The higher-up executives are also in hot water - Martin Winterkorn, then the CEO, is under indictment in both Germany and the US, and is likely to face prison time after his (more complicated, because his involvement worked through deniable cutouts) trial.
Re:Voltswagen of America
by BurningFrog on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @04:46PM
(#26640223)
> re-map the ECU
Sorry, what does this mean in layman's terms?
Change the parameters used to calculate the fine details of how the internal combustion engine operates, e.g. how much fuel to inject into each cylinder, when to send a spark to trigger ignition, how much pressure should the turbocharger provide, etc.
I can only recommend watching this 2015 talk at German Chaos Communication Congress about the technical details of the scandal. It's in English and really worth watching if you're technically interested. They reverse engineered the ECU configurations and showed how the manipulation works.
https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...
> sheds are biked ad nausuem
What does this mean?
It's from an old parable, also called Parkinson's Law of Triviality. Basically, simple things get discussed more because everyone can understand them. It goes something like this:
"If a committee designs a bikeshed, they will spend five minutes discussing the structural requirements, half an hour on the size, and the rest of the available time arguing about what color to paint the shed."
Oh ok. I wonder why he didn't just say "bikeshedding."
Spot of literary flair
It wouldn't fit grammatically.
because I'm a flashy git, but you're right to question it.
VW is not some bottoms up startup. It has a clear micromanaged road map for virtually everything. Data is gathered, sheds are biked ad nausuem.
this person was jailed because they were the last one holding the hot potatoe. There is no way (according to said associate) that upper management were not aware of what was going on. as any decision like that has to have approval.
It is/was a wide spread practice, well known in the industry. I know that ford used to routinely re-map the ECU after the warranty period, which boosted the miles per gallon at the expense of various pollutants.