It's Daimler's turn to be in the spotlight over alleged emissions cheating (AFP Photo/Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS) |
Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - Germany ordered Monday the recall of some 774,000 vehicles from Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler across Europe, citing illegal "defeat devices" designed to conceal high levels of harmful emissions from regulators' tests.
"The
federal government will order an immediate official recall because of illegal
defeat devices," Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer said in a statement.
The move
mostly affects Vito vans and diesel-powered versions of GLC 4x4s and C-class
sedans, Scheuer added.
Daimler
boss Dieter Zetsche was summoned Monday for crunch talks with Scheuer over
emissions irregularities in the firm's vehicles.
"Daimler
says the applications in the motor control software the federal government has
found fault with will be removed at the greatest possible speed and in
cooperative transparency with the authorities," Scheuer said.
So-called
defeat devices were at the heart of Volkswagen's "dieselgate"
scandal, in which the world's largest carmaker admitted in September 2015 to
installing them in 11 million vehicles worldwide.
Vehicles
kept to legal emissions limits for harmful substances like nitrogen oxides
during lab tests, only to exceed them as much as 40 times in on-road driving.
The scandal
has so far cost the world's largest carmaker over 25 billion euros ($29.5
billion) in fines, buybacks and compensation, and senior executives are under
investigation over their roles in the cheating.
Other
German carmakers have also been forced to recall vehicles to fix manipulated
software, although none has so far admitted to mass cheating as Volkswagen did.
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