[solaris999]

This is the big next step that a lot of people were expecting - where in-depth studies into all of the competitors occurs and it's gradually revealed that this defeat device game has been played by almost everyone in the industry. It'll be interesting to see the repercussions for the automakers, but inevitably this'll end with sweeping legislation changes and reform of the testing protocol and standards.

[Zigurd]

This is a very good bet. The "defeat device" turns out to be using a feature of the ECU platform provided by the ECU supplier. It would be surprising to find that VW was the only maker to cheat, when the cheating mechanism was available to everyone.

There are some markets, like voting machines, where requiring open, buildable, verifiable code is good practice. Cars might be another.

[slasaus]

I was thinking of voting machines as well and think publicly verifiable code and hardware would be a good thing for cars (I don't think it's good enough for large scale elections, but that's another topic).

See this story about the need for open source for large publicly used systems: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/nyregion/volkswagens-diese...

[slasaus]

ps. just reading this in a post from Bruce Schneier[1] that is currently on the frontpage as well[2] which is about cheating software as used by car manufacturers and the IoT that is coming up:

    Voting machines could appear to work perfectly -- 
    except during the first Tuesday of November, when it 
    undetectably switches a few percent of votes from one 
    party's candidates to another's.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/volkswagen_an...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10304428

[aleh]

The only problem is that hardware to verify ECU code is an actual car of particular model with equipment to analyse exhaust. Or very precise mathematical model of it which would be much more expensive and would probably require super-computer to run.

[drzaiusapelord]

Industry self-testing has always been a bad idea. You make it sound like legislation would be a bad thing here.

[chiph]

It was a response to the large numbers of new models being introduced (each with a couple of engine + transmission combinations), such that the EPA and NHTSA were unable to keep up with the testing load each year.

In hindsight, those agencies should have been staffed better. Additional legislation (which is sure to come, if only so Congressmen can appear to be doing something about the problem) wouldn't have helped, as the cars didn't meet existing laws as it was.