VW Admits Audi Automatic Transmission Software Can Change Test Behavior (cnet.com) 157
In response to a report via Bild am Sonntag last week, which found a new type of defeat device hidden inside an Audi automatic transmission, Volkswagen finally came around to admitting the findings. "Adaptive shift programs can lead to incorrect and non-reproducible results" in emissions tests, VW told Reuters on Sunday. CNET reports: Software in the AL 551 automatic transmission may detect testing conditions and shift in a way that minimizes emissions, only to act "normally" out on the road. Much like Dieselgate's defeat device, that leads to higher-than-imagined pollution, which could be in excess of legal limits. Audi's AL 551 can be found in both gas and diesel vehicles, including the A6, A8 and Q5. Volkswagen isn't going full mea culpa here, though. The automaker also told Reuters that its adaptive transmission software is meant to change shift points in order to improve on-road performance. Many automatic transmissions these days learn from driver input and tailor shifting to match a driver's style, which leads to a smoother drive. VW Group did not immediately return a request for comment.
Hay Sniffer (Score:2)
Hey, the Hay Sniffer is a legitimate hack. This is the software routine that "sniffs the hay" to determine if you are out on a country road and not driving one of the Federal Cycles.
My criterion is if you drive a Federal Cycle for real out on a highway, a test track, or a high school parking lot, it should give the same control coefficients as on the chassis rollers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. None of this "oh, only the back wheels are turning, I must be in Ann Arbor."
But if it only gives Federal Cycle p
Is this the last surprize ? (Score:1)
For $deity$ sake. Is this the final word ?
Or tomorrow we will find that in test conditions it transform also in a unicycle ?
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The point was that the software is adaptive. If you stomp throttle (like God intended) the slushbox gives you RPM, if you pussy foot (like when on an emissions dyno) to get a consistent RPM, the transmission will shift quickly to top gear. Intended behavior for a transmission being called cheating.
Old school slushboxes did basically the same thing with analog computers. Engine manifold vacuum, modulator and springs in the transmission valve body.
Digital computers just adjust shift points based on past
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The point is that modern cars have computers in them running proprietary software which control how the car behaves. Implementing the same limits with mechanical apparatus means exposing how the apparatus works and allowing the car owner to remove or adapt the apparatus. Proprietary software hides the rules and makes it much harder for the car's owner to remove or adapt how the software works. Apparently a variety of car manufacturers use this secrecy to deceive consumers into buying a car that didn't behav
no end to the cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
Our regulators should slap increasing penalties on each successive cheat they find, to penalize for the hiding of evidence over and above the violation itself.
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It's not impossible to build a vehicle which meets emissions standards and is affordable and is something people want to buy. It's just that it's not possible to do all that and make it a diesel.
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That must be why around half of all passenger cars, almost all vans, trucks and buses have diesel engines.
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And as we're finding out those cars aren't as clean as advertised. I have friends who bought a diesel VW car, and they were over the moon about it. It had great mileage, more than good enough performance, and it didn't pollute any more than a gasoline car.
Turns out only two of three of those were correct.
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Sure, if by "recent" you mean "after VW got caught in 2014". By cheating VW saved over two thousand dollars on their diesel car, which is a lot when you're selling cars for around $20,000. BMW didn't cheat, but they're selling cars for over $60,000.
So it's simply the case VW could not make a competitive diesel that met US NOx emissions standards as well as consumer expectations. Not in the affordable transportation market segment.
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The point is what I claimed it was all along: to achieve a balance of performance, economy and price while meeting emissions standards. It's a matter of meeting all constraints, which couldn't be done in a low cost diesel car.
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Which is why this cheap appears on gas cars too then?
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It does not, as you say, merely dilute emissions.
