• Question: .What do you think about the VW cheating in the tests

    Asked by 592smbd43 to Aaron on 9 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Aaron Boardley

      Aaron Boardley answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      I think it’s bad. It seems they deliberately misled their customers. A lot of people have been misled, and a lot of people have lost trust in car makers now.

      Are VW the only company to have done it? We don’t know.

      People say VW did it because they were under pressure to keep emissions down as well as keeping costs down. This is no excuse for lying. But it does make me think. We need to keep carbon dioxide and poisonous gases out of the atmosphere, but we also don’t want to pay more. Is this possible? Do we need to accept that if we want new and better technology that has lower emissions then we will have to pay more to develop this technology? What do you think?

      This is the challenge for engineers, coming up with new solutions, new technologies, and new equipment to solve problems – while balancing the needs of costs and speed.

Comments

  • Photo: Pete

    Pete commented on :

    I think it’s probably going to end up being a really interesting story of how people can collectively work together to deliver something awful without quite realising the ethics of what they are doing. The story isn’t out yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts with ‘Well these tests they make us put our cars through are ridiculous. They don’t reflect real world driving conditions…’ and ends with ‘this is a neat trick to get round the regulators.’
    This is what I’d call a ‘process story’. There is a huge amount to learn about how VW got to the point of doing this, and how regulators need to adjust to prevent similar scandals in future.
    Most engineering fields have rules and they are there to keep us safe but the safety features often make things more expensive so it’s quite common to find engineers looking at how to follow the spirit of the rules but get right up to the limits of what the rules actually say. (making a car without airbags, seat belts, crumple zones and so on would be cheaper but it’s not allowed and rightly so)

    Poor air quality kills thousands of people every year, and diesel engines are worse than petrol engines for air pollution. But the real answer there is to make walking, cycling and public transport so safe, so convenient and so good that people leave their cars at home (or simply don’t have one).