Truckmakers accused of putting brakes on technological change
-- EU parliamentarians and environmental campaigners have long had suspicions about Europe’s truckmakers. For 20 years, lorries seemed strangely impervious to market forces that were supposed to make them more fuel efficient and reduce hazardous emissions... Some clues to the mystery emerged in November 2014, when Brussels levelled formal cartel charges against the continent’s biggest truck manufacturers: DAF, Daimler, Iveco, MAN, Volvo/Renault and Scania. Accused of widespread price-fixing between 1997 and 2011 and delaying the introduction of new emissions technologies, the companies are expected to receive the highest cartel fine in EU history in the coming months — running to several billion euros... But the cartel investigation is only one strand of a far broader pattern of alleged collusive behaviour by lorry makers and the governments that lobby for them... Environmental campaigners also allege that the truck industry has strongly resisted attempts to improve fuel consumption and slash emissions of carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas... Emissions from lorries are a subject of intense concern because they produce about 25 per cent of the CO2 from road transport, while representing fewer than 5 per cent of vehicles on the roads. Despite new, greener technologies being available, the European Commission reported in 2014 that heavy vehicles’ fuel efficiency had stagnated since the mid-1990s and estimated that their CO2 emissions increased 36 per cent between 1990 and 2010... The motor industry says that its performance in CO2 emissions should be rated over a longer timeframe, noting big improvements since the mid-1960s... ACEA, the European Motor Manufacturers’ Association, declined to comment specifically on the alleged cartel involving its members...
(Photo: A man walks past driver cabins in the truck production plant of German truck and bus-maker MAN AG in Munich, Germany July 30, 2015) -- Brussels, Belgium - FT, by Christian Oliver in Brussels and Peter Campbell in London (UK) - May 29, 2016Labels: truckmakers news Europe
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