Daimler ready to fight cheating accusations as probe widens

Bloomberg

Daimler AG said it will push back against allegations that
it manipulated emissions in
its Mercedes-Benz engines,
as a German government pr-obe into the luxury-car
ma-ker deepens.
“We would employ all legal means” to defend against any accusation by the Federal Transport Motor Authority of an illegal defeat device in Mercedes-Benz cars, the company said in an emailed statement. Daimler was responding to an article in Der Spiegel magazine which said government examiners suspect that such a device was built into some vehicles.
Daimler’s statement comes
a day after top executives
were summoned for a special meeting to Berlin to discuss
an ongoing probe into the
carmaker’s engines, and hours after the German governm-
ent said it would expand its
examination to include additional models.
The motor transport authority, or KBA, which is also looking into potential emissions violations at other carmakers, will oversee these additional tests, Transport Ministry spokesman Ingo Strater told reporters in Berlin.
Details emerged that two engines used in Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz cars were being scrutinized by Stuttgart prosecutors as part of an investigation they opened in March.
“The KBA is testing vehicles from Daimler, just as it has done with other manufacturers in the past,” Strater said. Daimler stock fell 0.8 percent to 64.66 euros as of 4:23 p.m. in Frankfurt, heading for its steepest decline this month. The stock has dropped 8.5 percent this year in the worst performance on Germany’s bench-
mark DAX Index, valuing
the Stuttgart-based carmaker at 69.2 billion euros ($79.3
billion).
Germany’s scrutiny of Daimler deepens concerns that defeat devices used to cheat on emissions tests were used more widely than initially thought. Volkswagen AG was the first manufacturer to be caught, admitting in September 2015 that it used the technology in about 11 million cars.

ENGINES SCRUTINIZED
At Daimler, German prosecutors are focused on two diesel motors built between 2008 to 2016 that are used across Mercedes’s product lineup, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Details about the engines in question were contained in a search warrant used to conduct raids at Daimler sites in May.