German luxury automaker BMW AG has been sued in the US over “defeat devices” installed in tens of thousands of vehicles to cheat diesel emissions tests, lawyers for the plaintiffs said on Tuesday.
The case, filed in federal court in New Jersey, is to become a class-action suit once it is certified by a judge.
The suit singles out the BMW X5 and 335D model diesel cars sold between 2009 and 2013.
The attorneys at the Hagens Berman firm have said emissions from those cars were as much as 27 times higher than the standard allowed — a fact masked by the “defeat devices” and their “manipulative software.”
“At these levels, these cars aren’t just dirty — they don’t meet standards to be legally driven on US streets and no one would have bought these cars if BMW had told the truth,” Hagens Berman managing partner Steve Berman said. “BMW blatantly chose to leave its loyal customers in the dark, forcing them to unknowingly fit the bill for its degradation of the environment.”
BMW is the latest automaker to face legal action over emissions violations — rival Volkswagen AG was found to have built “defeat devices” into more than 11 million cars worldwide in the so-called “dieselgate” scandal.
The attorneys are seeking reimbursement for their clients for their car purchases.
German authorities last week raided BMW headquarters in Munich and another site in Austria in connection with a preliminary investigation into possible fraud relating to emissions cheat systems built into more than 11,000 cars.
BMW confirmed the raids and repeated the company’s stance that “a correctly programmed software subroutine was mistakenly allocated to incompatible models.”
The automaker last month admitted the software was present in some vehicles and said it would recall them for a software update.
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