German Luxury Carmakers Face Conspiracy Probe

Germany’s big-three luxury carmakers—BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen—are being investigated by the European Commission on suspicion that they colluded to control prices on a wide range of vehicle technologies, including emission control systems.

Der Spiegel revealed the probe on Friday. The magazine says antitrust officials believe the companies may have conspired since the mid-1990s to set technical specifications that sometimes compromised emission control performance. The EC confirms it and the German cartel office are assessing unspecified information about the claims.

Der Spiegel cites as an example a pact it says the carmakers agreed to that would limit the size of tanks used to store urea, a chemical sprayed into diesel exhaust to lower emissions of nitrogen oxides. The magazine says the objective was to free up room for other features.

But the report, which cites documents related to the investigation, says the smaller tanks were likely to run out of fluid before the recommended refill period. The magazine says VW admits it programmed its diesels to stretch their use of urea sufficiently to meet the maintenance schedule, even though the result was higher emissions.

On Sunday BMW denied any collusion to deliberately evade NOx limits. The company acknowledges the three carmakers did discuss how to make sure their customers would be able to buy refills of urea, which are marketed as AdBlue.