[londons_explore]

I support no prison sentences for VW... The engineers were meeting the letter but not the spirit of the rules, just as so many other companies do.

You probably have done the same when you did revision just before a geography test at school - you probably only learnt the syllabus rather than going to the library and learning everything in the geography section.

The VW engineers made a car that had only 'revised' enough to do well in the test, not to do well in the real world. Here is another example of engineers doing the same in a different industry[1].

[1]: http://omattos.com/2021/11/11/appliancegate-the-energy-effic...

[DoingIsLearning]

I know HN rules but this is apologetic bullshit.

The firmware actually detected if it was in test chamber conditions and ran in 'eco' mode. Outside these conditions it went full performance/full polluting mode.

This is text book fraudulent behaviour with complete lack of duty of care for anyone breathing the air near those exhaust pipes in city centres across the world.

[pretendscholar]

Lol no it is not like studying for a test and doing well on it. It is like cheating on your med school exams and then taking that license and killing people through malpractice. What they did was highly illegal and unethical.

[fnimick]

And anyone who has done the same to cheat the tests in other industries should also be penalized accordingly. I can't believe you're excusing deceptive behavior and test cheating because "everyone does it!"

[mechanical_bear]

I can’t believe you are using grade school bad behavior to justify polluting.