Skip to main content

Volkswagen to Conduct Emergency Meeting Over EU Cartel Allegations, BMW Plays it Cool

Volkswagen will hold an emergency supervisory board meeting on Wednesday to discuss recent allegations that Germany’s automakers have been operating as an automotive cartel since the 1990s. Meanwhile, Daimler’s workers’ council is demanding answers from management as the automaker reels from a one-two-punch of collusion and emissions cheating accusations.

“I advise the car industry to clear the air now, to say what has happened, and then we can look to the future together again,” parliamentary group leader Volker Kauder, said Monday on German television. “If the antitrust violations prove true, and there’s a lot to suggest that, then one must really say the clear sentence: the rule of law also applies to the car industry.”

However, claiming there is sufficient proof to prosecute is a little premature. With the exception of a somewhat damning letter intercepted from VW, no hard evidence of collusion has been made public. Investigators are still in the early stages of the antitrust probe and have given few details as to its progress. 

Regardless how true the allegations are, Germany’s automakers will still be entering damage control this summer. BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen’s share price all took a hit on Monday morning after investors, soured by the news, sold off their shares en masse.

A large contributor to the recent cartel suspicions are the similarities between Mercedes’ recent recall of 3 million diesel vehicles and the one that led Volkswagen to disaster in 2015. It was suggested by Der Spiegel that German automakers conspired to use smaller diesel emission fluid (DEF) tanks, which resulted in the use of software-based defeat devices when the systems failed to meet emissions standards. However, the size of the tanks should be irrelevant and BMW has been quick to remind everyone that its diesel technology had passed muster — denying the company has ever involved itself in any emissions cheating.

“As a matter of principle: BMW Group vehicles are not manipulated and comply with respective legal requirements,” the company said in a statement. “Of course this also applies to diesel vehicles. The BMW Group categorically rejects accusations that Euro 6 diesel vehicles sold by the company do not provide adequate exhaust gas treatment due to AdBlue tanks that are too small.”

It’s unlikely the governmental probe will yield any fast answers, but that hasn’t prevented those affected from demanding them. According to Reuters, Daimler works council chief Michael Brecht called for an immediate investigation into the antitrust claims. Brecht stated that “workers are rightly horrified and angry” by the allegations and that consequences should result if they’re proven true.

Volkswagen’s union council had similar concerns. “Management has the duty to thoroughly inform the supervisory board. That hasn’t happened yet,” the VW works council said in an official statement. “We also expect the management board to give an explanation to the workforce. Trust in company leadership is dwindling more each day.”

A spokesperson from Volkswagen has confirmed that chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch will convene a special supervisory board meeting to the discuss the matter on Wednesday morning. Daimler has not made any plans for such a meeting, according to company spokeswoman Ute Wüest von Vellberg, but it will report its quarterly results on June 26th — and the board is likely to convene beforehand.

Presently, the only standing accusations revolve around the price fixing of various automotive parts, specifically the AdBlue diesel treatment systems. There have been no claims made that any automaker engaged in price fixing to consumers.

This article first appeared on thetruthaboutcars.com

The post Volkswagen to Conduct Emergency Meeting Over EU Cartel Allegations, BMW Plays it Cool appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2vFV607
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volkswagen Group Records Best Ever First-Half-of-Year Sales

With 5.5 million vehicles in customer hands after the first six months of 2018, the Volkswagen Group is seeing the best performance of its history. Group deliveries increased significantly in all core regions,” said Fred Kappler, head of sales for the Group. “Our core brands recorded strong growth in the first half year.” For the year-to-date, all of Volkswagen’s brands had sales bumps. MAN, SEAT, and Skoda led the sales charge with performances 24%, 17% and 11% better than the previous year. The big sellers, too, had strong sales periods, with Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, and Volkswagen sales rising 3.5%, 4.5% and 6.3% respectively. That last figure is particularly good new for the board, since Volkswagen alone sold more than 3 million vehicles in the first half of 2018. As Kappler stated, the numbers are equally good when you break sales down by region. Brazil and Russia were the most improved markets (22% and 20%, respectively), while strong sales in Europe and China (u...
2 comments
Read more

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...
Post a Comment
Read more