Details of German transport minister’s “diesel deal”

Germany’s transport minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) has presented his proposal to reduce emissions from diesel cars in German cities to the chancellor and the heads of carmakers BMW, Volkswagen, and Daimler, Daniel Delhaes, Markus Fasse, and Martin Murphy report for the Handelsblatt. Scheuer pushed his idea to exchange old diesel cars for newer ones by keeping the swap cost-neutral for consumers, and only wants to see hardware retrofitting of manipulated diesel engines in newer cars. Carmakers oppose the hardware retrofits as too expensive and don’t want to undertake the updates themselves, but are open to Scheuer’s old-for-new swap idea, the article says. According to the reporters, Scheuer offered that car makers could contribute 80 percent of the retrofitting costs of newer cars, which would leave car owners with having to foot a bill of 600 euros themselves.
The government’s plan on how to lower emissions from diesel cars is due to be presented on 1 October.

Read the article in German here.

Get background on the diesel story in the CLEW factsheet "Dieselgate" - a timeline of Germany's car emissions fraud scandal.