Originally Posted by
UltraFan
I cannot agree. The unspeakable crime of manipulating a computer chip in the engine to fake environmental readings cannot be compared to something as trivial as a system that flies a passenger plane into the ground.
Whilst accepting VW's apparent attempt to deceive and cheat for profit, there is a more generous way to interpret their actions.
Car manufacturers were obliged to produce cars which could pass the emissions standards tests. And they achieved that. - cars that passed emissions tests. Car manufacturers also need to have their fuel economy tested by very specific (non-real world) tests. It is no secret that cars / engines are tuned to perform particularly well in such tests, where it is well known that the real-world performance is a whole lot worse than the official figures show after some very inventive tweaking. What happened in the emissions scandal was pretty much exactly the same as that; some devious manipulation by some clever engineers, to achieve a pass for certification - it just went a step further than the economy 'tuning for the tests'. It is all a matter of degree, of optimising a car to pass tests.
An interesting analogy to Boeing 'optimising' systems to keep within the 'not different enough to need re-certifying or additional sim training'. The devil is in the detail.