Renault Plunges 20% After French Authorities Raid Offices In Apparent Emissions Probe
Don’t look now, but Renault may be pulling a Volkswagen.
The French company’s shares fell by as much as 23% on Thursday after an apparent raid on what a union official described as “sites that have to do with standards testing and engine certification.”
Earlier, AFP reported that the agents from the fraud office of France’s Economy Ministry visited the sites last week seizing computers as part of an apparent probe into emissions testing.
As Bloomberg notes, “French authorities started a probe in September into whether VW deceived customers about the emissions levels of its diesel cars and promised to expand the probe to cover all carmakers, including Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen.”
Peurgeot shares fell nearly 10% in sympathy. In October, the automaker said it never used software to cheat emissions tests.
The news rattled carmakers from France to Germany where the market is still on edge after the Volkswagen scandal rocked the country's auto industry to the core last year.
Florent Grimaldi, the CGT labor official who spoke to the press, said the searches were conducted at company offices at Lardy near Paris. The Lardy site develops engines and ironically has been requesting more resources to work on anti-pollution systems. Apparently, the certification department was targeted.
The stock's 20% plunge is the largest single day decline in 17 years, reflecting investor fears that the scope of the probe could mirror what unfolded at its German rival.
"Separately, the country’s environmental regulator began randomly testing vehicles to check differences between emissions results found in laboratory testing and real-world figures," Bloomberg adds.
Renault initially declined to comment but has now confirmed the story and says the company is co-operating with authorities.
Is that a Renault car or just their shares? pic.twitter.com/q3usGq9rAa
— RANsquawk (@RANsquawk) January 14, 2016
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An emissions probe? That's got to hurt!
The difference is ... VW actually builds cars people want to buy.
Renault (Peugeot as well) have a real hard time competeting against VW et. al. (Seat, Skoda & Audi) Volvo and Ford who is gobbling up market share here in Rainbowland at a truly amazing pace.
There was a promo last year I hear from the Renault Clio for a 150€ per month lease WITH INSURANCE and with a 1000€ gas card, sign & drive. Nothing down save first month's payment.
I feel bad for them. At one point & time the French built great little cars. Then the Socialists got into the labor unions and that was it. Just like Rover, never to be heard from again in any meaningful way.
Owned a french car (Peugeot) once, never again. Since then, I have always been driving Japanese cars. Until recent, I bought my first try on Korea car, KIA. Oh boy, the car is so comfortable to drive. Even my boss who owns a $75k Merc, surprises how comfortable it is.
I drive a Lexus in Germany right now ... (I know the horror)
Everyone laughs at me at work, "rice cooker" etc., etc., whole nine yards, then they ride in it. "How much did you pay for this again?"
That being said, the japanese don't offer stationwagons in Germany, save for the Honda Accord and some other God-awful thing by Toyota. I'll be back into a BMW soon, maybe a Merc, but the looks I get with the Lexus is always fun.
In the extended family in the last 10 years there have been new audi, skoda and vw. All have had considerable problems during and after the warranty. The worst was a 2011 Golf VI 1.6 TDI that had numerous problems with diesel emmissions systems and cost us CHF2000 within months of the warranty running out.
I also had a 2006 1.9 Dci Citroen Berlingo that was a brilliant car and went over 100K km's without a singe problem.
I also have a friend who bought a new 2011 MB GL and had loads of problems.
Citroen, Peugot, Renaut, and Fiat are all very similar. They are built cheap and light but are not bleeding edge technology and are usually pretty reliable.
Golf is overpriced and overrated
Yep, last time I lived in Europe I had the IS300, everyone said they were plagued with problems, but never had any trouble with mine. Nice car to drive aswell. I bought the missus an X-Trail in '14 (She's pranged it twice, both times into stationary objects)
The Japs make some nice cars.
Everyone said the IS300 plaged with problems? What a load of BS.
Lexus (Toyota) are the most reliable cars you can find.
Daimler has illegal air conditioning systems
You life in Germany so of course French cars suck. I mean, you just confirmed the German prejudice against French cars.
For the record, my brother and I owned tons of cars and the Renaults were actually the most reliable of all.
"There was a promo last year I hear from the Renault Clio for a 150€ per month lease WITH INSURANCE and with a 1000€ gas card, sign & drive. Nothing down save first month's payment. "
You conveniently forget to mention the other brands who offer the same.