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Actually, they started putting those (smog pumps) on some cars even before catalysts, as a means of letting the fuel burn up in the exhaust system instead of being emitted unburned, because it's very unlikely to burn once it has left the exhaust system and while the NOx and CO from burning the fuel in the exhaust pipe are not pleasant they are better than HC (unburned hydrocarbons) which is the worst automotive emission. It also reduces soot particle size which makes it less apparent, which was good enough
Nissan Leaf Does Not Cheat (Score:1)
My Nissan Leaf does not cheat on emissions tests because it has no exhaust. It also does not have a transmission, so it can't cheat that way either. The closest that it is capable of cheating is the Guess-O-Meter, which determines the remaining drivable mileage based on various factors.
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This just keeps on getting better and better. VW Group have simply not owned up to the depth of their cheating and been forthright with their cooperation.
Our regulators should slap increasing penalties on each successive cheat they find, to penalize for the hiding of evidence over and above the violation itself.
I'm not sure this is nearly as bad as you make it sound. I have an Audi S5, and it has several shift programs you can choose. One is "Auto," where it looks at your driving style, and adjusts shift points and throttle response accordingly. If you're driving gently, it goes towards comfort/eco mode, which uses less fuel. If you drive aggressively, it goes toward sports mode, which keeps revs higher and uses more fuel. So, no shit, if you use that mode (which I think might be the default), and the test is gent
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That has already beendone [transportenvironment.org]. Don't expect any punishment though, because the patsy has been found.
GM and Ford got of very cheaply the last time they were caught cheating emissions in the US and I expect that their European cheating will have even fewer consequences. Maybe the Chrysler/Cummins cheat will have some consequences in the US, because of the lawsuit announced yesterday, but I wouldn't bet on it. US regulators are very friendly with the American car manufacturers.
Wish I could write things like (Score:2, Funny)
Umm (Score:2)
I have a Landcruiser that has 'adaptive' shifting. A button I press in for power and out for economy. Want to hear something worse? Everything else I own is a stick. So I shift when I damned well please.
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Porsche still offers manuals. And what you get with a Ferrari or Lamborghini is a DCT (dual clutch transmission) with paddle shifters. Still a manual.
And most cars other than real econo-boxes that do have automatics include a manual shift mode. So the driver is still in charge of shift points. I guess people just looked at those emission penalties and told the EPA to go suck an egg.
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I wish you could fine drivers going the other way. Coming off an on-ramp at half highway speed because you're hypermiling doesn't save any net fuel - other drivers have to match your speed when you merge in (usually without checking mirrors...) and accelerate with you instead of staying the same speed, and it puts everyone at greater risk.
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"And what you get with a Ferrari or Lamborghini is a DCT (dual clutch transmission) with paddle shifters. Still a manual."
It's not. It's really not. There is no mechanical linkage between your gearbox and the transmission at all, which I think is what people mean when they romanticize about owning a manual transmission. In a real manual, there's no disintermediation between you and the machineâ"computers adjusting the inputs to suit some predetermined range of acceptable outputs. You're just pressing a
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It's the missing clutch pedal (for launch control) that sometimes makes a DCT a grey area.
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The first transmissions
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Really? I'd say the vast majority of the cars I see at the drag strip are carburated. I think some of them might even win races.
That's mostly because it's easier to tune a carb than to rewrite the EFI software for a custom engine config, especially if you are only running it full throttle on a drag strip. They probably also want to mimic the Nascar circuit that require carbs (as part of the rules, ironically along with restrictor plates to limit speed/power) which is in deference to their hardcore audience, although other circuits use EFI...
However, if the rules allowed it, and a drag racing team had the expertise to design their o
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I'd say the vast majority of the cars I see at the drag strip are carburated. I think some of them might even win races.
That's mostly because it's easier to tune a carb than to rewrite the EFI software for a custom engine config, especially if you are only running it full throttle on a drag strip.
No, it really isn't. These days the major manufacturers have self-tuning PCMs that you just punch your engine characteristics into. Punch in the number of cylinders, displacement, lift, timing, duration, and firing order and turn the key.
