Is ‘diesel summit’ the last chance for Germany’s favourite engine?
Pressure grows on govt and automakers to curb or ditch diesel technology The ‘dieselgate’ scandal
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, July 30, (AFP): Germany hosts a debate on the future of diesel engines next week as pressure grows on the government and automakers to curb or ditch a technology tarred by a reputation for pollution and cheating.
The “national diesel forum” takes place in Berlin on Wednesday amid renewed suspicions of emissions-fixing and a clamour for diesel-powered vehicles to be banned from cities to reduce pollution.
“The reputation of cars ‘made in Germany’ risk being damaged and that’s something that would be dreadful,” said Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt in an interview with Bild daily.
“The automobile industry has driven itself into difficult territory” ... and it “has a responsibility to win back trust,” he added.
With its engineering prowess, profitability and role as an employment powerhouse, the car sector traditionally wields massive political clout in Germany.
But both parties in the governing coalition, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) led by Martin Schulz and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU), are keeping the industry at arm’s length as September parliamentary elections loom.
“Mrs Merkel is trying to calm things down before the elections, that’s the main reason for this summit,” Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the CAR automobile research centre told ARD public television.
Breaking with a political habit of cosying up to carmakers — which provide FRANKFURT AM MAIN, July 30, (AFP): German government officials and automakers meet in Berlin Wednesday to discuss the future of diesel vehicles, after a nearly two-year saga of scandal spread from Volkswagen to others in the sector.
Here is an overview of the controversy:
How the scandal started On Sept 18, 2015, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that VW had used so-called defeat devices in hundreds of thousands of 2.0-litre engines in the US since 2009.
The software, used in the Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, Seat and Skoda brands, helped make the cars meet exhaust pollution standards when monitored in tests, but in real life their emissions exceeded the limits.
Four days later the company admitted
more than 800,000 jobs in Germany’s largest industrial sector — Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said Thursday that overfamiliarity had been a mistake, as it allowed company bosses to believe they were untouchable.
Hendricks and Dobrindt will lead a summit packed with carmakers active in Germany, including VW with its Audi and Porsche subsidiaries, Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler, BMW, Opel and Ford, whose European HQ that some 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide, including 8.5 million in Europe, had been fitted with the software.
The stunning disclosure sent its shares plunging by 40 percent in two days.
VW’s response VW chief executive Martin Winterkorn stepped down five days after the scandal broke, insisting however that he knew nothing of the scam. He was replaced by Porsche chief Matthias Mueller.
As part of its efforts to turn the page on the crisis, the firm suspended some staff and recalled vehicles equipped with the cheating software.
VW’s guilty plea to a US criminal case in March this year settled its legal entanglements there, adding $4.3 billion in criminal and civil fines to $17.5 billion it had agreed
stands in Cologne.
On Thursday, Dobrindt ordered Porsche to recall 22,000 vehicles across Europe after what he called “illegal” software disguising the true level of emissions had been discovered in its Cayenne and Macan models.
Because the affected models are still being manufactured, the government will also deny any permits for the vehicles “until new software is available,” he said. to pay in compensation to owners and dealers and for environmental cleanup.
It has also announced a renewed focus on electric vehicles, aiming to become the world leader in electric cars by 2025.
Unlike in the US, where VW offered to buy back affected customers’ vehicles, it has offere.d no compensation to drivers in the European Union — irritating the bloc’s consumer protection authorities.
Consequences for VW VW announced a net loss of nearly 1.6 billion euros in 2015, its first in 20 years, after setting aside billions to cover the anticipated costs of the scandal.
But it came back into the black in 2016, with net profits of 5.1 billion euros, and overtook Japan’s Toyota to become the world’s topselling automaker, with sales of
The VDA auto industry federation, the car importers’ association VDIK, powerful trade union IG Metall and the local and regional governments most affected by air pollution are all invited to Wednesday’s talks.
SPD lawmaker Johannes Kahrs took Merkel to task over her absence at the meeting.
“When millions of diesel engines have been manipulated, and one of the biggest industries of the country is in 10.3 million vehicles.
VW has made provision for 22.6 billion euros in its accounts since the start to meet the legal costs of the affair, but added no new cash to the pot in the second quarter of 2017.
It still faces lawsuits from thousands of car buyers and investors in Germany and investigations elsewhere.
Cartel allegation Suspicions of cheating meanwhile have fallen on other firms in the German car industry, such as Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler, BMW and VW’s luxury subsidiaries Audi and Porsche.
On Friday, Der Spiegel magazine published details of a VW letter to the German and European competition authorities, which it said showed firms had been working together on technology, suppliers, costs, sales and markets since the 1990s.
danger, the chancellor should be present at the diesel summit,” he told business weekly Handelsblatt.
Topping the agenda at the talks will be the task of reducing air pollution from diesel technology.
But Dudenhoeffer expects nothing but a “pretend solution” that will not go far enough. Consumer and environmental organisations are meanwhile incensed that they have not been invited.
Even so, widening public concern about pollution provides a powerful spur for the auto industry to rethink its commitment to diesel.
Germany has already been warned by the European Commission about its bad air quality. On Friday, a court in Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, found that a ban on older diesel vehicles would be the most effective way of reducing the pollution and protecting public health.
Such restrictions could be a massive blow to those using the cars, which make up around one-third of the total on German roads.
The Stuttgart ruling also piles pressure on politicians to abandon their support for a voluntary approach by the car industry to fix the problem.
Other countries have announced drastic measures — even if implementation remains decades away.
Both Britain and France will stop sales of fossil-fuel vehicles from 2040, but the move appears extremely unlikely in Germany, which has deep historic connections to diesel.
The technology can be traced to a German inventor, Rudolf Diesel, in the 1890s.
Part of the problem is that some foreign manufacturers invested heavily on hybrid or all-electric vehicles to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but Germany’s car industry largely bet on diesel.
The fuel contributes less climatealtering carbon dioxide (CO2) gas than petrol-burning motors. But it emits more NOx, which contributes to the formation of harmful smog, as well as fine particules that can hurt respiratory and cardiac health.