Diesel-gate & VW’s Corporate Social Responsibility

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How Volkswagen Mocked Corporate Social
Responsibility
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Cars, Pollution the EPAs Efforts Through
Corporate Social Responsibilty
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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How Volkswagen Mocked Corporate Social
Responsibility the EPA
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Volkswagens 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The defeat devices would sense
emission testing procedures, and adjust engine
output to reduce pollutant emissions.
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How Does The Defeat Device Work Anyway?
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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.
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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.
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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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How Was Volkswagen Caught?
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The EPA never caught on to
Volkswagens software cheat
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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.
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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.
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Volkswagens Fallout From Largest Global Au-
tomotive Scandal
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Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned
due to the scandal.
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The US Justice Department is reported to
have opened a criminal investigation into
Volkswagen.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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EPA to step up testing emission standards
and procedures in the wake of VW scandal.
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Government Measures to Prevent Future
Software Cheats
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Researchers only caught VW thanks to physi-
cal testing, not software analyses.
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All software products, including those
controlling cars, are copyrighted content,
preventing inde- pendent researchers from
studying code for vul- nerabilities.
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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.
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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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