They use carbs because you can fucking pour fuel down them. If you use injectors you need multiple huge ones.
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NHRA had strict 'roots blowers and carbs rules' to try to keep the speeds down in the top classes. Doesn't seem to be working.
Need huge fuel pumps in any case.
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Re: Umm (Score:2)
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Re: Umm (Score:2)
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I had an Audi that not only had adaptive shifting; it knew who was behind the wheel.. If I started the car with my fob, the seats, steering wheel, pedals and shift points would all adjust to my settings and habits; and when my wife was behind the wheel they all automatically changed to her settings and habits.
Since I drove the car alot harder than she did; the few times I drove with her fob it was absolutely miserable.. mebe her adaptation had less emissions than the defaults; and perhaps mine had more emis
the test is flawed (Score:2)
but there are no such thing as defaults in a car that even gets driven to the test place. how hard you jam down on the pedal affects the "sportiness" and thus shifting points, all kinds of things affect it.
the problem is that they do the tests like this: stick it on a dyno and run a pre made program, without even fucking moving.
they should just make a tester small enough to fit in the boot or passenger area, and drive around a test track - vw's "cheating" would have had to be of different kind in that case.
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I have a Landcruiser that has 'adaptive' shifting. A button I press in for power and out for economy.
That is not adaptive shifting. What we are talking about here is what Audi (and most others) call DSP, or Dynamischshaltprogramm. Er, that is, dynamic shift program. The transmission is programmed ahead of time with many different shift modes which are arranged in a table. Each program modifies the shift points, shift speed (which controls the firmness of the shift) and so on in an attempt to match the driver's expectations regarding shift time and point, based on throttle input. Unfortunately, people who a
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After you've driven a Tesla (with no transmission or clutch) you'll realize what a kludge it is to have all that machinery whizzing around attempting to match the limited torque range of an ICE engine to the wheels. Rube Goldberg made simple things in comparison.
EVs are so much less complex.
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After you've driven a Tesla (with no transmission or clutch) you'll realize what a kludge it is to have all that machinery whizzing around attempting to match the limited torque range of an ICE engine to the wheels
After I can get a good one for five or ten grand, I'll be interested.
Re: Umm (Score:2)
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" it is almost impossible to get a stick on anything larger than a small 4 cylinder."
Ever heard of sports cars? Its not just s european thing , my brother-in-law has a Mustang.
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You'd better call 911, because you're about to get schooled by one.
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A Mustang is not a sports car, it is a Pony car. Seats in the back is an instant disqualification of sports car.
What? Who told you that? There are tons of sports cars with insurance seats. The Mustang was a pony car, but the latest version has IRS. Now it's a sports car, albeit one whose handling has been deliberately compromised to make it feel more like the original. They built a couple other models with IRS in the past, those were sports cars too.
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IRS has nothing to do with 'sportscar'. Many of the IRS Cobras get converted back to solid axle, 8.8 IRS in them is weak. A few GTs go the other way, don't know why, use Tbirds as donors. Puts a hard limit on power.
I have bandied the idea of installing a 9.5 IRS out of an Expedition in mine. Hard axle to find, plus would be a ton of fab to make it work.
The back seats in rustangs are actually semi functional. Unlike pure insurance/japanese crazy rules seats with 0 legroom in back.
A purist will tell yo
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IRS has nothing to do with 'sportscar'.
No, whether it's a sports car is determined by whether it was designed for performance and handling — unless it's some other kind of car, like a muscle car. An IROC was definitely designed around motorsport, that was the whole purpose of the car. But it was also a muscle car, and not a sports car.
A purist will tell you a 'sport car' is two seat by definition.
A purist can suck my balls. There is no world in which for example a Nissan 240SX is not a sports car. I took the back seat out of mine, but that was only because I was removing all the interior. The weight o
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You can use whatever definition you choose. Don't expect people to understand what you're saying.
I'll stick with the standard one.
