them of money in their pocket outweighs the relatively small amount of pollution that their individual car will create. However, when taken in aggregate, it's better if *everyone* chooses the clean car.

Since we can't persuade human beings to always selflessly consider the good of the community over their own interests (and we shouldn't), we agree on laws to protect our shared resources.

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[Strudelkugel]

In this case a "negative externality" [economicshelp.org]

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[silentcoder]

That's true but a bit redundant - nobody has ever, in all of history, tried to make a law to prevent somebody from causing a positive externality (though, there are moves - especially online by copyright corporations to try and make laws to force you to pay for benefiting from their positive externalities, that would be just as bad as NOT preventing negative ones).

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[Fwipp]

Thanks, I should have been more clear.

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[OzPeter]

As the early history of industrialization shows, unregulated companies have no problems poisoning people for short-term profits.

And then more recently there was acid rain that all those companies self regulated about .. NOT

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[Chuck Chunder]

By the time 3-eyed babies appear, the perps or their trail may be long gone.

On the upside, at least these people will be able to check their Facebook while driving and still keep an eye on the road.

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[Tablizer]

You marketers

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[micahraleigh]

"unregulated companies have no problems poisoning people for short-term profits."

Unlike the EPA which has no problem poisoning and polluting for free.

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[Tablizer]

You have never slipped up?

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[micahraleigh]

Yes, I have.

But why is the gov allowed to slip up but not companies?

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[Tablizer]

How do you propose punishing them?

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[micahraleigh]

Apply Sarbanes-Oxley to the EPA: let unrelated people go, fire some people, and haul the rest off to jail.

When was the last time that ever happened to a government entity?

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[mlw4428]

We tried this once. It ended up badly. The heavy water thing was a legit accident. Commercial companies like BP had "accidents" caused by willful negligence and the worst they got was a slap on the hand. The problem with your theory of letting "the consumer" decide is that it's stupid. What if the consumers are, collectively, retarded and let it go on far too long? We're not a species capable of space travel in vast numbers. We have no backup for this planet and your theory is the IT equivalent of not letti

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[Hognoxious]

The problem with your theory of letting "the consumer" decide is that it's stupid.

In three years it will be totally forgotten, like Honda's sudden acceleration problem.

Aaaaaaaaannnnnnd

[zenith1111]

Another article without absolutely no additional information regarding either the VW scandal or self-driving cars.

"Sensor manufacturers, for instance, may be untruthful about their abilities or, more likely, reliability." Is the author implying that before VW's scandal everyone trusted their suppliers blindly?

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[gl4ss]

well the author is implying that bosch did the scandal and vw was unaware(comparison to vw is made and then if you replace sensor manufacturer with 'bosch' and user of said 'sensor' with VW.

bullcrap of course.

so maybe its something designed to shift the blame game away from vw. or just something stupid to fill the article quota for some poor schlob.

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[zenith1111]

But that was not a sensor issue or reliability problem, the sensors work perfectly fine, it is an extra piece of code that does the cheating. Besides, there were all the other articles where Bosch already claimed they alerted VW that the feature in question was to only be used as a test mode during development. I guess we'll wait and see.

In the Age of the Robocar...

[MetricT]

Most cars will be owned by large corporations, not individual pwople. Lyft, or Thrifty Rent-a-Car, or possibly automakers like Ford themselves. (I'm curious how it shakes out, for investment purposes, but bet the automakers will try to corner the market).

At that point, when a car has a problem, it's not Joe Smith on the phone shaking a hand, it's the Big Owning Company with Lawyers who is. I expect the consolidation of purchasing power into a fewer, much bigger hands will make this unlikely to occur, at least more than the one time it takes for the surviving firms to understand the cost of lying.

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[tompaulco]

A world where I can't own my own car? We already don't own our software. What's next? Not owning our house? How many more things will we no longer own but continue to pay the same amount as we did when we owned them? This future sounds dreadful.

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[tompaulco]

Do you really own your house? Or is real owner the bank that you pay every month or the government agency you pay to keep that house supposedly "yours" twice a year?

With today's mortgage interest rates if I could pay cash for a house, I would be a fool to do so. Also, it's always nice to have a company full of lawyers on your insurance policy in case you have a claim and your insurance company decides they don't want to pay. Technically. the government leases me the land that my house is on for 99 years at a stretch. But if I were to sell my house, I don't have to ask the government's or the banks permission, and people will pay me money for it, though some will go to

VW....cheat....on purpose (like the NE Patriots)

[turkeydance]

bottom line: that's the understandable headline. and yes, a RoboCar for VW is in a galaxy far, far away.

Testing

[hackwrench]

Clearly as demonstrated by the Portal games, perpetual testing is the only way to go.

Then there was that SpaceX part failure where they then turned around and tested the parts in stock and a significant number failed. Can't turn it up in a net search, though.

