Volkswagen's Diesel Emissions Nightmare

If you’ve turned on the news or checked out a newspaper lately, you’ve undoubtedly seen or read about the Volkswagen diesel emission scandal. If you haven’t, the scandal is pretty simple. Volkswagen programmed its diesel vehicles to only ‘turn on’ the emissions control system when the engine computer detected it was being tested by a regulatory agency such as the EPA. What this means is that millions of Volkswagen diesel vehicles have been pumping out harmful emissions at a rate ranging from 5 to 35 times the acceptable limit here in the US.

After being caught doctoring emissions results with clever computing, the Volkswagen Auto Group share price dropped 20% and Volkswagen’s CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned. It goes without saying that manipulating data clearly isn’t compatible with running a successful business. It’s interesting to think about how easy it must have been for a group of software developers and automobile engineers to create this software that ultimately cost the German economy billions of dollars.

As a result of modern day computers, the software that Volkswagen used to evade emissions testing is present in all of their 2.0-liter diesel engine vehicles. Had this been an isolated case with a single (or several) affected test car the magnitude of the scandal might be different. However, we can see that the integration of computers and cars made it possible to easily implement this devious software into millions of automobiles.

I have several questions after reading about the entire situation. First, why is that it this software was only discovered now in 2015? According to the Notice of Violation released by the EPA, this emissions manipulation has been found to affect cars from as long ago as 2009. I’m also curious about the impact this is going to have on other automakers… Will diesels become even less popular here in the States as a result of this computational cover up?

Regardless of what happens to Volkswagen or emissions laws in the US, one thing is certain—computers can be used to perpetrate and hide less than ethical or legal actions with apparent ease. We must remember that these systems are created by humans for humans and that the real enemy isn’t the computer itself. As we as a society continue to implement more computer systems in more devices in our lives—it will become essential to define what ethics apply or don’t apply to computer systems.

Works Consulted: 

http://business.financialpost.com/business-insider/anatomy-of-a-cheat-heres-what-volkswagen-did-and-how-they-get-caught

http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15.pdf