German politicians call a meeting to brake Dieselgate

After a two-year avalanche of revelations – from diesel emissions manipulation to claims of cartel collusion – German politicians will give car executives an unusually chilly reception in Berlin on Wednesday.
At an emergency “diesel summit” increasingly jittery federal politicians and leaders of car-building states – Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Baden Württemberg – will read auto executives the riot act over their handling of a scandal with growing political and economic consequences.

On September 18, 2015, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that VW had installed illegal 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 that some 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide, including 8.5 million in Europe, had been fitted with the software.

While VW has agreed a €22 billion settlement with the US authorities, where the legal system allows class action lawsuits, the car group denies it has legal cases to answer in Europe, where class action suits are not common and individual car-owners must sue.

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 offered no compensation to drivers in the European Union, irritating the bloc's consumer protection authorities.

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 returned to the black in 2016, with net profits of 5.1 billion euros, and overtook Japan's Toyota to become the world's top-selling automaker, with sales of 10.3 million vehicles.

Spiegel magazine in July published details of a VW letter to the German and European competition authorities, which it said showed auto giants had been working together on technology, suppliers, costs, sales and markets since the 1990s.

A spokesman for Volkswagen told AFP that the group would not comment on "speculation and conjecture." BMW and Daimler similarly declined to comment.