The Digital Life

The Digital Life


The Volkswagen Software Scandal

October 01, 2015

Jon: Welcome to Episode 123 of The Digital Life, a show about our adventures in the world of design and technology. I’m your host, Jon Follett, and with me is founder and co-host, Dirk Knemeyer.

Dirk: Hey, Jon, how’s it going?

Jon: Pretty good. Today I wanted to talk with you a little bit about what is turning out to be one of the biggest corporate scandals of the year and it just happens to be also a software-related scandal, so I thought it would be an interesting topic to explore for us. Of course, I’m talking about the Volkswagen scandal and alongside that the increasingly important role that software is playing in controlling our physical world. The Volkswagen scenario may just be one of many software-based cheating scandals to come and it’s probably not the first time software has been used to circumvent regulation, but it’s so high-profile that it feels like a game changer to me.

Let’s get started here with a quick recap of the scandal so far. We’ve got Volkswagen, the biggest automaker in the world and they get caught red-handed for rigging their diesel engine emission tests in the U.S. and in Europe. They did this by installing a software defeat device. I love this name. It’s all over the news now, a defeat device, to make cars appear cleaner when they’re being tested and then the software changes the settings in the car and then when it’s on the road it emits whatever, 40x as much emissions and pollution into the atmosphere.

There’s a lab that discovers this and brings it to the attention of the EPA and so far they’ve figured that these defeat devices have been on cars since 2009, so around six years or so. The provider of the software, Robert Bosch GmbH, that they have a warning from them to VW that basically says if you use this software to rig emission tests that’s illegal, you can’t do that. You have this incredibly sophisticated software, but for media attention purposes and for the purposes of your everyday viewer or listener or reader it’s a very simple scandal. They used software to cheat like gangbusters for the past six years on emission tests, so what do you make of this situation so far, Dirk?

Dirk: It’s certainly shocking in its audacity and scale, but not surprising from another perspective, right. Big company, trying to make more money, trying to … Who knows what the genesis is. Probably invested a whole bunch in some technology, some engine technology or whatever the hell and then in reality it didn’t … From an emissions perspective it wasn’t working the way it should or they miscalculated something, whatever, and then they’re left with a choice. The company could take huge financial hits beset years back in their model year strategy and all that rubbish or they can fudge the tests and keep going. I suspect that once this is all unpeeled it’s going to come down to something like that where it wasn’t that they set out and said oh, we’re going to make the world’s most emissions unfriendly cars and then just hide it, ha, ha, ha.

Jon: Right.

Dirk: I’m sure it’s a response to something, but that’s a response that’s terrible. We’re in the midst of all these issues around global warming and trying to control carbon output and the whole nine yards and then there’s this. Yeah, conceptually not surprised, it’s what big companies do, but in the specifics of it it’s pretty horrifying.

Jon: Yeah, I wonder if it’s the equivalent of the Superfund sites of the 1970s except you’ve got your software equivalent, right. This is dumping barrels of toxic chemicals into the river when you know very well what they’re going to do, right. This is the software equivalent of that. What’s fascinating to me is that you have this digital world which we all know that the effects that software has on real life whether it’s all this talk about the Internet of things, or the software that runs our electrical systems, or the software that runs any of