Boss: “Give me a diesel car that both gets 40mpg and meets USA Tier II emissions standards.”
Engineers: “But that’s impossible. The only way to meet USA NOx standards is to run the engine rich and then it will not get 40mpg.”
Boss: “You’re just being stubborn. If you refuse to obey, I will fire you and find engineers who can do the job.”
Engineers: “Uhm… okay….”
(Engineers go figure out how to make it both get 40mpg and meet USA Tier II emissions standards — i.e., by cheating.)
Engineers: “Okay, we made it both get 40mpg and meet USA Tier II emissions standards!”
Boss: “There. Was that so hard?”
I.e., I doubt there is a boss anywhere in the company who directly ordered the engineers to cheat, or has direct knowledge of the engineers cheating. Instead, he ordered the engineers to do something that was impossible to do unless the engineers cheated — and they did so.
]]>The VW board is still looking for the people in management who came up with this plan.
]]>Meanwhile Fiat’s been moaning and groaning for the past five years that they can’t import small diesels into the US because the equipment needed to make them meet emissions standards costs over $8K and simply won’t fit on anything smaller than a large SUV or pickup truck. Now we know how VW could sell small diesels in the USA for under $30K… they cheated. SIGH.
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