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Switzerland bans new Porsche SUVs over emissions cheating

Switzerland said on Friday that it will no longer register Porsche's luxury SUV, the Cayenne, with diesel engines citing the fallout from the emissions scandal that has rocked neighbouring Germany's car industry.

Published: 18 August 2017 15:49 CEST

Switzerland bans new Porsche SUVs over emissions cheating

File photo: DPA.

Previously registered Cayennes can stay on Swiss roads, but no newly purchased vehicles with diesel engines will be cleared to drive, the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) said in a statement, citing the need “to protect the environment”.

Germany's transport ministry last month announced that “illegal” software disguising the true level of polluting emissions had been discovered in Porsche's Cayenne and Macan models with diesel engines, which needed to be fixed.

READ ALSO: Germany orders recall of 22,000 Porsches over emissions cheating

A total of 22,000 vehicles were recalled, widening the scandal over emissions test cheating that has plagued parent-company Volkswagen for two years.

Volkswagen, the world's largest carmaker, has admitted to using so-called “defeat device” software to cheat regulatory nitrogen oxides emissions tests.

The devices allowed the cars to spew up to 40 times the permissible limits of polluting nitrogen oxide during normal driving, but this was hidden during emissions testing.

SEE ALSO: What you should know about the 'dieselgate scandal' shaking up Germany's car industry

'Infringement on air quality': EU court slams Germany for pollution in cities

Cars sit in traffic in Stuttgart's Hauptstätter Straße in July 2020. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Sebastian Gollnow

Germany infringed air quality rules “by systematically and persistently exceeding” the annual nitrogen dioxide limit in 26 out of 89 areas from 2010 to 2016, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in its ruling.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, referred the matter to the ECJ in 2018 after almost a decade of warnings that went unaddressed.

The decision against Europe’s top economy echoes a ruling targeting France in October 2019 after the commission stepped up its anti-pollution fight in the wake of the so-called “Dieselgate” scandal that erupted in 2015 with revelations about Germany’s Volkswagen.

The motors caught up in the scandal — in which automakers installed
special emission-cheating devices into their car engines — are the main emitters of nitrogen oxides that the European Environment Agency says are responsible for 68,000 premature deaths per year in the EU.

READ ALSO: Five things to know about Germany’s dieselgate scandal

Nitrogen dioxide is toxic and can cause significant respiratory problems as one of the main constituents of traffic-jam smog.

Under EU rules, member countries are required to keep the gas to under 40 micrograms per cubic metre — but that level is often exceeded in many traffic-clogged European cities.

The judgement opens the way to possible sanctions at a later stage. However the air quality throughout much of Germany has improved in the last five years, particularly during the shutdowns in the pandemic.

The environment ministry said that 90 cities exceeded national pollution limits in 2016 — the final year covered by the court ruling. By 2019, the number had fallen to 25 and last year, during the coronavirus outbreak, it was just six.

The case involved 26 areas in Germany, including Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart as well as urban and rural areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, Mainz, Worms/Frankenthal/Ludwigshafen and Koblenz/Neuwied.

“Furthermore, Germany infringed the directive by systematically and
persistently exceeding, during that period, the hourly limit value for NO2 in two of those zones” — the Stuttgart area and the Rhine-Main region.

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