The ban will definitely hurt Mercedes and it seems pretty mean spirited. The French government has decided to ban certain Mercedes models and they claimed that the issue of air conditioning refrigerant is the main reason. We are 100% sure that this move will not be casting the government in a positive light.
The problem seems to be the T134a gas which was first introduced as an ecological alternative to R12. Now this model has been banned in favor of the R1234yf which is even more ecological and modern.
Mercedes used this kind of gas until this year, in June when they found out that it can be extremely flammable in some types of accidents. Mercedes is definitely very interested in people’s safety and they switched back to R134a on the A Class, B Class and even CLA Class.
France decided to ban the cars from sale even if an EU court has decided that they will allow this until new evidence is brought. This is how France violated the EU ruling in order to punish Mercedes.
After this scandal Mercedes Benz decided to take legal action against the French environmental Ministry in order to stop the banning.
They accused the French government of violating the EU’s ruling and they also declared that the procedure of giving notice to the carmaker and to the European Commission was completely ignored and it was not a proper one. France accounts for about 2% of Mercedes’ global sales and we can easily understand why Mercedes Benz seems so angry when it comes to this topic.
They are going to lose a lot of money and they are going to feel the effects of such a ban, even if not all models have been banned.
We are not sure how this situation will evolve but one thing is for sure: each of them seems to have solid reasons and the final confrontation is not going to be an easy one.
We definitely hope that Mercedes Benz will manage to get rid of such a ban and that they will be able to solve all the problems of their cars in order to avoid such situations. The customers are the most affected ones when it comes to such moments and this is why this kind of situations is not the best things that can happen.