You are right.
Japanese and French brands produce Europe’s most reliable cars, according to new research by Warranty Direct’s Reliability Index.
http://www.reliabilityindex.com/news/52/States%20of%20Repair%20%E2%80%93%20Japanese%20and%20French%20brands%20top%20international%20league%20table%20of%20car%20reliability
Renault engines are not bad: Renault is regularly champion of Formula 1 for the motors (cf. with Red Bull)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Drivers%27_Championship
Renault is the supplier for a lot of Mercedes motors:
1.5 DCI 90Ch for Class A, B, CLA
1.5 DCI 109Ch for Class B
1.6 DCI for Class C
Renault is also a supplier of motors for Opel, Vauxhall and Nissan
Fond memories of the Renault Fuego 1.6 TS my dad bought. Looked good, stylish, comfortable, practical interior, handled well, worked well. Electrically a bit iffy, but mechanically vey good indeed.
Renault has a sub making Nissan. I doubt Renault has problems competing against VW....the Polo must lose money, Seat does. The French are much more efficient at building small cars profitably than are Germans. VW finances its cars through VW Bank and carries $100 billion in debt
Yeah sure, that's why Volvo put Peugeot diesel engines in their cars before they developed their own.
I drove a V40 1.9D and it was an amazing automobile (5.5 l per 100 km at 145 km/h [42.7 mpg at 90 mph] no wind no slipstreaming.)
It's all part of the agenda to artificially level the playing field......
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/12/as-events-spiral-ou... 2972.htmlo
Mon Dieu
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If you are making $11,000 dollars a month, WTF are you wasting your time posting here for?
"If you are making $11,000 dollars a month, WTF are you wasting your time posting here for?"
They were Zim Dollars!
FTW, bring back the math problems for posters!
It would be silly to think the car companies didn't lie. Assume the worst and you still might be surprised.
@Cognotive Dissonance
Renault: "No fraud software" says Ségolène Royal but unmet standards
The Minister of Ecology Segolene Royal said Thursday that pollution tests following the Volkswagen scandal by an independent commission showed "exceeding standards" CO2 and nitrogen oxide at Renault and two foreign brands.
Unlike Volkswagen, Renault uses no fraud software to scale back the emission from diesel engines said the Minister of Ecology.
http://www.leparisien.fr/automobile/constructeurs/diesel-pas-de-logiciel-de-fraude-chez-renault-assure-royal-14-01-2016-5450957.php
What's with these EU nuts? You don't see the DOJ & the EPA Nazis raiding GM or Ford, and they actually caused deaths.
Then there's the issue of wiping out the industry that is keeping the positive GDP fantasy alive.
Yeah. It's almost like they're not fascists.
More likely they just hide it better though.
No, they raid foreign companies instead. Like Toyota. Hearings all produced the same result. No evidence of any problems, coverups or wrongdoing. But they scared the crap out of them and bullied them into a record fine anyway.
The Govt/EU Authorities need to do for every make and model out there. If more are found, force them to fix the problems.
Tell me what is not fake these days??
Obama.....he is WYSIWYG
no joke they would all do it. Question is, can this be controlled by bigger/better cat converters (and do we expect a bounce in Pt and Pd some day if htey have to start doubling the size of these devices), or have engines finally hit an envelope in their compression ratios etc that increases performance but increase in NOx is a result - which the cat converters may not help. I am assuming the cats mainly just oxidise teh unburnt fuel more than reduce NOx.
Catalytic converters. If it wasn't for those benighted bloody things, your car would be running a much leaner mix, and thus using less fuel and producing less emissions, and that would've been the case for many years now.
I recall that circa 25 years ago manufacturers (and particulalrly Ford) were working hard on lean-burn as the route to low emissions. Any engine tuner knows that the real gains are made by improving efficiency. However, the mining lobby was desperate to sell mucho precious metals, and big oil knew that inefficient engines use more fuel, and they won the day. The result was that the governments legislated that all cars would thus come with the equivalent of a potato stuffed up their exhaust pipe. From this episode of corrupt idiocy springs pretty much all the shenanigans we see now.
They need to put Columbo in charge of the investigation.
Colombian neckties for upper management?
