If VW engineers are smart enough to design an engine management system that can spot when the car/engine is being tested on a rolling road, and then modify it’s performance accordingly, their engineering skills are to be praised, though the ethics and morals behind those skills are perhaps less praiseworthy!
In a warped sense… yes! I find it odd that 1) they took this gamble in the first place and 2) they used so much time, energy and resource in producing this naughty engine management system instead of developing one that kept emissions down all the time. On top of that, I was always under the impression that the heads of German car companies had a solid technical and engineering background (rather than our strain of wussy rent-a-CEOs) and could roll up the shirtsleeves and build motors if necessary. Usually this rhetoric is brought up by those that claim the UK is stuffed because of our lack of heavy industry. In light of this, I find it hard to believe that the head of VW had no knowledge of this fiddling. Is this indicative of a wider culture within the car industry, perhaps top-heavy companies forcing underlings to scrabble around to meet impossible targets? With the level of lobbying from the car industry in the US I find it odd that emissions targets weren’t more easily attainable, either by being set lower (ie higher acceptable emissions levels) or by fiddling figures the old fashioned way, such as making them up.
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