Dieselgate is threatening to take a nation-wide form, with German magazine Der Spiegel claiming Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Porsche have had secret understandings on diesel matters.
Allegedly the companies have been performing together secret working groups since the 1990s, aimed at deciding the prices of diesel emissions treatment systems – which means they formed a cartel, which is something punishable by law. “These allegations look very serious and would mean more than 20 years of potential collusion,” commented Juergen Pieper, a Frankfurt-based analyst with Bankhaus Metzler for Bloomberg. “There seems to be a never ending story of bad news about the industry’s bad behavior.” Apparently the German media outlet caught wind of a letter sent by Volkswagen to German competition authorities, which have now opened an investigation.
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