As if the threat of a trade war with the United States weren’t bad enough, BMW’s Munich headquarters were raided by prosecuters who suspect the company of teaching its cars to cheat during emissions tests. Similar practices have already cost Volkswagen billions of dollars in fines and billions more in reputational damage, but it turns out the company wasn’t an outlier in trying to cheat. In fact, there’s suspicion that German cars may all taken steps to beat the system to some degree. It’s bad news for an economy whose biggest export is high-end consumer vehicles where image is a key selling point. It’s unclear how serious the charges against BMW will end up being, as it claims that the wrong software was installed in some vehicles by mistake.
