After cars, trucks also cheat
After cars, trucks also cheat
The European Commission (EC) has imposed a record fine of 2.93 billion euros on truck manufacturers for illegal cartels linked to a technology for reducing polluting emissions. MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, and DAF are involved.
It’s not on the level of Volkswagen, which installed rigging software to distort emissions tests, but still. “Truck manufacturers colluded for 14 years on the sale prices of trucks as well as on the possibility of passing on to buyers the costs of complying with stricter emission rules,” the Commission explains in a statement.
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The manufacturers involved are Daimler, which is fined the most, €1.01 billion, Paccar (DAF), Volvo/Renault, and Iveco.
“It is not acceptable that MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, and DAF, which together produce about 9 out of 10 medium and heavy trucks in Europe, have entered into a cartel instead of competing,” said Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in the same statement.
MAN, a Volkswagen subsidiary, has denounced the cartel
Ironically, MAN, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, has not been sanctioned, because it is she who denounced the cartel and alerted the European executive.
Volvo/Renault will have to pay a fine of 670.4 million euros and Iveco, a subsidiary of truck and tractor manufacturer CHN Industrial, will have to pay 494.6 million euros.
DAF Trucks, owned by Paccar, has been fined 752.7 million euros.
Daimler already has a fine in its accounts!
The four companies have admitted the facts in exchange for a 10% reduction in fines and the German Daimler announced that it had already made provisions to cover the fine from Brussels.
The owner of Mercedes, which said last week that it had set aside 400 million euros to cover unspecified litigation costs, had already set aside 600 million euros to cover the fine.
Truck manufacturers have invested heavily in recent years to bring their engines into compliance with the EU’s so-called Euro VI standards, which are intended to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. These standards have been introduced in stages since 1993 and their VI version has been in force since 2014.
“Manufacturers need to change and so do regulators; they need to create competition on green performance. Introducing fuel economy standards is one way to do that,” responded William Todts, director of the green organization Transport and Environment.