Ryanair ordered to pay Dutch pilots up to €480,000 Business

DutchNews, April 23, 2019

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Budget airline Ryanair has been ordered to pay eight Dutch pilots between €380,000 and €480,000 by a court in the Netherlands, as a bitter dispute over contracts ends. 

The court also agreed to dissolve the eight pilot’s contracts from May 1, arguing that there is no likelihood of a ‘purposeful continuation’ and that Ryanair is to blame for the current situation. 

The dispute dates back to last year following Ryanair’s decision to close its base at Eindhoven airport where pilots had twice gone on strike in protest at changes to their pensions and other benefits. 

The district court in Den Bosch then ruled there was no business case to shut the base and said the decision had ‘all the appearance of a sanction following the earlier strikes.’ 

DutchNews.nl has asked Ryanair to comment on the court ruling.

Stints will be allowed back on Dutch roads after technical upgrade

DutchNews, April 17, 2019

Two stints in action. Photo: Stintum.nl

MPs have approved changes to the law which will allow electric wagons known as ‘Stints’ back onto the Dutch roads in time for the next school year. 

The Stints, which were used by hundreds of daycare centres to ferry children around, have been banned since a fatal crash last year in which four children died. 

The new rules include tougher safety specifications and technical requirements and the company which makes the Stint has said it will upgrade all 3,000 vehicles. The wagons will also be allowed to carry 10 rather than eight children, after MPs urged transport minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen to rethink her plans for fewer seats. 

Last September a wagon ploughed into a train at a level crossing after the brake apparently failed, killing four children. However, the cause of the accident has not yet been determined. 

Last December, research institute TNO said the wagons can only be allowed back into traffic after modifications have been carried out. In particular, there are problems with the braking system, the report said. 

Stints made their debuts on the Dutch roads in 2011 via legislation covering ‘special scooters’ – a new category of road transport introduced to cover Segways. 

MPs and ministers were keen to encourage new forms of transport and did not introduce extra safety measures so as not to dent innovation.

German prosecutors charge ex-VW boss Winterkorn with fraud

Yahoo – AFP, April 15, 2019

German prosecutors say former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn was as
 "guarantor" to authorities and customers that the group was not selling cheating
vehicles "even after he knew about the illegal manipulations" (AFP Photo/Tobias
SCHWARZ)

Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - German prosecutors said Monday they had charged former Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn and four other managers over the group's "dieselgate" emissions cheating scandal.

They "are accused of multiple crimes realised in a single criminal action, especially a particularly serious case of fraud and an infraction of the law against unfair competition," the prosecutors said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether the other accused -- who were not named -- still work at VW or have since left the company.

Winterkorn has been singled out for his role as a "guarantor" to authorities and customers that the group was not selling cheating vehicles "even after he knew about the illegal manipulations" -- knowledge the prosecutors said he had "from May 25, 2014".

That date was more than a year before VW publicly admitted to fitting 11 million vehicles with software to make them appear less polluting in the lab than in real driving conditions.

"In the end, this resulted in the imposition of higher fines against Volkswagen AG in Germany as well as the USA," the prosecutors said.

As well as failing to inform authorities of the cheating, VW "with the knowledge and approval of Winterkorn" issued a software update in November 2014 whose only purpose was to cover up the so-called "defeat devices" that enabled the cheating, said the statement.

VW shares were little moved by the charges, gaining 0.4 percent to trade at 154 euros around 1:15pm in Frankfurt (1115 GMT), slightly outperforming the DAX blue-chip index.

The Wolfsburg-based group has so far suffered costs of 29 billion euros ($32.8 billion) related to dieselgate, much of it in fines, compensation and buyback schemes in the United States.

In Germany, the group has paid 1.8 billion euros spread over two fines.

Aftershocks from the scandal have been serious enough to change the gigantic firm's course, with bosses now making a massive bet on electrification over the next decade.

But the legacy of dieselgate is still clinging to VW, with hundreds of thousands of customers in Germany bringing cases demanding compensation for their manipulated vehicles.

And investors have opened two court cases against VW and its holding company Porsche SE, saying bosses should have informed markets sooner about the likely financial impact of the cheating.

Dutchman ends 'world's longest electric car trip' in Australia

Yahoo – AFP, April 7, 2019

Wiebe Wakker took just over three years crossing 33 countries in his 95,000 km
journey by electric car (AFP Photo/PETER PARKS)

Sydney (AFP) - A Dutchman completed an epic 95,000 kilometre (59,000 mile) journey by electric car in Sydney Sunday in a bid to prove the viability of such vehicles in tackling climate change.

