Originally posted on Slash Gear by Shane McGlaun on February 20, 2018.
VW has yet to claw its way out from under the mess surrounding its cheating diesel cars and may not for a long time to come. Reports are now indicating that Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler might have used software to help it pass US emission tests. The first word of the scandal surfaced from a German newspaper citing confidential documents over the weekend.
Daimler is currently under investigation in the US and Germany over excessive diesel emissions and could face harsh penalties and recalls of its vehicles. According to the German paper, Bild am Sonntag, US investigators have found several software functions that helped Daimler cars pass emission tests. One of those software functions turned off emissions cleaning after the vehicle had driven 26 km.
Another function discovered allowed the emission cleaning system to recognize when the car was being tested based on speed or acceleration patterns. The German publication also cited emails by Daimler engineers that questioned if the functions were legal.
Daimler has offered no official comment on the documents in question but says that the US authorities know about the documents in question and that no complaint has been filed. Presumably, Daimler and all its diesel cars affected by these software cheats would be forced to submit to a deal similar to what VW is undergoing.
VW had to buy back thousands upon thousands of diesel cars from owners and submit plans to the US government to show how the vehicles would be fixed before they could be resold. Thousands of VW cars still sit in fields and parking lots around the US waiting for a fix.