The High Court trial considering allegations which suggest OEMs used illegal software to allow their cars to reduce emissions of harmful gases under test conditions opened today.
All carmakers in question – Mercedes, Ford, Peugeot/Citroën, Renault and Nissan – deny the accusations, reports the BBC.
“Each player in the industry basically took a conscious decision that customer convenience, which helped the industry sell more cars, was more important” than preventing pollution, Thomas De La Mare KC told the High Court.
The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air research, cited by De La Mare at the trial, found excess nitrogen oxide caused 124,000 premature deaths and 98,000 new cases of asthma in children in the UK and Europe between 2009 and 2024.
The original ‘Dieselgate’ scandal can be traced back to September 2015, when the US Environmental Protection Agency accused Volkswagen of installing software such software.
It was said that “defeat devices” were installed on diesel cars to lower readings of the cars’ nitrogen oxide emissions.
