Automakers chose to cheat to sell cars rather than comply with emissions law, ‘dieselgate’ lawsuit claims | Automotive industry

Car manufacturers have decided they would rather cheat to prioritize “customer convenience” and sell cars than comply with the Deadly Pollutants Act, it has emerged on the first day of the largest class action trial in English legal history.

More than a decade after the first ‘Dieselgate’ scandal broke, lawyers representing 1.6 million diesel car owners in the UK say manufacturers deliberately installed software to rig emissions tests.

They claim the “prohibited override devices” could detect when cars were in testing conditions and ensure harmful NOx emissions were kept within legal limits, thereby misleading regulators and drivers.

If the claim is successful, the estimated damages could exceed £6 billion. The three-month hearing which opened on Monday at the High Court in London will focus on vehicles sold by five manufacturers – Mercedes, Ford, Renault, Nissan and Peugeot/Citroen – from 2009. In “real world” conditions, when driven on the road, lawyers say, the cars produced much higher levels of emissions.

The judgment against the five main defendants will also bind other manufacturers, including Jaguar Land Rover, Vauxhall/Opel, Volkswagen/Porsche, BMW, FCA/Suzuki, Volvo, Hyundai-Kia, Toyota and Mazda, whose cases are not being heard in order to reduce delays and costs.

Opening the plaintiffs’ case, Thomas de la Mare KC said: “Everyone in the industry basically made a conscious decision that customer convenience, which helped the industry sell more cars, was more important than reducing death-causing pollutants.” »

In their written submissions, the claimants cited a report from the Center for Energy and Air Quality Research which found that excessive NOx emissions had caused 124,000 premature deaths in the UK and Europe between 2009 and 2024.

De la Mare told the High Court that emissions levels could easily have been reduced if vehicles had had larger tanks of AdBlue – an additive which reduces NOx in diesel vehicles – and asked customers to refill them. Instead, he said: “They basically said that the concern about making these cars sellable by removing these disadvantages is so strong… that we would rather cheat than follow the law.” »

Lead counsel also told the judge, Ms Cockerill, that the manufacturers were trying to argue that many previous decisions regarding dieselgate abroad, including in the US and European Court of Justice, did not apply in the UK. He said: “Our position broadly is that we will rely on foreign regulatory decisions as a matter of fact, rather than an opinion on the law. »

He said the defendants’ argument meant that “mainland Britain becomes a sort of defeat device for the Brexit island… But Northern Ireland is applying case law that you are being asked to throw in the dustbin.”

Internal Ford training and briefing documents in 2010 on defeat devices showed that “manufacturers could and did understand the law exactly as we do now,” De la Mare said.

Lawyers for the defendants will make opening statements later this week. Automakers deny using banned defeat devices.

In their written submissions, Renault’s lawyers said the case was “riddled with errors and misunderstandings, particularly regarding the design and operation of vehicle emissions control systems”, while Ford’s lawyers said it was “scientifically illiterate”.

Mercedes said the plaintiffs’ case was “obsessively focused” on NOx pollution rather than other emissions, and failed to “recognize the complexity” of diesel engineering. Nissan’s lawyers said the central legal principle of the case was “an untenably broad reading of the defeat device.”

The main trial, establishing the evidence, is expected to conclude before Christmas, with a break before legal arguments are heard in March 2026. A judgment is expected next summer, followed by a retrial for possible compensation.

Adam Kamenetzky, from south London, one of the lead claimants among the 1.6 million landlords, told the Guardian outside court: “For the first time, certainly in the UK, if not in any jurisdiction, the evidence is actually made public.

“If these allegations are confirmed, consumers have been deceived at the point of sale, and steps must be taken to prevent this type of deception from being built into cars.”

Clean air campaigners including Mums for Lungs and Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, whose daughter Ella’s death was the first to be officially linked to air pollution, demonstrated outside the court.

Adoo-Kissi-Debrah said “illegal pollution from diesel vehicles has caused thousands of premature deaths in the UK”, adding that she hoped for a “day of reckoning” on the use of the fuel.

These landmark claims were filed by more than 20 law firms, led by Leigh Day and Pogust Goodhead. Martyn Day, senior partner at Leigh Day, said the claims, “if proven, would demonstrate one of the most egregious corporate breaches of trust in modern times”.

Alicia Alinia, chief executive of Pogust Goodhead, said the case would go “to the heart of corporate responsibility and environmental justice”.