Dieselgate officially has washed-up on American shores, on board of the Jeep Renegade. Germany’s Ministry Of Transport has declared that Fiat-Chrysler uses illegal defeat devices in at least three models. This is the gist of an official letter sent by the Ministry to the European Commission. With that “a governmental agency for the first time alleges systemic manipulation by an automaker outside of the Volkswagen Group,” writes Germany’s Wirtschaftswoche, which has a copy of the letter.
There is another first: By sending the letter to Brussels, Germany implicitly accuses the Italian government of covering for a national automaker. These pot-shots can turn into all-out war, and they can break the EU system of mutual type approval.