Wiebe Wakker drove his retrofitted station wagon nicknamed "The Blue Bandit" across 33 countries in what he said was the world's longest-ever journey by electric car.

The trip from the Netherlands to Australia took just over three years and was funded by public donations from around the world, including electricity to charge the Bandit, food and a place to sleep.

Wakker drove across a variety of countries and environments including Turkey, Iran, India, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia, with the route determined by the offers he received on his website.

"I wanted to change people's opinions and inspire people to start driving electric by showing the advantages of sustainable mobility," Wakker said.

"If one man can drive to the other side of the world in an electric car, then EVs (electric vehicles) should definitely be viable for daily use."

Wakker said before the car was modified, it would have used 6,785 litres (1,800 US gallons) of petrol to complete the journey.

The modified vehicle can travel 200 kilometres on a single charge, with Wakker saying he spent just US$300 on electricity, much of it in the remote desert Outback of Australia.

BMW, Daimler, VW broke antitrust rules, EU says in 'preliminary view'

France24 –AFP, 5 April 2019

Exhaust from cars is a major source of air pollution in urban areas and numerous
cities have enacted or are considering restrictions on driving heavily-polluting
vehicles in city-centres dpa/AFP/File

Brussels (AFP) - The European Union warned German car giants BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen on Friday that a preliminary inquiry has concluded they colluded not to compete on emission control technology.

"As a result, European consumers may have been denied the opportunity to buy cars with the best available technology. The three manufacturers now have an opportunity to respond to our findings," EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.

The EU Commission has concluded that BMW, Daimler and the VW group -- Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche -- held so-called "circle of five" meetings to rig competition in emissions technology.

This allowed them to limit the introduction of "AdBlue" or urea to diesel engine exhaust gases, reducing its effectiveness as a way to produce cleaner emissions, the statement said.

The firms also -- "in the Commission's preliminary view" -- colluded to avoid or delay introducing OPF particle filters to reduce harmful particles in petrol exhaust fumes.

The findings form the basis of a "statement of objections" to which the firms will have a chance to respond before the Commission decides whether to pursue a case under competition rules banning cartel agreements.

A Damiler spokeswoman told AFP the firm was aware of the report but had already been cooperating with investigators and "does not expect to receive a fine in this matter".

Germany finds truckers cheating to hide emissions

Yahoo – AFP, April 2, 2019

Emissions cheating in trucks is rampant and getting harder to detect (AFP Photo/
Christoph Schmidt)

Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - German authorities have identified hundreds of trucks "manipulated" to save their operators money by shutting off exhaust treatment systems, saying many more cheating vehicles could be at large on Europe's roads.

Of around 13,000 trucks whose "AdBlue" filter system was checked on German roads last year, 300 were "defective", a government answer to a parliamentary question from the Greens party seen Tuesday by AFP showed.

Of 132 such defects spotted since August last year, 84 could be traced back to deliberate manipulation rather than a technical fault, the government added -- a distinction not drawn in statistics collected before then.

Electronic devices available for around 100 euros ($112) allow users to deactivate the exhaust treatment system, allowing some trucking firms to make massive savings, daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) reported after revealing the scheme.

But with their catalytic converters switched off, the trucks spew far more harmful pollutants.

"The fact that we are finding more manipulated systems than faulty ones is an alarm signal," Greens MP Stephan Kuehn said.

With time, "the parts needed for the cheating are becoming smaller and smaller and more sophisticated, and therefore more difficult to find" during spot checks, the government added.

The SZ reported that operators can save up to one-third of the costs of running a truck supposedly meeting the Euro 5 or 6 emissions standard by installing one of the boxes or modifying software -- an even harder-to-detect option.

Devices or software changes can enable cheating in a number of ways.

Some fool the engine control software into thinking the catalytic converter is still working, preventing a warning to the driver or an automatic reduction in performance.

Others produce fake readings for the outside temperature, triggering a system that deactivates exhaust treatment at below -11 Celsius (12.2 Fahrenheit).

Clusters of similar rule-breaking have been identified elsewhere in Europe, especially in Spain.

Without exhaust treatment, trucks emit far more nitrogen oxides (NOx), which studies have shown is linked to various respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

Since Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to cheating emissions tests on 11 million vehicles worldwide, alarm has spread in Germany about levels of the gas in city air.

Federal, state and local governments are battling to prevent drivers of older diesel vehicles being banned from city centres as courts order a growing number of exclusion zones.