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Prosecutors in Stuttgart, Germany, fined Daimler between 800m and 1 billion euros for violating diesel vehicle emissions regulations, according to foreign media reports.

It is understood that the German Automobile Administration found that Mercedes-Benz C-Class and E-Class cars were equipped with deceptive emission testing software, which involved passing the exhaust test by software fraud, so Germany ordered the company to recall a total of 280000 Mercedes-Benz cars.

In response to this report, a spokesman for the German prosecutor's office in Stuttgart said that the investigation would not be lifted before the end of the year. Daimler also declined to comment in the face of the diesel gate incident.

In February 2016, the US Environmental Protection Agency asked Daimler to describe the emission levels of some of its Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles, according to the survey.

In May 2017, German prosecutors searched Daimler's office. As part of the investigation, the investigation focused on whether Daimler manipulated diesel exhaust emissions to pass the exhaust test.

In July 2018, the German Federal Transport Ministry believed that Daimler may be suspected of tampering with exhaust emissions of more than 774000 diesel vehicles in Europe, requiring Daimler to recall 238000 diesel vehicles put in Germany, including Vito, GlC220D and C-class 220D models. But Daimler escaped fines by agreeing to upgrade software for nearly a million diesel cars in Europe.

In June 2019, the German Transport Ministry said that because Daimler was suspected of emissions fraud, illegal software was installed in vehicles to control emissions. To this end, the German Transport Ministry ordered Daimler to recall 60, 000 Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles for the 2012-2015 Mercedes-Benz GLK220.

Daimler has issued four profit warnings in just one year, thanks to heavy investment by US and European regulators in the development of electric and self-driving cars and increased investigations into emissions fraud from Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles.

According to Daimler's second-quarter results, its operating income was 42.65 billion euros, up 5% from a year earlier, with a loss of 1.56 billion euros before interest and tax, compared with a profit of 2.6 billion euros in the same period last year, Daimler's first loss in nine years. The last quarterly loss was in 2009. Among them, the fraud of Mercedes-Benz diesel emissions cost Daimler 1.07 billion euros. At the same time, Daimler raised the provision for legal and government litigation costs for diesel vehicles by 1.6 billion euros.

Daimler has said it expects earnings before interest and tax in 2019 to be the same as in 2018. This is mainly because Daimler's earmarked funds for "various ongoing government procedures and measures for Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles" will amount to hundreds of millions of euros, which will cause Daimler to cut its full-year profit forecast.

For Daimler, the biggest risk remains that the diesel fuel scandal continues to simmer, and if the charge that Daimler tries to use cheating software to pass diesel exhaust tests comes true, it could lead to huge fines like Volkswagen.

Volkswagen has paid more than 30 billion euros in fines since the revelation of the diesel emissions scandal in September 2015, but the scandal is still simmering and the investigation is ongoing.

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