Germany diesel ban: Decision on diesel hardware retrofits in a few days

The German government will decide in a few days whether and when hardware retrofits for diesel cars are appropriate, following a court ruling on a ban of diesel vehicles in Frankfurt, the secretary general of Germany's Christian Democrats said on Monday.

A German court ruled last week that Frankfurt, Germany's financial center, must ban highly-polluting, older diesel vehicles from the city center from next February as part of a plan to improve air quality. The debate over air quality and hardware retrofits has been stoked by reports of persistently high nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in Germany's largest cities and by Volkswagen's admission in 2015 that it had rigged diesel emissions tests in the United States with the help of engine control devices.