The Daimler management board is approving a plan to boost public confidence in its diesel technology by accelerating plans to build a wholly new line of engines as well as increase its current European service action for existing customers.
“The public debate about diesel engines is creating uncertainty – especially for our clients,” says Daimler AG management board chairperson Dr Dieter Zetsche.
“We have therefore decided on additional measures to reassure drivers of diesel cars and to strengthen confidence in diesel technology,” says Zetsche.
“We believe that diesel engines will continue to be a fixed element of the drive-system mix, not least due to their low CO2 emissions,” he says.
The plan comprises a substantial expansion of the current service action for vehicles in customers’ hands as well as a rapid market launch of an entirely new diesel engine family.
Following the market launch of the new four-cylinder OM 654 engine in 2016, Daimler AG says the launch of the new modular engine family will now be implemented rapidly across the entire model portfolio.
Since March, Mercedes-Benz has offered its European clients of compact-class cars an improvement in NOx emissions for one version of its diesel engine and updating approximately 45% of those vehicles.
A voluntary service action is also being carried out for V-Class customers – so far with about 75% of the vehicles in Germany.
To improve the emissions of additional models, Daimler is also extending the current service action to include more than three million Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
The company’s engineers are making use of latest knowledge gained during the development of the new family of diesel engines to do make this happen.
The measures to be carried out on nearly all EU5 and EU6 vehicles in Europe will be conducted in close cooperation with the German regulatory authorities.
The company is investing about 220 million Euros to complete the service actions at no costs to its customers.
The implementation will be starting in the next few weeks, and Daimler AG says this will make a significant contribution to the reduction of nitrogen-oxide emissions from diesel vehicles in European inner cities.