Or Inspector Clouseau
"The crooks never sleep and neither does Clouseau!"
I guess this was an obscure reference.
Columbo always drove an old beat-up Peugot
Sorry to sound like a broken record on this but Vehicle Manufacturers are mostly just assemblers with parts bought in from suppliers. The Engine Management Systems are no exception. Neither VW nor Renault manufacture EMSs. They are manufactured by Denso, Bosch, Delphi, Hella , etc etc with Bosch having a large share of that market, particularly for German manufactured vehicles. At the moment Bosch are saying that they supplied the ECU with no cheating software implying that the vehicle manufacturer added the additional software themselves. It seems highly unlikely that the manufacturer could have achieved this witout the help if not direct involvement of Bosch. For the moment, Bosch are pleading the fifth but it is only a matter of time when the truth will come out. Car manufacturers did not add this software because the car could meet the standards without it. They added it because the standards could not be met. If VW/Bosch could not meet the standards then its a fair bet no-one else can either. After all, they're all up against the same physics. The implications for that are enormous. If the manufacturers are not going to lie going forward then none of these cars can be imported. If they then cry foul then all the other manufacturers are going to be found out. For example, I can't believe any GM gas-guzzler meets any kind of emission standard.
That may all be true, but the big label signs off on it. That's who will pay the fine.
Bosch stated categorically they supplied the software to VW together with a warning that it was a TEST software package requested by VW and it would be ILLEGAL to use it other than in test simulations.
Bosch was categorical in this statement so it is legally binding.
VW has a particular issue being a major DIESEL producer across its range.
Renault is interesting because its subsidiary is Nissan
Actually, Renault owns like 35% of Nissan.
More exactly Renault owns like 43.4% of Nissan
and Nissan owns 15% of Renault.
And Renault supplies engines to Nissan.
Sandmann, do you have a link for that?
astute comments - double short bosch?
ponders why it is listed in India
http://www.moneycontrol.com/company-facts/bosch/listing/B05#B05
who would have thought that, those driving fish tanks burn more fuel then expected.
Cowardly companies need to fight back right at the outset. You have to tell the government unicorns it just can't be done. Stop trying to fake this emissions crap to please the people in government, who are flunkies and not working real jobs in the first place. Just tell them: "Look, the job is yours. My bosses name is Seymour Bledsoe. He'll set you up in the lab where you can solve all these problems. Provide all documentation, cost analysis and blueprints for the solutions. Let me know when you're done, I'll come back from my fishing trip. Thanks."
A reflection of new government priorities, clean air over mileage. Too many were buying diesel cars.Now Europe will have to transition to gasoline cars and they will not have enough refining capacity for that fuel.
i am still wondering how they measure the success of clean air engines..
i doubt there is any proof that carbon emissions have fallen one jot (jet?) because of the extra cars sold last year.
jeep is selling - are its carbon emissions double those of VW and renault even after cheating on tests? fines coming for chrysler having a succesful brand as motorists switch to higher emissio SUV's? i doubt it
these tests are a farce of bureaucracy
if there was proof or a mechanism for demonstrating proof, it ought to be possible to show the extent of damage in money and/or emission terms caused by either VW or Renault or any other (succesful) motor manufacturer.
this is prosecution for an offence without demnstration of any cost, harm or damage to people, property or anythig else.
may as well impose fines of strip clubs and hookers in the name of some invented law that can similarly prove no harm or foul to the world at large
I'm taking delivery of a new Merc shortly, due to a German car policy at work, but... if you actually want to have a car that just plain puts a smile on your face every time then you need an Alfa. Pure and simple, fun. Before anyone says it, we've had several Alfas in the family and they have been entirely reliable. The leccy bits are rhe same as everyone else, so don't go wrong any more ( or less, I suppose) than the rest, but the bits you actually touch sense and enjoy are Alfa.
Now, by contrast the worst heap of crap I've driven in recent years was a Peugeot, christened Poo-joke. Steering twitchy but felt dead, suspension felt like it lacked both travel and damping. Quite a feat of incompetence. Add tot hat that it was ergonomically hopeless and zero-concept of human factors/user interface it's a wonder they're still in business. Oh no, hang on, I forgot - the French govt has been throwing money at them in contravention of EU rules for years. Creative destruction? Not in France.