I admit it. I own one of those cars that is affected by the
scandal surrounding a certain German car company. I chose the car because the
specification said it had the performance to do the
job required as well as adequate safety
systems and creature comforts. I trusted the manufacturer and the regulators to
ensure that the car met current legal and environmental requirements. As far as
I was concerned, it was a "black box”*.
On the face of it, it appears that the company stands squarely in
the dock but I think the testing agencies are there too.
As identified in a recent WSJ
report, the
company has been hoodwinking the US (and possibly the European) test
agencies. The EMS - a computer that controls the engine based on data from
sensors littered all over the vehicle, including the driver’s controls - has
been programmed to recognise when the car is in a test situation and alter the
engine performance accordingly. Now that the US EPA has discovered what’s going
on it is not difficult to imagine how it was done.
Several questions for the company arise from this discovery.
The first relates to the management “culture” of the company and,
in particular, of that of the design team responsible. The CEO of the company
in the US (Michel Horn) has stated
to the US House Energy and Commerce Committee that it was the work of a few “individuals” and happened
without the knowledge of the board.
This is strange, for it appeared that the company had made some
significant break-through in Diesel technology when the new engine was
announced. The brilliant engineers had managed to cajole their diesel engines
to meet a tough environmental standard in a way that not only delivered good
engine performance and fuel economy but also without the costly paraphernalia
of Urea injection systems that other diesel engine manufacturers needed. This
was not questioned at the time by the motoring journals, the public, other
manufacturers or the Board of Directors of the car company.
It appears that this Board had expressed no interest in how this
feat had been achieved. Given the way this company has prided itself on both
its technology and know-how, one would have thought that someone in the
organisation would have questioned this and, had they been given a truthful
answer, been suspicious. It's not that the senior management should know
how their engineers achieved the result but that they should have ethics policies
and audit procedures in place to make sure that the result had been achieved
according to these policies. Or perhaps the company management style and
reward mechanisms are so strong on achievement and conformity that no one dared
to ask the question. The panel of a recent BBC podcast of “The
Bottom Line” certainly seem to think so.
Quite where the company goes from here is difficult to plot; they
have to find a technical fix for the 11 million or so vehicles that are
affected, one that will meet the demands of both the regulators and their
existing customers. Neither will be easy. There’s talk of a “class” action
being taken out by lawyers on behalf of (and crowd funded by) the "deceived"
customers.
The regulatory test agencies should be in the dock too. They have
two questions to answer. One is how they originally established the standards and
the required tests; the second is how can they ensure that not only do the engines
now meet the mechanics of the test, but that they meet its intention too – e.g.
the emissions are controlled in all conditions.
The test standards and
processes are developed
jointly with the motor industry: this may compromise both the standards and the
processes.
This is a regulatory system failure akin to (but perhaps not as economically serious as) the changes to
bank regulations that are thought to have triggered the financial crash of
2008.
The second point, which is really a sub set of the first, is how
the test authority can ensure that the cars meet the intention of the standard
Perhaps they have to adopt the type approval testing applied within the
aircraft industry - the test authority should insist on access to the computer
code.
Would the authorities have the resources and capability to examine
it in the detail required? If not, could the verification be “crowd sourced” by
making the code “open access”? At present such code is the intellectual
property of the company. In some jurisdictions, non-franchised repair
organisations find it difficult to gain access to it for diagnostic use. Once
the code is made public, clever programmers will be able to subvert it and
provide customers with software to defeat the probable changes made to comply
with the regulations. David Golumbia discusses this issue in his article
in Uncomputing .
Let’s assume that the car company can satisfy the regulators that
the changes they plan to make to the affected engines are effective: it’s still
not the end of the issue. At present, there
is no legal requirement (in the UK) for an owner of an affected vehicle to have
it retrofitted. Including a test of these emissions in the mandatory annual
test of roadworthiness (due after a vehicle is three years old) would force the
issue. It is possible that such measurement may be
required from some time in 2018. This gives the grey industry plenty of
time to develop test beating “retrofit” kits that can be removed prior to the
test - already, owners can “chip” their vehicles to improve performance. Such “test
beating” might be discovered if would be possible to measure the emissions from
specific vehicles from the roadside – so far, such measurement does not appear to be on the
horizon local or government agencies within the UK.
Whilst on the subject of software in cars, another question
arises. Computers are ubiquitous in cars – they control significant safety
systems: traction control, anti-skid, and cruise control and navigation. There
have been several demonstrations of hackers taking control, the most recent by
a wire free remote
connection.
Computer control will soon be extended to the full “autonomous”
vehicle. This poses the question of whether regulation can move fast
enough to protect the public from the unintended consequences of the next
technology. The UK government has made a start in this direction and published
a set of guidelines under which such vehicles may be tested but these have yet
to be translated into regulations.
The recent revelations also pose a moral question to be answered
by users of the vehicles affected for there have been claims in the UK press
that NOx emissions by diesel cars account for a number of deaths from pulmonary
diseases each year. The sources for this information are unclear. The UK
government committee on the medical
effects of air pollutants in April of
this year was uncertain and called for more research.
So what should the customer do now? Is continued use acceptable
until the modification is applied? Is the modification just a technical fix
with further unintended consequences? It might just push me (and the Company)
into going electric.
But the regulation of test processes has to be resolved soon.
Notes
*
It is black, as it happens but by "black box" I'm referring to is
piece of finished technology as discussed in the book "Science in
Action" by Bruno Latour, published by The Open University Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment