Dieselgate: Fourth trial requested against Fiat for aggravated deception

On June 30, the Paris prosecutor's office requested a fourth trial for aggravated deception in the Dieselgate scandal, targeting the manufacturer Fiat-Chrysler, following those already requested against Volkswagen, Peugeot-Citroën and Renault, we learned on Wednesday, July 16, from a source close to the case.

According to this source, the Italian-American manufacturer is suspected of having marketed between 2014 and 2017 vehicles under the Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Jeep brands equipped with Multijet II diesel engines which would have "frequently exceeded the regulatory threshold for nitrogen oxide emissions" , atmospheric pollutants which promote the appearance of respiratory diseases in humans.

According to the requisitions notified to the parties this Wednesday, these vehicles were "specially calibrated according to technical parameters (temperature, speed, gearbox ratios, etc.) ensuring that the vehicles comply with the regulatory standard relating to nitrogen oxide emissions only under the traffic conditions of the approval test."

"In a normal traffic situation not corresponding to the conditions of the said test" , the public prosecutor considers, however, that "the calibration implemented" by these manufacturers "resulted in a significantly degraded functioning of the pollution control devices" .

A legal expert thus estimated that "if there was no strategy for detecting the approval cycle in its entirety" , as Volkswagen is accused of, "the operation of the pollution control devices had been adapted to the approval procedure alone" .

Fiat acquired the American Chrysler Group in 2014 to form the Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) group. FCA then merged with PSA (Peugeot, Citroën, Opel) in 2021 to form the automotive giant Stellantis . When contacted, one of Fiat-Chrysler's lawyers did not immediately respond, as did several civil parties.

Also contacted, lawyer Frederik-Karel Canoy, who claims to have filed the first complaints in this case, requested "full and not symbolic compensation for the 38,144 vehicles concerned." According to him, the sale of the vehicles in question generated a turnover of approximately 836 million euros for FCA.