Your diesel Mercedes-Benz might be illegally polluting. How carmaker is paying for cheating
In another major scandal involving California and nationwide air-pollution standards, Mercedes-Benz and its German parent have been fined $1.5 billion for equipping their diesel cars with illegal software.
Daimler AG and its Mercedes-Benz USA subsidiary agreed to pay $1.5 billion in fines, including $286 million to the state of California, after investigators discovered diesel cars equipped with “defeat device” software enabling the vehicles to evade air-pollution limits.
The settlement was announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board on Monday — one day before the fifth anniversary of the the landmark disclosure of a similar but much larger scandal involving another German automaker, Volkswagen.
Federal and state officials said Daimler sold more than 250,000 illegally-equipped diesel Sprinter vans and Mercedes-Benz passenger cars in the United States. About 37,000 of the vehicles were sold in California. The settlement requires the automaker to contact owners and fix at least 85% of the vehicles within three years, or pay additional financial penalties.
Officials said the “defeat device” software activated the emissions-control mechanism in the cars when they were being tested in labs to certify that they met state and federal pollution standards. The software switched off the mechanism when the vehicles were on the open road. Experts say emissions controls can hurt fuel mileage and overall vehicle performance.
Investigators uncovered the problem by inspecting the vehicles at the California Air Resources Board’s lab in El Monte and an EPA lab in Michigan.
“The Daimler diesel vehicles involved in this case emitted several times the legal amount of smog-forming pollution depending on the model,” the Air Resources Board said.
In a statement from Stuttgart, Germany, the company said it “denies the authorities’ allegations” but has fully cooperated with the investigations.
“By concluding the proceedings, Daimler avoids lengthy court actions with respective legal and financial risks,” the company said.
Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom said Daimler was on the verge of joining an alliance of automakers that had sided with California in a fight against the Trump administration over rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions. But the company hasn’t joined after all.
One of the companies that’s joined California in the fight is Volkswagen — the company that was nabbed in the largest diesel pollution scandal of all.
In 2015 Volkswagen was forced to pay more than $14 billion in fines and other penalties after investigators uncovered similar software in a wide range of Volkswagen diesel cars. The El Monte lab played a pivotal role in confirming suspicions that Volkswagen had been cheating on pollution standards.
“Automakers must learn that in this state, CARB will continue to use the very latest and most sophisticated science and technology to catch cheating and violations that impact our air and health,” said Mary Nichols, the chairwoman of the Air Resources Board, in a prepared statement.
This story was originally published September 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.