Photo: DPAGerman carmakers Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, BMW and Daimler secretly worked together from the 1990s onwards on issues including polluting emissions from diesel vehicles, news magazine Der Spiegel reported Friday. Volkswagen, facing tens of billions of dollars in compensation and fines after admitting to manipulating diesel emissions in 2015, reported the cartel to German competition authorities in a letter seen by the weekly, as did Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler. "The German car industry agreed in secret working groups about technology in their vehicles, costs, suppliers, markets, strategies and even about the emissions treatment of their diesel vehicles," the magazine reported. The size of the AdBlue tanks agreed on was too small to clean exhaust gases by the agreed amount - "laying the foundations for the diesel scandal," Spiegel reported. Meanwhile, VW subsidiary Audi on Friday recalled up to 850,000 Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche cars fitted with its diesel engines for a similar software update.

Source: The Local July 21, 2017 12:45 UTC