With Volkswagen’s dieselgate scandal hanging over the show like a toxic exhaust cloud, its rivals played up the new era of zero emissions. Mercedes-Benz set the electric bar high with plans to convert the whole of its fleet to some form of electrification by 2022. More radically, Dieter Zetsche, its chief executive, revealed that Smart, its sister brand, would ditch the combustion engine completely in Europe and North America by 2020. Smart will thus become the first conventional car brand to go pure electric. As the company introduced the first…

Source: The Times September 12, 2017 23:02 UTC