{"id":6560,"date":"2016-01-06T09:18:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T14:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kasperskydaily.com\/uk\/?p=6560"},"modified":"2019-11-22T10:11:52","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T10:11:52","slug":"explaining-how-volkswagen-dieselgate-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/explaining-how-volkswagen-dieselgate-happened\/6560\/","title":{"rendered":"Explaining how Volkswagen Dieselgate happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the recent Chaos Communication Congress<\/a> in Hamburg two IT experts, Felix Domke and Daniel Lange (former Head of IT strategy at BMW) gave a talk on what exactly had happened with Volkswagen\u2019s cheating of emissions tests.<\/p>\n

Over the last several months we have seen a large ammount of media stories published on Diesel-gate. With that said, few explained how this trickery worked and who is really responsible for its im-plementation. That\u2019s why it\u2019s interesting to look at the research conducted by independent experts who tried to find out the truth.<\/p>\n

\"dieselgate-32c3-lange-domke\"<\/p>\n

Why this trickery had occurred at the first place?<\/h3>\n

The biggest issue of emissions tests is that they are always performed with some standard model, like the so-called NEDC<\/a> (New European Driving Cycle). This model consists of a few pretty short ac-celeration-braking cycles and one long cycle with higher speed, which represent city and highway traffic respectively. In real life nobody drives like this, and definitely nobody drives exactly<\/i> like this.<\/p>\n

\"dieselgate-32c3-nedc\"<\/p>\n

But for emissions measurement they use this very model, thus engineers at car companies can do tricks to improve measurement results. Why do they do it? Plain and simple: it\u2019s way cheaper than to do real improvements. If an enterprise could do something in a cheaper way, it definitely would pre-fer this way to any other as the bottom line is important to company performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrickery on that tests is very common,\u201d says Lange. \u201cWhat tricks people are doing to drive down the emissions? For example they blow up the tires by 3 bars<\/a> more than you could actually use them on the road. The bottom of the tire looks like this, so that means that you only have that very small por-tion of the tire that still touches the ground, your resistance gets reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"dieselgate-32c2-trickery\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThey put diesel into the oil, because diesel is lighter than the oil, so friction gets reduced. They take off the mirror on a passenger side, because that is not legally required to exist. So resistance gets away with it. They tape close all the openings of the vehicle. Obviously, when the wind goes over it, it goes much smoother once you have everything taped. All of these things are either Ok, or they kind of borderline grey area. And they do this. This is how actually emissions are tested.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"dieselgate-32c3-nox-emissions\"

NOx emissions in NEDC and alternative ADAC tests<\/p><\/div>\n

The results of this trickery are very simple: measured values have pretty much nothing to do with what is going on in the real world. The whole auto industry knows this very well. Perhaps every car manufacturer uses software tweaks, just like Volkswagen did. As a matter of fact, 15 years ago BMW was actually caught<\/a> on using a similar trick with software of its motorcycle.<\/p>\n

\"dieselgate-32c2-bmw\"<\/p>\n

But how do they deploy these software cheats? To understand that, we need to examine how cars\u2019 electronic systems work.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s inside the box<\/s> car?<\/h3>\n

The piece of electronics directly responsible for everything that happens with car\u2019s engine, including exhaust, is Engine Control Unit<\/a> (or ECU). Car manufacturers don\u2019t develop these devices them-selves, but purchase this equipment from companies who specialize in vehicle electronics systems. There are not that many companies, and at least in Germany the market leader is Bosch.<\/p>\n

\n

Breaking News: E.P.A. orders Volkswagen to recall nearly a half-million carshttp:\/\/t.co\/WNqBPQnHbd<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 The New York Times (@nytimes) September 18, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n