The Safety Regulations Of The Automobile Industry

Volkswagen is one of the largest automakers in the world and it has a global reputation as a high-quality German auto brand. Social responsibility is included in VW’s corporate culture and it seems that Volkswagen made some advances in Corporate Social Responsibility because the corporation was ranked 11th 2015 in the Global CSR Rep Track 100, which listed companies by reputation (Reputation Institute, 2015).However, the company has been threatened by an emission scandal which broke in September 2015, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disclosed that Volkswagen had installed defeat devices on diesel cars which were sold in the US. These devices equipped on VW cars cheated regulators in such a way that it could detect

“Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God” (Romans 13:1). This verse provides the spiritual rule, that when followed, prevents many negative incidents and their consequences. However, the engineers broke this command and made conscious decisions to design, develop, and produce vehicles that violated established law. In fact, the emissions produced were, “…as much as 40 times what is allowed by the U.S. standard defined by the Clean Air Act” (Mercuri & Neumann, 2016, p. 24).

The mistrust between the Volkswagen Company and their customers developed after the scandal associated with the incorrect emission of data and cheating of the system unfolded.  The scandal occurred on the eighteenth of September 2015 when it was found that the company had made a car with a turbo that released emission directly into the real word atmosphere. The allegations were genuine and were proved by the Environment Protection Agency in the United States (EPA) (Hotten, 2016).The chief

Volkswagen company put sensors in the emission component, so when tested, the examiner sees that the car meets emission standards. But because the sensors are to meet U.S emission standards, the car itself can be modified to ignore the sensor’s override and make the car believe it was in use. TFL motors was curious about the scam, so they decided to put a Jetta TDI turbo diesel on an AWD Dyno, to confuse the car into thinking it’s on the street, not being checked for emissions. Being in emissions mode, the AWD dyno lost horsepower and torque, but without the sensors active the car produced excess diesel exhaust, going over the EPA regulated limit. The car itself was able to perform at a higher level without the sensors active, proving reason to hide the fact that excess exhaust is produced. Certain companies realize the regulations hold their products back, so to promote the fuel efficiency and or horsepower of the car, they would gladly hide the fact that their cars are emitting excess diesel exhaust. Some ways to prevent excess exhaust would be to install EGR coolers, or to buy tuners for your engine’s valves. But many professional truckers tend to stick with rolling coal. “Rolling coal” can happen by making a smoke switch, or removing emission controls on truck models, and adding a tuner to produce fine smoke build ups. Diesel exhaust is actually less harmful then a

As a multinational corporation, the implication of the scandal determines the fate of numerous stakeholders both internal and external. Internal stakeholders comprise of the board, managers and employees while external stakeholders subsume shareholders, customers and suppliers. The economic, political and social impacts of the dishonest practices would shape the fate of Volkswagen and affect the future prospects of the automotive industry. Common shareholders whilst not involved in the day to day running of the business placed faith and belief in the firm by providing capital had suffered severe economic loss as share prices (get something for stat). Despite the callous deception in advertising the defeat device displayed no signs of disturbing vehicle performance, however, customers of Volkswagen and its subsidiary vehicles suffer from lower resale value. In addition, even though the scandal was global, European consumers were the most affected with diesel cars accounting for 41% of all European cars (Fontaras, 2016). This high percentage in respect to other nations is a result of incentives provided by the European Union for the purchase of diesel vehicles such as subsidies towards the production process resulting in lower premiums compared to petrol counterparts (Vidal, 2015) In additional with sales falling suppliers of Volkswagen would likely lose future contracts or have current contracts downgraded as less parts are required. Thus, this loss of future

The environmental laws are based on reducing CO2 emission. Every organization associated with the automotive industry has to bide with the laws for introducing products in the market.

Legal: Legal action taken by car owners, shareholders and the EPA have the power to fine and sue VW for up to 37, 000.00 dollars per vehicle for breaching environmental standards regarding nitrogen oxide emissions from their vehicles, and a maximum fine of roughly 18 billion dollars may be issued by the EPA (Hotten, 2015). Breaching legal regulations, particularly environmental regulations, set out by government departments will result in poor company reputation as VW will be seen as a significant contributor to environmental issues such as air

In 2014, questions began to arise surrounding the Volkswagen and the emissions that their diesel cars produced. It came to light that the company was violating U.S. environmental regulations by installing software in their cars that was able to sense when emissions were being tested and limit the operations that increase emissions during the test thus producing a lower score. The result of this was that Volkswagen had produced and sold approximately 10,000 vehicles that violated U.S. law. In the early part of 2017, the FBI arrested Oliver Schmidt, a Volkswagen official, in Florida based on his connection to Volkswagens criminal activities. This case illustrates an ever growing issue in the world: international white collar crime. Globalization

They stated that it was the right thing to do, and that they are sorry for all the inconvenience. They were right in doing so because they do not deserve those awards if their diesel lineup is on the back burner.

In September the world of car industry went upside down when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed the car manufacturer company Volkswagen had installed a software on their cars to evade the emission of high pollution during the tests. Volkswagen was proven of violating the United States code title 42 chapter 85 Subchapter I Part A 7412 that specifies that any modification in a product that increases the emission of any air pollutant is considered dangerous and violates the Clean Air Act. Other than Volkswagen more companies are being suspects like Robert Bosch who is believed of being the developer of the device.

Engineer James Liang found himself entangled in a deep running scandal by means of an organized effort by Volkswagen to dupe emissions testing performed by the United States Government (Tabuchi, Ewing). With upcoming changes to the United States emission standards, Liang and his team came to the realization that their new diesel engine concept would come up short to meeting the new specifications (Department of Justice). Rather than scrapping the idea and spending additional time, effort, and resources to develop an engine that complied with the new standards, Liang and associates made the conscious decision to develop and equip new vehicles with a circumventive system (Tabuchi, Ewing). This system possessed the ability to detect whether the

As engineers, they strived to create a new diesel engine with lower emissions, not for their own personal gain, but because it was their duty as engineers at Volkswagen. Once they realized they couldn’t design an engine to specifications, their duty to tell the truth was disregarded completely.

Volkswagen committed an atrocity, worse even than making tanks for Hitler. They (or at least someone) willfully allowed toxic NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) gases to dissipate into the atmosphere. They no doubt need to recompense, but $48 Billion is just too much. That is an insane precedent to be set, and wildly unnecessary. No company in history could survive a hit like that, $48 Billion is over 75 percent of the Volkswagen’s market capital (all of the outstanding stocks multiplied by their value).

Of course they did not care about the consequences neither the harm they will be

In early 2014 a group of scientists at West Virginia University, 2 students and two professors tested three cars for their emissions. For Passat and Jetta two Volkswagen cars, their found that in real driving conditions the US emissions limits was exceeded by factor of 15 to 25 and by factor 5 to 20 for Jetta and Passat respectively.(1) This confirmed the discrepancies already found by International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCDT) in Europe. On 18 September 2015 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) seed a Notice o Violation (NOV) alleging that Volkswagen Group had an emissions-compliance defeat device installed.(2) In this case this defeat device was an installed firmware with an algorithm intentionally forged with an intention to detect and falsify emission tests. Since then couple of heads has rolled, but as my best knowledge it is still not known which individual software engineers are personally responsible for doing this. But from software engineer point of view it might be interesting to answer the question what can we learn from this affair? What IT professional issues it raised?