Shut them down completely

[Anonymous Coward]

one can see smaller vendors telling lies if they see it as the only way to get a big sale for their business."

If they want to cheat on emissions/reliability tests, they should be shut down and have their property/assets seized & given away.

No entity, person or company, should reap the benefits of cheating the people.

Hello and welcome to the millennium

[pushing-robot]

Companies have been "untruthful about abilities and reliability" since forever. Right now my onboard computer is reporting a fault in the AE-35 unit, which is impossible if you'd believe the manufacturer.

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[thinkwaitfast]

Which millennium? Romans had a saying about this which I guess on longer is taught.

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[e r]

I'm interested. Could you please post that saying here?

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[thinkwaitfast]

Caveat emptor [wikipedia.org]

So, they will cheat...

[pem]

And the cars will run over people, and nobody will notice until some college gets a grant to study what's really going on?

Srsly?

Time to face reality

[kheldan]

You'll get your 'robocars' about the same time you get flying cars and hoverboards.

In my opinion, at best you'll have a sophisticated 'autopilot' system to supplement your full set of manual controls, and it'll be a boon on long highway trips, and maybe to keep you safe if you fall asleep at the wheel in the middle of the night. Assuming you're rich and can afford a luxury car, that is; economy cars won't have such things as an option. Sorry, kids, but you'll still have to learn how to drive, pass tests, and pay for insurance, and you'll have a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals (if not a clutch pedal) in front of you for quite some time to come; please do learn your driver training lessons well so we're all safe on the roads, OK? Thanks.

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[kheldan]

Here's the main problem with 'self-driving cars', 'autonomous vehicles', 'driverless cars/vehicles', or however you want to refer to them as: Where the safety of human life is concerned, another human being should always be the final backup system to any automated system. If you have 'autonomous vehicles' with no manual controls, then you can't have a human being in the vehicle that is able to take control in an emergency situation (autopilot system fails, unexpected situation it's not handling properly, et

Strange relation

[treczoks]

The VW (and probably others, I don't believe that only VW cheated - What miracle did they all work in unison to be 30x better with emissions than VW?) problem is the engine, not the general "Car Intelligence". I believe that the VW scandal will lead to more electric cars in the future (not electic replacing diesel, but a shift where gasoline enters the diesel domain, while at the other end electric engines cut their margin of the gasoline market).

What will happen in the future, though, is that the certifica

What?

[EmperorOfCanada]

One thing has nothing to do with the other. This is just misleading propaganda from companies that have dropped the driverless ball. This is about lying cheating executives. Executives can lie and cheat about anything. Are those tires safe? Is the gasoline really unleaded? Do the ignition switches kill people?

If anything the companies that are leading the charge with driverless don't have a long track record of cheating and killing their customers. The reality is that they are going into this new arena with unblemished records. This probably scares the crap out of the old companies.

For instance, anything that Ford, GM, or Chrysler tell me is probably a lie or an exaggeration. I don't really trust any of the Japanese Manufacturers and even the Koreans aren't looking too good with the emissions testing. Thus I am far more likely to believe a Tesla, Google, Apple, etc. If they say their car can go 200 miles on a charge I will actually plan on going roughly 200 miles on a charge. If GM tells me that I can go 200 miles on a charge I will assume that they lobbied the government to allow them to have a tail wind and go downhill the whole time. Plus they won't mention that the battery caught fire 3 times each test and the driver's seat is the battery.

So this straw man argument is just pure PR being put out to distract us from the fact that the old school car companies are run by a bunch of psychopathic MBA types. And instead of changing their ways they are trying to paint the aggressive young newcomers with the same brush.

What Effect Will VW's Scandal Have On Robocars?

[Chrisq]

What Effect Will VW's Scandal Have On Robocars?

If someone attempts an emission test they'll transform [wikipedia.org] and say "If you think you are going to shove that probe up my tail-pipe you've got another thing coming".

More than that...

[djupedal]

I'd worry about their self-esteem - I mean, being lumped into the same conversation as a company that clearly values profits over honesty is bound to make any robocar flinch when unrelated topics try to occupy the same space at the same time. No wonder skynet went all wicked-witch on mankind.

Ahm? Favour Robocars?

[drolli]

If you have a autonomous car, the most important change will be that

a) The inconvenience of driving to maintenance is a non-issue (imagine your car going to the workshop without you) - and thus the central issue about the scandal (that adblue would need to be refilled more often than acceptable for the convenience of the customers) is a non-issue.

b) For most of the driving the car can go fuel/emission optimized (i.e. it may go as slow as its reasonable) , since it's very likely that there will be non one on

None

[chispito]

Next story.

How is this new?

[barbariccow]

How is this anything new? Why is this news? Companies can lie? Companies can over-exaggerate claims? This is nothing new? Source: Watch ANY informercial.