Picture a car on a test bench. A rule says its exhaust may carry only so much of a gas that harms lungs. On the bench it passes. On the road it gives off up to forty times the limit. Between the two is software that notices it is being tested. This is Volkswagen, 2015, and about 11 million cars.
A limit and a test→A target: biggest in the world→Engineers who could not meet both→Software that cheats the test
Take it apart with the course. The rule came down the ladder: a law, a limit, a test. The target came from the top: to be the biggest carmaker in the world, with clean diesel as the way in. The hands were engineers whose bosses decided a car that met the limit would not sell. The target beat the rule.
The rulethe limit
vsvs
The targetbiggest in the world
From lesson 8, which beat which?
The target beat the rule. Pay, deadlines and the plan followed the sales, so the hands did.
Right. The limit was read once. The deadline and the plan were read every morning, and the software was written to the deadline.
The rule beat the target. The cars passed the test.
Not yet. Passing a test by detecting it is the rule being cheated, not followed. Lesson 1's cook could have signed the sheet without washing.
Neither. Software has no target.
Not yet. The software was written by engineers to hit a deadline the target set. A tool carries its author's target.
Cars on a real road
↓→
A university's meter
↓→
The finding, 2014
Where were the three lines? The first line wrote the software. Whatever checking the company had did not catch it, and the court papers say its people hid the software from the regulators who asked. A university in West Virginia found it, paid by a research group, driving diesel cars on real roads with a meter in the boot.
Tap the thing that actually caught it.
Tap the part of the picture that answers it.
The first linewrote it
++
The company's checksdid not catch it
++
A university outsidemeasured the road
A university outside
Right. Nobody inside the three lines caught it. An outsider with a meter did: nobody inside found it; someone outside measured it.
The first line
Not yet. The first line wrote the software. The people doing the work were the people doing the cheating, which is why a first line cannot be the only line.
The company's checks
Not yet. Whatever the company checked, it did not compare the road with the bench, and the people who objected were told to carry on. A check the boss can overrule is no check.
Picture the company's choice in 2006, when its bosses decided a car that met the limit would not sell. Move what the company does and see the bill, in billions of euros. Made up to show the shape; the last frame is the real one.
2 of 32
€ billion
What the company does: Meet the limit with dearer engines
Meet the limit with dearer engines: about €2 billion. Dearer engines on millions of cars. Made up, and the honest bill.
3 of 32
€ billion
What the company does: Delay the cars and miss the target
Delay the cars and miss the target: about €3 billion. Showrooms with no diesel to sell, and the plan to be biggest slips a year.
0 of 32
€ billion
What the company does: Cheat the test, never caught
Cheat the test, never caught: nothing. This is the frame the engineers were living in.
32 of 32
€ billion
What the company does: Cheat the test, caught in 2015
Cheat the test, caught in 2015: about €32 billion. Fines, buy-backs, refits, compensation: more than €32 billion by 2021, and two men in prison besides.
Why did the cheat look cheap in 2007?
Because the fine was small.
Not yet. The US penalty alone was billions. Most of the 32 was buying back and fixing cars and paying the people who bought them; the fine was the smaller part.
Because the 32 only exists in the frame where it is caught, and in 2006 nobody was pricing that frame.
Right. Honest engines cost 2, the cheat cost 0 as long as nobody measured a road. The whole bill lived in a frame the company chose not to look at, for nine years.
Because cheating is always cheaper.
Not yet. The caught frame is sixteen times the honest one. The cheat was cheaper only if the chance of being caught was priced at nearly nothing, and that is a choice, not a fact.
Move the control.
$4.3 billionUS guilty plea
++
over €31 billionThe bill by 2020
Then the ladder. The chief executive resigned within five days. In the US the company pleaded guilty and paid $4.3 billion; an engineer and a manager went to prison, the manager for seven years. By 2020 the company put its bill at over €31 billion. In 2022 it paid £193 million to 91,000 drivers in England and Wales.
Each card is a piece of the case. Which part of the course is it?
One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.
Card 1 of 6
A limit on exhaust gas, set by law
A plan to be the biggest carmaker in the world
Software that notices the test
Diesel cars driven on real roads with a meter in the boot
A judge accepting a guilty plea and $4.3 billion
Engineers who objected, and a boss who said carry on
A limit on exhaust gas, set by law → Rule and ladder
Not yet. The rule. It came down the ladder from a law to a test, which is chapter 1.
A plan to be the biggest carmaker in the world → Inside the company
Not yet. Inside the company. That is the target, and the target is what the pay and the deadlines followed.
Software that notices the test → Inside the company
Not yet. Inside the company. The hand's answer to a target it could not meet honestly: the first line, cheating.
Diesel cars driven on real roads with a meter in the boot → The finding
Not yet. The finding. Nobody inside found it; someone outside measured it.
A judge accepting a guilty plea and $4.3 billion → Rule and ladder
Not yet. The ladder. A court at the top rung, dealing with the company, and separately with its people.
Engineers who objected, and a boss who said carry on → Inside the company
Not yet. Inside the company. The court papers say some engineers did object and took it to a boss, and the boss told them not to get caught. The check was there, and the company overruled it.
2Rule and ladder
++
3Inside
++
1The finding
Right. Two, three, one. The rule and the court sit outside the company; the target, the hand and the missing check sit inside it; and the finding came from neither, which is the usual way.
Put the course's four questions in the order it asked them.
Tap them in the order they happen, first to last. Each tap gets a number.
The rule→The company→The big rules→The ladder
Right. The rule, the building, the rules everyone meets, and what happens when it goes wrong. Each one needs the one before: you cannot build for a rule you cannot trace, or climb a ladder for a breach nobody told you about.
The waiting listthe rule
++
The targetbeat it
++
Who checks?
A new case: a hospital hits its waiting-time target by quietly moving patients off the list. From the course, name the parts.
Just one bad manager.
Not yet. The engineers in this lesson were not one bad engineer either. The parts were a target, a deadline and a check that failed, and all three are here.
A data breach. It is about records.
Not yet. The names were not leaked; they were moved. The rule broken is the waiting-time rule, and a falsified record is the ladder's court rung, not the data lesson.
A rule, a target that beat it, hands that moved the names, a check that did not catch it, and a watcher waiting for a tip.
Right. The same parts as the cars: the target was read every morning and the rule once, nobody compared the list with the patients, and the watcher will hear of it when someone tells.
Lesson complete
One case held the whole course: a rule, a target, a hand, a failed check, a finding, and the ladder.