Image credit: autocarbrands.com
More damage on the way for the reputations and finances of underhand German car makers, it seems. It’s reportedly not related to previous charges over ‘cheat devices’, although the intentions look much the same.
BMW, and Volkswagen face possible hefty fines after EU antitrust regulators on Friday charged them and whistleblower Daimler with colluding to block the rollout of clean emissions technology, reports Yahoo! News.
In the latest pollution scandal to hit the auto industry, the European Commission said it had sent statements of objections to the German carmakers setting out the charges, nearly two years after carrying out dawn raids at their premises.
It said the collusion occurred between 2006 to 2014 and took place during technical meetings held by the “circle of five”, namely BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen Group’s VW, Audi and Porsche.
“Daimler, VW and BMW may have broken EU competition rules. As a result, European consumers may have been denied the opportunity to buy cars with the best available technology,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
BMW said it would contest the allegations “with all legal means if necessary”.
It also said it was probable the Commission would issue a “significant fine” and it would set aside a provision of likely more than 1 billion euros, hurting first-quarter earnings.
The EU focused on selective catalytic reduction systems, which reduce nitrogen oxides from diesel car emissions, and “Otto” particulate filters that reduce particulate matter emissions from petrol cars.
EU enforcers said their case was not related to other investigations into the use of illegal defeat devices to cheat emissions tests and possible violations of environmental laws.
EU fines could go as high as 10 percent of a company’s global turnover.
Full report here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
[…] via Top German carmakers charged with blocking clean emissions technology […]
Perhaps the German carmakers could quietly let their lunatic government know the political costs of shutting down their assembly lines for a month to settle this whole matter. There seems to be no end to governments around the world pushing ludicrous levels of clean emissions legislation.
The Greens will never stop legislating until the car makers go bankrupt – and I suspect this is their aim.
A prosecution for being disrespectful to electric vehicles must be being planned and I’d wager that Article 13 will be invoked against people daring to point out that Teslas and the like are predominantly fossil fuel powered vanity cruisers for rich people.
“pushing ludicrous levels of clean emissions”
10-4. In the late ’60s, we started tackling air pollution from cars. We succeeded.
The green campaigners folded their tents and said, “Thanks! Great job, everybody!”
Uhhh . . . what? They are still fighting for cleaner air?
Cleaner than WHAT?
What are they supposed to have blocked? The Yahoo link didn’t say. Diesels have been equipped with SCR for some time. The technology is fairly mature. I’m not sure what grand new innovations in SCR are in the pipeline. Tinkering around the edges with catalyst substrate is not new technology.
Ah, I see the european socialist wing of the UN is working according to plan. This move is an offshoot of their trying to castrate the west and bring in a socialist world government.
The blameless CO2 was used because it could be tied in with fossil fuels and it is necessary for them to be eliminated to allow range limited electric cars to come to the forefront as required by Agendas 21 / 30. Only the elite government officials will be allowed to travel in large FF burning cars and aircraft, everyone else must be in the
slave campssustainable cities for their own good.I know this sounds like a dystopian SF novel but it is the best fit to the facts as we know them.
Were they colluding with Russians?
The NYT article says:
The commission said that for most of a decade, Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW had agreed not to compete on key components of their pollution controls, violating antitrust laws and contributing to bad air quality in traffic-clogged cities like London and Paris.
Instead, the carmakers colluded to restrict the size of tanks used to hold a fluid that cleanses diesel emissions, the commission said, while delaying deployment of filters that remove cancer-causing particles from the exhaust of gasoline engines.
See: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/suggestions-38/comment-page-1/#comment-148411
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Under-sized cleansing tanks and missing or obsolete filters.
What is left of the free West starts pushing back hard now or it will soon be too late.
The single biggest issue is the belief that an electric car is “zero emission” It is in every country almost always coal fired.
So always when you see your best “virtue signaling” friend come in their Tasla ask how they like their coal fired car. It generally leads to conflict but this is a war, a gorilla war, they move amidst us.
Read a copy of Ayn Rand’s book Anthem if you would like to see the world all this stupidity is leading to, especially now the UN is pushing for a world reserve currency.
‘while delaying deployment of filters that remove cancer-causing particles from the exhaust of gasoline engines.’
There are no cancer-causing particles in the exhaust of gasoline engines. Nor diesel engines. The NYT is lying. Conspicuously. Flagrantly.
Gamecock – re the NYT
You might think that, but we at the Talkshop couldn’t possibly comment 😎
If these carmakers had any guts, they could say collectively we are moving our HO to say the Bahamas, shutting our German plants moving them to the US and will import cars to the EU. Then watch the German government quickly change tack and remove any clauses about electric vehicles. Do you know that VW and Mercedes make more cars in China than in Germany? A slow change but the boards of the companies still consider the politics rather than the wellbing of the shareholders.
I understand. But this isn’t just Gamecock’s opinion.
https://www.amazon.com/Scare-Pollution-Why-How-Fix/dp/0998259713/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
Latest from Germany…
APRIL 14, 2019
Daimler faces probe over ‘new cheating software’
According to the Bild report, around 60,000 vehicles of the Mercedes-Benz GLK 220 CDI models produced between 2012 and 2015 were affected.
The software allegedly reduced emissions of nitrogen oxide during test conditions. On the road however, the affected vehicles were spewing out amounts of the harmful gas that were above regulatory limits.
The KBA last year had already ordered Daimler to recall 700,000 vehicles worldwide, including 280,000 in Germany, over illegal software—a ruling the carmaker is appealing.
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-daimler-probe-software.html