twyalen wrote:
不好意思，我們就事...(恕刪)
原文是Forbes的, 以下.
CARB Finds New Audi Defeat Device, German Paper Digs Up Smoking Gun Document
Bertel Schmitt ,
Contributor
I have written about the auto industry all my life.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Engineers at the California regulator CARB found another, previously unreported defeat device, German tabloid Bild am Sonntag [paywall] reports. The paper also found a document that is bound to affect the career of Volkswagen Group powertrain chief Axel Eiser, if not higher-ups. For Volkswagen, the find comes at an inopportune moment. The company wants to cut a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, and it recently reported progress in the negotiations. The new affair “clouds the prospects” for a deal, the paper says. The scandal also puts Audi in the cross-hairs of European tax collectors, who usually are less understanding than the EU’s paper tiger automotive regulators.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) detected the defeat device software in an automatic transmission Audi four months ago, says BamS. According to the paper, the device causes lower mileage and hence higher CO2 emissions when the car is off the “rolling road” used in official emission tests.
The paper said that the device, which keys on movements of the steering wheel to detect that the car is in the lab, has been used in “several hundred thousand” diesel and gasoline-powered cars sold by Audi throughout the world. According to the report, Audi engines with the automatic transmission AL 551, as used in Audi A6, A8, Q5 and others, were equipped with the device until as late as May 2016, eight months after Volkswagen’s dieselgate scandal became public in September 2015.
According to the paper, the cheater device is camouflaged as a “warm-up function. As long as the warm-up runs, the transmission stays in a low rev mode, it uses less fuel and produces less CO2. This fuel saver mode is only active when the vehicle is in the testing bay. In normal traffic, the warm-up is deactivated, and the transmission switches to a mode with higher fuel consumption.”
The report, if true, is bound to attract the attention of Europe’s tax collectors. In most parts of the EU, CO2 emissions have an immediate effect on the car tax. A little NOx here and there is routinely overlooked, but the line is being drawn at understated taxes. Earlier in the year, Volkswagen said that more than 800,000 VW cars sold in Europe supposedly had understated CO2 numbers. This immediately alerted European finance ministries. In various EU countries, police raided Volkswagen offices. Volkswagen begged that the tax bills are sent straight to Wolfsburg. Then, VW declared that it all was a clerical mistake.
To make matters worse for Volkswagen, the new scandal won’t be easily explained away as the work of a few rogue engineers who lacked adult supervision. BamS found a document where Audi’s chief of powertrains, Axel Eiser, asks:
“When will we have the cycle-optimized shift program?” The program, says the document “needs to be designed to be 100% active on the dyno, but only 0.01% in the hands of the customer.”高層指示在此.
After Volkswagen decapitated its technical leadership in the wake of dieselgate, Audi manager Eiser was made head of all powertrain development of the Volkswagen Group. When Volkswagen had to answer questions of the European Parliament’s Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector (EMIS), Eiser was among the grilled managers.
According to the report, Audi already “suspended several responsible engineers.” No word about Eiser. Audi CEO Rupert Stadler so far ducked calls for his ouster. If the reports are true, Stadler will be very busy dodging bullets.
“All pre-dieselgate decision-makers should have been eliminated long ago,” told me an audibly irritated Volkswagen manager, reached after reading the BamS report this morning in Wolfsburg. “Now, everybody will talk about Stadler being in trouble, that [VW CEO] Müller once was in charge of product management, and that [VW China boss] Heizmann used to be in charge of production. Everybody will be flustered, and once more, nothing will happen.”
P.S. After this story was written, Volkswagen announced “that the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office has extended its investigation against two members of the Company’s Board for alleged market manipulation to include Hans Dieter Pötsch. Based on careful examination by internal and external legal experts, the Company reaffirms its belief that the Volkswagen Board of Management duly fulfilled its disclosure obligation under German capital markets law. The proceedings refer to the period during which Hans Dieter Pötsch served as the Group Chief Financial Officer. The Company and Hans Dieter Pötsch will continue to give the inquiries by the public prosecutor’s office their full support.”
The Braunschweig prosecutor opened the market manipulation probe in June, targeting former CEO Martin Winterkorn and current Volkswagen brand chief Herbert Diess.
P.P.S. On Monday, the Germany Transport Ministry said that “U.S. authorities have not shared any information with Germany” regarding the new defeat device in Audi cars, Reuters wrote. Ministry spokesman Sebastian Hille promised that “the KBA (motor vehicle authority) is making sure that it will receive information on the issue and as a next step it will make an assessment.”
