Cheating German car-makers are good news for Brexiteers

It came as no great surprise to learn that the EU competition authorities are crawling all over the three major -German car-makers, Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler, to investigate collusion via ‘secret technology working groups’ dating back to the 1990s. The most damaging allegation — reported by Der Speigel — is that the three groups colluded over the use of AdBlue, an additive that neutralises -diesel emissions, by agreeing to use small but inadequate AdBlue tanks in their cars when larger, more expensive ones might have done the job properly. (BMW denied that story, but the other two groups declined to comment.)

This follows the 2015 emissions -scandal in which half a million VW cars in the US were revealed to have been fitted with ‘defeat device’ software that switched their engines to a cleaner mode while undergoing environmental testing. Then last year, German and other European truck-makers — accounting for 90 per cent of all trucks made on the continent — were fined €3 billion for price collusion among other sins over a 14-year period.