On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), accusing the company of using software to understate emissions in 104,000 cars with diesel engines.
Fiat Chrysler expressed disappointment with the decision of the Ministry of Justice.
Reports that the FCA, like Volkswagen AG, understated emission data, appeared in Western media back in April last year. German Bild reported similar suspicions of the German authorities against the FCA.
In January 2017, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused the FCA of illegally using unknown equipment or software that underestimates the emission figures of cars produced by the concern.
In Europe, searches were carried out in 11 office buildings of the German automotive concern Daimler, Deutsche Welle reports. Investigative actions were carried out in Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony and Saxony. The police searched for "clues and data carriers" in connection with illegal advertising and manipulation of the level of exhaust gas on Daimler diesel models.
Information that international legal bodies - in particular, the US Department of Justice - have questions to Daimler in connection with suspicion of manipulating the level of exhausts, appeared in April 2016. However, the scale of the current searches is still a surprise.
"It has long been believed that only Volkswagen is a" black sheep” in the diesel issue, says Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of the Center for Automobile Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, “but after a search at Daimler, Fiat, Renault and other automakers, the whole industry seems suspicious now” – added he.
As it turned out in September 2015, Volkswagen manipulated data of environmental tests that determined the level of exhaust gases on cars with diesel engines. The result of this scandal, dubbed "dieselgate", has become unprecedented so far in its scale of multi-billion losses and penalties.