“Living in a limitocracy”

Germany’s cities have warned for over a year that the car industry is headed for a front crash since first court hearings in the context of emissions limit violations by diesel cars had started, Jasper van Altenbockum writes in an op-ed for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Either there would be a moratorium for limit values, a retrofitting of vehicles by the industry or driving bans, which nobody wants,” he says. But as NO_x limit values were a political decision, “the combustion engine would rather disappear before the limitocracy is put into question,” van Altenbockum argues. So the choice for carmakers remained between retrofitting and bans, he writes, adding that a trend towards e-cars begins to show that might deprive the companies of their choices altogether.

Find the article in German here.

See the CLEW timeline of Germany’s diesel emissions scandal for background.