The European antitrust authorities may suspect anti-competitive practices, but Daimler has defended the practice in Germany for corporations to work together on technical issues.
A report in Der Speigel suggested that there could be collusion between OEMs through such committees that would go further than technical standards and have implications for commercial relationships between OEMs
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The report said that BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen may have colluded to fix the prices of diesel emissions treatment systems using industry committees.
"Daimler is convinced that an exchange of opinions on technical issues between various manufacturers in the automotive industry is useful and that it accelerates many innovations or actually makes them possible," the carmaker said in a statement to Reuters on Friday.
It is alleged that the carmakers fixed the size of tanks for AdBlue, a filtering liquid used to remove nitrogen oxides from diesel emissions. The German carmakers had agreed to keep them small and had sought to standardise their size, the newspaper report said.
Daimler maintains it has a certified antitrust compliance program, which fulfilled the highest requirements and was continually being further developed, Reuters reported.
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By GlobalData"Insofar as violations of antitrust law might have occurred, as a matter of principle Daimler cooperates openly and transparently with the responsible authorities," Daimler added.
The European Commission is said to be looking into the matter, but has not started a formal investigation.
The questions raised appear to derive from the long-established practice in Germany of cross-company meetings of engineers to discuss areas of common interest such as technical standards. Occasionally, analysts say, the discussions may touch on areas that have a commercial aspect, even if the brief for the discussions is technically based.
BMW rejects emissions collusion reports
