As the VW ‘crisis’ was unfolding last year, a colleague of mine who spent decades in the auto industry said to me ‘you watch: if VW is doing it, then many others will be doing it too. I wouldn’t be surprised if VW did this on purpose to financially cripple their competitors’.

So far, the first limb of my colleague’s prophecy could now be coming to fruition, with Renault’s sites having been raided by police. In true French style, Renault has come out swinging with this half-hearted denial of wrongdoing:

Renault said investigations to date had found “no evidence of a defeat device equipping Renault vehicles”, in a reference to a type of software program Volkswagen was found to have used by US investigators to cheat emissions tests.

It doesn’t sound like they’re too convinced about what might be in their cars does it?

The second limb of the prophecy could also end up being true. As you will see from the first link above, VW has very strong finances, whereas not every other auto maker can say the same thing.

Let’s see where this all goes.

(Thanks to reader Peter Part).