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Germany orders recall of 43,000 Opel diesel vehicles

Germany's KBA transport authority said Friday it had ordered carmaker Opel to recall tens of thousands of diesel vehicles worldwide that were configured to fool regulatory emissions tests.

Published: 19 October 2018 18:03 CEST
Germany orders recall of 43,000 Opel diesel vehicles
A traffic light turns red in front of the company logo of the car manufacturer Opel in Hessen. Photo: DPA

The authority “ordered an obligatory recall on October 17th” for Opel Insignia, Cascada and Zafira diesels meeting the latest Euro 6 emissions standard manufactured between 2013 and 2016, saying they were fitted with an
“illegal 'defeat device'”.

Such software is designed to make vehicles appear less polluting during regulators' tests than in real on-road driving.

Opel has already begun voluntary refits to the 96,000 affected vehicles across Europe, a company spokesman told AFP, with some 43,000 yet to be updated.

SEE ALSO: German prosecutors raid Opel over diesel allegations

That means an officially-approved refit procedure exists that can quickly be applied to the recalled vehicles.

However, Opel has rejected the KBA's finding that its vehicles performed illegally, and said Monday it would contest any compulsory recall order.

Opel this week became the latest German household name to suffer a police search at its headquarters in the wake of the “dieselgate” scandal, in which Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to installing defeat devices in 11 million vehicles worldwide.

Other prominent carmakers like Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler and BMW have already digested recalls of their own, while official probes into the emissions cheating are under way.

Meanwhile, German luxury automaker Daimler on Friday again cut its profit outlook for 2018, warning that costs related to polluting diesel engines would drag down earnings.

The Mercedes-Benz maker, which this year had to recall more than 770,000 diesel cars across Europe, said it now expected earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to come in “significantly below” last year's figure.

The diesel saga erupted in 2015 when German rival Volkswagen admitted to installing “defeat devices” in 11 million diesels worldwide designed to dupe emissions tests and make the cars seem less polluting than they were.

Suspicions have since spread to other automakers as well.

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POLLUTION

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

The EU's top court ruled on Thursday that Germany continually violated upper limits for nitrogen dioxide, a polluting gas from diesel motors that causes major health problems, over several years.

Published: 3 June 2021 11:35 CEST
'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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