Mercedes-Benz Korea sanctioned over misleading EV battery claims

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 major safety scandals 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 authority’s investigation, the carmaker concealed the actual battery supplier for several models — the EQE and EQS EVs — and promoted as if all of the vehicles were equipped with batteries from CATL, the world’s largest battery maker. Mercedes-Benz Korea distributed an internal sales manual to dealers in June 2023 with detailed information about the firm’s EV lineups. Even if many of the models were equipped with battery cells produced by Farasis Energy, a much lesser-known Chinese supplier than CATL, the carmaker focused on promoting the upsides of CATL batteries in the manual and omitted the fact that it also equipped some of the models with Farasis batteries. The authority launched the investigatioWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times