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You can use whatever definition you choose. [...] I'll stick with the standard one.
In that case, usually two doors [wikipedia.org] does not mean "always two doors". Note source. HTH, HAND!
P.S. If you think shipping without a back seat makes a difference when it's the same chassis, you're a tool
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You're not even quoting your own source right. Even wiki says 'usually two seat'.
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You're not even quoting your own source right. Even wiki says 'usually two seat'.
Yeah yeah yeah, seats is what I meant, which is obvious. If that's your last complaint, then I'll accept your concession.
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re transmission (Score:2)
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not that the ECU's job is to control the engine so that it will perform within spec as long as it is operated when conditions are within spec.
but whatever
teaching to the test (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:teaching to the test (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a very good point. The issue with all of these "shocking discoveries" is that they in fact PASSED the various prescribed tests. There is nothing in the law that says it has to perform the same in actual driving rather than the EPA load cycle. The specific EPA load cycle is what is in the test, there IS NO SPECIFICATION for what it does on the road, period.
Note that everybody with any concept of the way diesels work know that the various performance/emissions "breakthroughs" touted (now, apparently, falsely) by the European car makers were false. This was demonstrated by the back of "clean diesels" turning black in short order on US roads, and most of the cities of Europe turning gray from accumulated diesel soot.
They are more-or-less scuzzy, but they haven't broken the law.
Re:teaching to the test (Score:5, Informative)
The specific EPA load cycle is what is in the test, there IS NO SPECIFICATION for what it does on the road, period.
There is a specification that you not intentionally do something different during the test though.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/86.1809-10 [cornell.edu]
"The manufacturer must show to the satisfaction of the Administrator that the vehicle design does not incorporate strategies that unnecessarily reduce emission control effectiveness exhibited during the Federal Test Procedure or Supplemental Federal Test Procedure (FTP or SFTP) when the vehicle is operated under conditions that may reasonably be expected to be encountered in normal operation and use."
It doesn't count as passing if you cheat.
Re:teaching to the test (Score:5, Informative)
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Nissan Sentra rental.
Left turn, I get the weight transferred out, then stomp the throttle, nothing happens, nothing. Then I exit the turn and straighten the wheel, the engine starts doing something, barely, not like it was going to break em loose.
Never buy a Nissan Sentra.
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I rented a Sentra (well, it was called an Almera, but it was a Sentra) in Panama and I was astounded at how amazingly good it was. It had a 1.6 liter four banger with high compression (meaning it did require premium, but you could get that there) and a slush box but it was fast for what it was. It would pass without any problems, and speeds on the Interamericano in Panama are (or at least were) about what they are on the 101 here in California so that was a valid test. And it was also actually amazingly goo
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The one I rented in Sacramento was TERRIBLE. No power (I drove a similar displacement Honda CIVIC at the time, much, much better. 40 more HP easy.)
It wasn't just the throttle by wire that was brain dead. The slush box wouldn't downshift even in 'sport' mode (it might, maybe, in about a minute after trying to go at 1500RPM first). It was programmed to game the EPA milage standard to the point it is dangerously unresponsive. Mush for suspension (but that's just standard for econo cars).
Say something nice
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There are good reasons why an automatic gearbox would let its behaviour depend on whether the car is being driven in a corner. It's the closest thing to anticipatory behaviour an automatic gearbox can do.
Actually, most gearboxes try to anticipate your next desire from your driving behavior, like whether you're desperately stomping the pedal down to the kickdown switch when they're making slow shifts. VW calls this DSP (dynamic shift program) but pretty much everyone has been doing it since the oughts or so, if they didn't start in the nineties. The transmission will generally only ask for torque reduction during shifts (where it will ask for a specific amount thereof) or during some kind of failure. If you'
Re:teaching to the test (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the law quite specifically says "no defeat devices" in the EU, and I'd be amazed if the US law didn't have a similar clause that you aren't allow to run the car in a special low emission mode designed purely to game the test.
