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Bosch fined $57.8 million by DOJ for price fixing and bid rigging

The US Department of Justice has been investigating bid rigging and price fixing among automotive parts suppliers for years, and so far the agency has leveled nearly $2.5 billion in fines against 34 companies. The latest business to be caught in this ongoing crackdown is Germany's Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch), the world's largest independent auto component maker, and it agrees to pay a $57.8 million criminal fine to the Feds. According to the DOJ, Bosch has agreed to plead guilty to pricing fixing and bid rigging for spark plugs and oxygen sensors supplied to the former DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors. The rigging is said to have occurred between January 2000 and July 2011. Bosch also allegedly played foul with starter motors sold to Volkswagen from January 2009 until at least June 2010. Bosch and other companies allegedly conspired on the pricing for bids to submit to automakers, and sold the parts at noncompetitive prices. The DOJ filed a one-count felony charge in US District Court for these actions. The company's plea is still subject to court approval, though. Bosch is only the third European company to be charged in this investigation, according to the DOJ. So far, many of the fined businesses have been from Japan, including Takata, NGK and others. Some execs have claimed price-fixing has been the standard operating procedure in the auto parts industry for a long time. Robert Bosch GmbH Agrees to Plead Guilty to Price Fixing and Bid Rigging on Automobile Parts Installed in U.S. Cars Robert Bosch GmbH, the world's largest independent parts supplier to the automotive industry, based in Gerlingen, Germany, has agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $57.8 million criminal fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for spark plugs, oxygen sensors and starter motors sold to automobile and internal combustion engine manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere, the Department of Justice announced today. According to the one-count felony charge filed today in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan, Bosch conspired to allocate the supply of, rig bids for, and to fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of, spark plugs and oxygen sensors sold to automobile and internal combustion engine manufacturers such as DaimlerChrysler AG, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Company and Andreas Stihl AG & Co., among others, in the United States and elsewhere.

Major automakers urge Trump not to freeze fuel economy targets

WASHINGTON — Major automakers are telling the Trump administration they want to reach an agreement with California to avoid a legal battle over fuel efficiency standards, and they support continued increases in mileage standards through 2025. "We support standards that increase year over year that also are consistent with marketplace realities," Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing major automakers, will tell a U.S. House of Representatives panel on Tuesday, according to written testimony released on Monday. The Trump administration is weighing how to revise fuel economy standards through at least the 2025 model year, and one option is to propose freezing the standards through 2026, effectively allowing automakers to delay investments in technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions from burning petroleum. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not formally submitted its joint proposal with the Environmental Protection Agency to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. Even so, last week, California and 16 other states sued to challenge the Trump administration's decision to revise U.S. vehicle rules. Auto industry executives have held meetings with the Trump administration for months and have urged the administration to try to reach a deal with California even as they support slowing the pace of reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that the Obama administration rules outlined. One automaker official said part of the message to President Donald Trump at a meeting on Friday will be to consider California like a foreign trade deal that needs to be renegotiated. Automakers want to urge him to get automakers a "better deal" — as opposed to potentially years of litigation between major states and federal regulators. On Friday, Trump is set to meet with the chief executives of General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler and the top U.S. executives of at least five other major automakers, including Toyota, Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG, to talk about revisions to the vehicle rules. Senior EPA and Transportation Department officials will also attend. Environmental groups are eager to keep the rules in place, saying they will save consumers billions in fuel costs. A coalition of groups plans to stage a protest outside Ford's headquarters in Michigan.

Europe's most-wanted classic car is... the Ford Mustang?

Over the span of its 49 years and five generations, the Ford Mustang has held a special place in the hearts of automotive enthusiasts in the US, but, as it turns out, this car is also very popular amongst European car lovers. Earlier this summer, AutoScout24 - a new and used car shopping site in Europe - polled around 75,000 European "car lovers" (not sure how they vetted the respondents) to see which cars were the most popular, and the Mustang came out on top over iconic European classics like the BMW M1 and Volkswagen Beetle.
In the whole of Europe, 37 percent of those polled dream of owning a Mustang, but that number jumps in individual countries like Austria (42 percent) and Spain (41 percent). Rounding out the top five popular classics in Europe are the Mini and Citroën 2CV. Find out which cars made up the rest of the top 10 in the press release posted below.