What's the news?
French investigators have raided Renault's offices at the company's facilities in its corporate headquarters, the Renault Technical Centre in Lardy and the Technocentre in Guyancourt. This move comes on the back of a series of tests, carried out on random vehicles, by the UTAC (the French official homologation office) to ensure that they are adhering to emissions limits in the wake of the Volkswagen scandal.
When the raids were first reported by Agence France Presse, it was enough to trigger a tumbling of value in Renault's stock market listing, wiping as much as €5 billion off the value of the company at a stroke. That depression in values quickly spread to other car makers, including Peugeot, BMW and Volkswagen.
That's all in spite of the fact that Renault released a statement saying that the authorities had confirmed that there was, as yet, no suspicion of a 'defeat device' or illegal software being used by any of its cars.
The statement read: "The French Agency for Energy and Climate (DGEC), which is, on behalf of the Ministry for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, the main contact for the independent technical commission, already considers that the on-going procedure would not reveal the presence of a defeat device on Renault's vehicles. The on-going tests open the way for improvement solutions for future and current Renault vehicles. Presented in its Renault Emissions Plan which is aimed at improving the energy performance of our vehicles. At the same time, the DGCCRF decided to carry out additional on-site and material investigations, in order to definitively confirm the first findings resulting from the analysis of the independent technical commission. Renault's teams are fully cooperating with the independent technical commission and the additional investigations decided by the Ministry of Economy."
Speaking to Reuters, a senior Renault union official, Florent Grimaldi, said that: "there were searches at several Renault sites by fraud investigators. Management has not confirmed that it is about NOx emissions but given the sectors that were inspected we think that it could be linked. There were searches at several Renault sites by fraud investigators. Management has not confirmed that it is about NOx emissions but given the sectors that were inspected we think that it could be linked."
Subsequently, Peugeot released a statement which said that its cars, as tested by the French authorities, were showing no signs of using any illegal devices. "The purpose of the tests, which were carried out by French testing laboratory UTAC, was to verify vehicle compliance with regard to pollutant emissions. The test results confirm the validity of the PSA Group and Peugeot's choices in terms of pollutant emission treatment technology. These initial results also confirm the effectiveness of the Peugeot BlueHDi after-treatment system, which includes selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology positioned upstream of the particulate filter, to treat the nitrogen oxides (NOx) released by diesel engines. This technology has been deployed on all of the Group's Euro6 vehicles since late 2013."
What remains to be seen is precisely what triggered the raids, led by police officers, on Renault. If the company has been informed that no defeat device has been tested by the authorities, then why the heavy-handed treatment? We await an answer with interest.