Or maybe VW's lawyers are so incompetent they didn't think of that and cost it billions of dollars.
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The US absolutely does prohibit the use of a defeat device, which is defined as a physical device which cheats the test, or software which performs the same purpose. Yes, it's worded much like that.
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The problem with that approach is that it's like bringing the person who wrote the test into the room to help you answer questions. You can rewrite the test 100s of times, the result will be the same if the device under test cheats.
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The only question I want answered is "did it pass the test as written by the government?". If yes, what's the problem. If you don't like the results, fix the test.
Its not the test.
Imagine if you had someone else sit an exam in your place. Would you be worthy of holding the certification after that? Because that is essentially what VW is doing with cheat devices.
The Euro and US tests have flaws, but the problem here is that manufacturers are employing cheat devices to pass them.
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The mission of modern effective engine control is to adopt to current situation and run the engine in a way that delivers the power needed in this situation with minimum exhaust/fuel. In any situation. Including tests.....
Line between adaptive motor control and defeat device became blurry.
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CS-Vs (tarted up LS-6 'vettes) aren't Cadillacs?
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This is really the case where I have a hard time grasping the test.
It's the automotive sector. Relative to the size of the market, there really aren't that many cars to test.
People are already aware or should be aware that the EPA results don't match to real world driving conditions.
Why not just do what many car magazines or journalists do. Take the car for a test run of mixed highway and city driving and report the results. You can have some baseline weather conditions for the test. You can have some train
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European Banking doesn't put up with this junk (Score:2)
This is stupid (Score:2)
The sooner we as a society can move to electric, the better.
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Maybe, maybe not. Bear in mind that for modest commuting in my moderate (low AC use) climate my crappy little Leaf accounts for only 20% of our power use.
At night we have huge offline capacity, often even an oversupply of just renewables like hydro and wind (highly region dependent). We've started to see negative spot pricing during the night in areas such as Texas due to more installed wind power than nighttime demand. Home charging today is pretty dumb, but it is not inconceivable that once electric fl
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Because 'Moore's law' all technological advances are inevitable.
See how stupid that sounds? Battery technology may or may not make IC cars obsolete soon. Devil is in the details.
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You know, I agree with a lot of what you said.
However it's not really relevant to what we're discussing.
The *point* is that electric cars use a hell of a lot less energy than ICE's[1], produce a lot less pollutants[2], and don't have to further compromise their efficiency by converting emissions into something else.
And that's a worst case scenario - I'm sure you'll know that electricity is increasingly being provided by wind and solar. Not as a base load of course, but massively reducing the amount of foss
The only penalty applicable right now. (Score:2)
Given the latest revelations, I doubt there a product they make that we can definitely say is actually compliant.
At this point, it's a plateful of lies smothered in bullshit sauce.
The only penalty regulators should be considering at this point is shutting them down.
VW caught cheating - again? (Score:1)
Doesn't sound like cheating (Score:1)
From the description, this doesn't sound like cheating. It simply sounds like the transmission shifting algorithm can vary shift points, which in turn can affect emissions. There's nothing surprising or revelatory about that. The real problem seems to be that the EPA is using a static test for a dynamic system.
Not new (Score:2)
Whatever they're paying these people to inspect these cars, they're paying them too much if they don't know about stuff like this.
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(IIRC) ZF also is one of two manufactures of automotive DCTs worldwide.
Similar software will be in the those for auto mode.
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It's quite possible that there is an alternate coding for your transmission that will alter its behavior to be more suitable. The unreliable ZF slushbox (ZF5HP42A) in my Audi (1997 A8 Quattro) became much nicer after I re-coded it from USA with DSP to rest of the world, DSP disable. It actually enables gear-holding behavior which is normally disabled, but unlike whatever it is you're driving it actually works really well. If you don't look at the rev counter the only hint it's doing it is the noise, and as