How Volkswagen Mocked Corporate Social Responsibility: “DieselGate” Outs Sustainable Business Sham In September 2015, the automotive industry played witness to the largest scandal among its ranks in recent history, as Volkswagen was caught cheating with its pants down. The German car manufacturer had recently overtaken Toyota in sales, in the first half of 2015, to establish itself as the leader of the global car market. Though, this shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone, since VW was largely leading the automotive industry in terms of revenues, profits, and assets even in 2013. The world was left with jaws agape in early September, as the German giant admitted to placing “cheat” software in roughly 11 million of its diesel-engined cars worldwide. Carried out since 2009 onwards, this subterfuge was perpetrated in an effort to deceive pollutant emissions testing in developed markets like US and EU. As investigations into the fraud continue, the primary reason seems to be that Volkswagen did not wish to install a Urea-based exhaust system marketed as AdBlue – roughly $336 per unit – into the “clean diesel” engines which they'd spent years developing for their 2009 models. In-house testing into the engines revealed that they emitted roughly 35 to 40 times the amount of nitrogen oxide, linked to smog, acid rain, asthma, and other illnesses, above the limits allowed by clean air legislation in developed nations. Suddenly, the car manufacturer was faced with two options – go back to the drawing board and miss out on the 2009 car season, or spend exorbitant amounts of money to fix the problem by retro-fitting their engines with AdBlue. They chose option three – cheat through a “defeat device” software. Ironically, the test which ultimately uncovered the deception was carried out by independent American researchers – working for an NGO, rather than the EPA or other bigwig agencies – to show their European counterparts that diesel engines can be used with cleaner emissions. Despite their published efforts coming to light in 2014, however, the EPA was unable to make Volkswagen admit to the cheat till September 2015 – after threatening to withhold approval for VW's and Audi's 2016 diesel models. Now, after having lost its CEO in the wake of the scandal alongwith almost a fifth of its share value, Volkswagen is looking at criminal investigations from the US and Chinese governments, a legal penalty for $18 billion for the roughly 482,000 cars it sold in US, and class-action lawsuits from owners of post-2009 VW Jetta, Golf, Beetle, and Passat, as well as similar Audi diesel models. Even though the firm has set aside roughly $7.3 billion to deal with this scandal, early projections show that this amount may be grossly insufficient. By now, we're sure that you have a flood of unanswered questions – What are these “defeat devices”? How do they affect the car's performance? For more visit > > > cake.hr

1. How Volkswagen Mocked Corporate Social Responsibility

2. Cars, Pollution & the EPA’s Efforts Through Corporate Social
Responsibilty

3. In a perfect engine, oxygen in the air would convert all hy-
drogen to water, and fuel carbons to carbon dioxide – but in
reality, engines emit several types of polutants.

4. Motor vehicles are responsible for nearly 50% of
smog-forming compounds, more than 50% of acid-rain con-
tributing nitrogen oxide, and account for 75% of carbon
monoxide emissions in US.

5. The Clean Air Act of 1970 gave the Environmental
Protection Agency broad authority to regulate motor vehicle
pollution, which gave the agency authority over pollution
control standards for the automotive industry.

6. However, while the EPA created the standards,
automotive companies were left to self-regulate
through corporate social responsibility practices in
order to create sutainable business models.

7. How Volkswagen Mocked Corporate Social
Responsibility & the EPA

8. Volkswagen’s diesel engines were known for
their great fuel economy, but their engine could
stay within pollutant emission limits only when
more diesel was being burnt, which would wreck
the mileage.

9. Under normal conditions, when less fuel was used in on-
road conditions, the diesel engines released up to 40 times
the legal limit of pollutants.

10. According to New York Times, in 2008, VW
discovered that the new “clean diesel engines”
it spent years developing would fail US and
EU modern air quality standards by significant
margins.

11. To clear their pollutant-vomiting cars through
testing, VW installed “defeat devices” in their
diesel cars, including Skodas, Audis, and
commercial VWs totalling roughly 11 million in
number, from 2009 onwards.

12. The “defeat devices” would sense emission
testing procedures, and adjust engine output to
reduce pollutant emissions.

13. How Does The “Defeat Device” Work Anyway?

14. Modern cars have several software and
hardware computing elements which sense,
read, and calculate various metrics to make
thousands of small, continuous adjustments to the
vehicle.

15. The “defeat device” was a specialized
software which read steering wheel position, tire
rotation, atmospheric pressure, duration of engine
run-time, etc. to determine if car was “on-road” or
in “emission testing”.

16. If the software determined that the car was be-
ing tested for emissions, it would increase the
amount of fuel being burned in the engine, and so
lower nitrogen oxide pollutant emission levels.

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18. How Was Volkswagen Caught?

19. The EPA never caught on to Volkswagen’s
software cheat

20. The scandal was unearthed by a team of
researchers at West Virginia University who
used a mobile testing rig to test the pollutant
emissions of a VW Jetta and VW Passat while
driving on-road.

21. The team published their findings in spring 2014,
and their research was used by the EPA to make
Volkswagen admit to the “defeat device” in Septem-
ber 2015.

22. Volkswagen’s Fallout From Largest Global Au-
tomotive Scandal

23. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned
due to the scandal.

24. The US Justice Department is reported to have
opened a criminal investigation into Volkswagen.

25. Matthias Muller, Porsche chief and new VW
CEO, has ordered tiered mass recalls for upgrade
on roughly 11 million affected cars to remove
“cheat” software.

26. The company is facing roughly $37,500 in US
federal fines per vehicle for the roughly 482,000
cars sold in the country – bringing a whopping
tally of $18 billion to be paid.

27. The German manufacturer, which had recently
become the largest automotive company in
the world, has put aside $7.3 billion for expenses
relating to this fiasco, though preliminary
data suggests that this figure may be grossly
inadequate.

28. Class-action lawsuits from car owners
already underway in US against Volkswagen,
on grounds of misrepresentation of vehicular
performance, breach of contract, increased fuel
costs for drivers, and heavier depreciation of
vehicular value.

29. EPA to step up testing emission standards and
procedures in the wake of VW scandal.

30. Government Measures to Prevent Future
Software “Cheats”

31. Researchers only caught VW thanks to physi-
cal testing, not software analyses.

32. All software products, including those controlling
cars, are copyrighted content, preventing inde-
pendent researchers from studying code for vul-
nerabilities.

33. Copyright office considering making an
exception for automotive software, so
independent researchers can check software for
future cheats and vulnerabilities, but EPA ironically
just opposed that exemption, according to The
Verge.

34. “So long as the DMCA hinders or chills law-
abiding researchers from casting their eyes on
code, more bugs – and insidious code – will end
up in the devices we trust our livelihoods and lives
to.”
Sherwin Siy, VP of legal affairs at Public
Knowledge to The Verge.

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