Mercedes Benz toxic exhaust scandal

This music video from the USA says about itself:

JANIS JOPLIN – MERCEDES BENZ – LIVE ?!?

2 November 2009

On this track, only the voice of Janis Joplin has been recorded in 1970 for the album “Pearl”. Arrangements, instruments and audience have been created by Marc Bidou 35 years later.

Lyrics are here.

The song is satire of the mix of religion and desire for expensive cars and other goods in United States culture. Nevertheless, Mercedes Benz and other car brands used the song in advertising.

I ask myself whether the ‘I’ in the Joplin song would be still so keen on having a Mercedes Benz (or a Porsche …) after reading this news of today. Translated from Dutch NOS TV:

Fraudulent software at Mercedes, big recall in Europe

German car manufacturer Daimler is recalling 774,000 diesel cars back to the garage in Europe because there may have been fraud with emissions data. These include the van Mercedes Vito and cars of the Mercedes C-class.

About a third of the recalled cars drive around in Germany. It is not clear how many Mercedes cars in the Netherlands will have to go to the garage. The company will probably soon approach European car owners with fraudulent software.

Manipulation

The recall is related to suspicious test data from the cars. Just like almost three years previously at Volkswagen, the cars may have been manipulated to seem cleaner than they really are. The software recognizes when the car is being tested, after which certain systems take effect or are switched off.

It is the second major recall for Daimler in a short time. Last year the company pulled out more than 200 million euros for a similar action. Other major car manufacturers (such as Audi and BMW) have also been suspected for years of using fraudulent software.