Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/627675
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 17 JANUARY 2016 VIII Motoring RENAULT has admitted that three of its production sites in France have been raided by anti-fraud investigators, sending shares in carmakers around the world lower amid fears that the Volkswagen emission scandal could spread. Shares in Renault plunged as much as 22% after unions revealed that France's competition and anti-fraud authority, the DGCCRF, had searched the carmaker's sites at Lardy, Guyancourt and its headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, with computers seized and later handed back. The company confirmed the raids, but said its own tests had shown no signs of "cheat" software. Its shares later closed down 10 per cent at €77.75, wiping nearly €3 billion off its market value as French ministers rushed to reassure investors that defeat-device software had not been found at Renault. However, the French environment minister Ségolène Royal admitted that preliminary results from the tests showed that emissions exceeded limits on diesel vehicles made by Renault and by some foreign carmakers. The industry has been under scrutiny since September when US regulators first revealed that VW had cheated to make its diesel-driven vehicles appear to create less pollution than they really did. The German car giant was thrown into a crisis. Its chief executive Martin Winterkorn was forced to resign and the company set aside €6.7 billion to fix up to 11 million cars worldwide, of which 1.2 million are in the UK. French authorities began an inves- tigation into the country's own car industry in September. Just over 75,000 Renaults were bought by drivers in the UK last year but the total number in the country is far higher than that. The Japanese carmaker Nissan, which has a 15 per cent stake in Renault and operates a joint venture with the French group, said the raids were "a Renault issue" and was directing inquiries to it. In the wake of the VW scandal, Re- nault said last month that it would invest €50 million to bring the emissions of its cars into line with those measured in official test conditions. Rival Peugeot said in October that it had never used emissions-cheating software, as VW admitted it had been doing. But Peugeot shares fell 5 per cent, BMW 3.35% and VW 3.7% on the news of the raids. Shares in Fiat Chrysler, meanwhile, were down nearly 8%in afternoon trad- ing in New York as it emerged that the Italian-American carmaker is facing a Chicago lawsuit alleging that it tried to pay dealers to inflate sales figures. Fiat said that the claims were "without merit" and it would defend itself vigorously. Carmakers fear fallout as Renault admits to fraud raid An assembly line at a Renault facility in France Parents in the dark over child seat safety ALMOST half of parents across Europe have little or no understanding of the term Isofix, despite it being the simplest way to secure a child seat into a car safely. Some 44% of mums and dads quizzed by child seat maker Britax had either never heard the word or had a lim- ited understanding of what it refers to. Badly-installed child seats are a major contributing factor to child injuries in car acci- dents. Isofix was designed by Britax and Volkswagen in the 1990s to give parents an easy way to remove the hassle of seatbelt-secured seats. The system is simple. Special anchoring points at- tached to the car's chassis are designed into the outer rear seats of almost all modern cars, and sometimes even front passenger seats too. Any Isofix car seat should, in theory, click straight into these anchoring points and be 100% secure. Mark Bennett, Child Safety Expert at Britax, commented: "Britax always strives to support parents through the innovative design of their products, that's why we want to continue spreading the word about Isofix. "Isofix is an incredibly safe, quick and easy to use system that simplifies the busy lives of mums and dads and gives them the confidence to install their child seats in an intuitive way." Separate research by the German Insurance Institute found that only 30% of seat- belt-secured child seats were installed correctly, compared to 96% in Group 1 car seats.