About a year ago I went to the largest used car dealer in Prague. Nearly every available car had a diesel engine, and the salespeople kept emphasising how the car had come from Germany “so all the papers are in order”. I got to thinking.
German car companies engaged in a years-long campaign to mislead people about how clean their diesel engines were. Many German cities are in the process of banning diesel engines altogether. Are Germans unloading their diesel cars as fast as they can before they drop further in value? Are they simply sending their dirty, law-breaking, diesel vehicles to places where people supposedly don’t care about clean air or public health — places in Central and Eastern Europe?
Yes, it turns out.
