Mercedes-Benz Korea fined $7.64 mil. over misleading EV battery information

Mercedes-Benz Korea was slapped with a 12.23 billion won ($7.64 million) fine for misleading customers with false battery information on some electric vehicles (EVs), which triggered a major safety scandal in 2024, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Tuesday. The nation’s antitrust watchdog also ordered the carmaker to rectify its deceptive marketing practices. According to the investigation findings, the carmaker concealed the actual battery supplier for its EQE and EQS EV models and claimed in promotional materials that the vehicles were equipped with batteries from CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, which is headquartered in China. Mercedes-Benz Korea distributed an internal sales manual to dealers in June 2023 with detailed information about its EV lineup. Although many of the models were equipped with battery cells produced by Farasis Energy, a lesser-known Chinese supplier, the carmaker focused on promoting the upsides of CATL batteries in the manual and omitted the fact that it also equipped some of models with Farasis batteries. The FTC launched the investigation intoWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times