German Carmakers Meet To Set Fresh Standards For Diesels: The Two-Way: NPR
German Carmakers Meet To Set Fresh Standards For Diesels
The harass pipes of a VW diesel car are photographed in Frankfurt, Germany, on Wednesday. German auto bosses, ministers and state governors are considering how to reduce diesel emissions as drivers face the threat of possible bans on driving older diesel cars in some cities. Michael Probst/AP hide caption
The harass pipes of a VW diesel car are photographed in Frankfurt, Germany, on Wednesday. German auto bosses, ministers and state governors are considering how to reduce diesel emissions as drivers face the threat of possible bans on driving older diesel cars in some cities.
German carmakers and politicians are meeting in Berlin at an “emergency diesel summit” this week to attempt to shore up eroding market share amid concerns over pollution in Europe’s major cities.
They also hope to put to rest a major scandal over the manipulation of emissions testing data.
NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports that the two sides are expected on Wednesday to agree to lower emissions of smog-causing nitrogen oxides in Germany’s fifteen million diesel vehicles.
Soraya says that in the lead-up to the summit, manufacturers and the German government haggled over reducing emissions by improving auto software, something that would cost several hundred million euros. Alternately, hardware fixes would be far more expensive – estimated at around five billion euros ($Five.9 billion). In either case, much of the cost would be absorbed by the companies.
Germany is Europe’s leading car manufacturer, and Volkswagen — the company at the heart of the faked emissions testing data — is among the world’s largest carmakers.
As NPR’s Bill Chappell reported in 2015, Volkswagen had installed “test-cheating software on eleven million vehicles worldwide” that misreported the emissions data. In the U.S., the software was installed on more than 480,000 diesel VW and Audi vehicles.
It has led to a crisis of confidence in Germany’s vaunted auto industry, which employs one out of five workers in the country. Die Welt newspaper published an opinion poll Wednesday demonstrating that seventy three percent of Germans want politicians to crack down on the industry to improve emissions standards.
In latest weeks, VW, BMW and Daimler have also been hit by lawsuits claiming they acted as a cartel to illegally drive up car prices.
Increasingly, German carmakers are facing a market dilemma. While in the U.S., the market share for diesels is minuscule – about one percent — in Europe, half of all fresh vehicles sold have a diesel under the spandex hood.
Europe incentivized diesels for their fuel efficiency, but the trade-off was more polluting vehicles. The problem of smog from diesel harass has reached a critical stage in Europe and three major cities there; Paris, Madrid and Athens have said they will ban diesel vehicles by 2025. They were joined by Mexico City.
Pollution concerns and puny, but growing sales of hybrid-electric and chargeable electrical vehicles are already having a negative influence on market share for diesels in Europe. Some analysts think the percentage of diesels sold in Europe could plummet to just thirty percent by 2020. Meantime, UBS Group estimates the worldwide share of diesels will fall to four percent by two thousand twenty five from 13.Five percent today.
“We still need a strong auto industry. We want our carmakers to proceed to be successful in the world and to carry on building the best cars,” Armin Laschet, the premier of the North-Rhine Westphalia region, was quoted by Reuters as telling.
“We need to save diesel . but there must also be a fresh thrust into the electrified era,” he said.