BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany has cleared the way for diesel retrofits but leading carmakers and suppliers repeated their reluctance to support hardware fixes to older diesel cars to reduce pollution.
Cars pass a traffic sign, which ban diesel cars at the Max-Brauer Allee in downtown Hamburg, Germany, November 8, 2018. Picture taken with long time exposure. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer
The transport ministry on Friday released a 30-page paper, setting out the requirements for a so-called “general operating permit”, which is necessary for the motor vehicle authority to approve the hardware kits – a first legal step for retrofits.
“Now it is the turn of the retrofit industry to develop effective systems to meet all limits and regulations”, transport minister Andreas Scheuer said in a statement.
The Federal Motor Transport Authority would grant approval as quickly as possible so that the retrofit systems could be offered on the market as soon as possible, he added.
German auto lobby group VDA, however, said that customers should rather buy new cars than retrofit existing vehicles.
“We cannot give a guarantee for a vehicle in which third-party exhaust purification systems have been retrofitted,” VDA president Bernhard Mattes told daily Welt. “If a customer has his vehicle modified, then he and the retrofitter are responsible for any consequential damage.”
Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) said it advised its customers against hardware retrofitting.
“All concepts known to us to date have disadvantages for our customers, such as increased fuel consumption and thus increased CO2 emissions and, in some cases, reduced performance,” VW research and development head Frank Welsch said in a statement.
He added that not every vehicle with emissions standard Euro 5 could be retrofitted in a way to exempt it from driving bans.
A transport ministry spokesman said the regulatory authority KBA has not yet received any complete applications by suppliers for retrofits.
In October, the government presented plans to cut pollution from diesel vehicles by asking carmakers to offer owners trade-in incentives and hardware fixes.
German carmakers agreed to spend up to 3,000 euros ($3,431) per vehicle to help reduce diesel emissions as the government and industry respond to driving bans in major cities.
But carmakers are divided over the question of who will pay the retrofit costs, which could run into billions of euros. Volkswagen and Daimler announced they would cover some retrofit costs, while rival BMW has refused, only proposing incentives to trade in old vehicles for new ones.
The government cannot force carmakers to pay for hardware upgrades but it shares an interest with the industry in preventing further driving bans for cars that pollute more, which Hamburg has already imposed. Other cities including Berlin and Stuttgart, the home of Germany’s car industry, are set to introduce similar bans.
Supplier Continental supported the carmakers’ critical stance. A spokesman said developing retrofits for each model would be extremely costly and time-consuming.
Peer Bosch said that only carmakers could make a call whether the goal of reducing nitrogen oxide emissions could be achieved by retrofitting.
Daimler said it was not yet aware of the paper and could therefore not assess its implications.
($1 = 0.8742 euros)
Reporting by Arno Schuetze, Paul Carrel, Hans Seidenstücker, Jan Schwartz; editing by David Evans
