SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s antitrust regulator has launched a probe into the local unit of Mercedes-Benz, an official at the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Tuesday, without elaborating.
The investigation came after a fire involving a Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle broke out in the city of Incheon on August 1, destroying or damaging about 140 cars and forcing some residents in the apartments above to move to shelters.
Mercedes-Benz Korea declined to comment on the matter. The company has previously said it was cooperating with authorities to determine the cause of the fire and planned to offer free inspections for EV owners.
The Korea Economic Daily, which first reported the probe, said the regulator will look into whether the company misled consumers over its vehicle battery suppliers.
The Mercedes EQE vehicle that caught fire used batteries supplied by China’s Farasis Energy.
In 2022, a Mercedes Benz executive said in a South Korean media interview that China’s CATL, one of the world’s leading battery firms, would be supplying batteries for its EQE electric vehicles.
Mercedes Korea disclosed in August this year that three of its four EQE versions use Farasis batteries, while the EQE 300 model has CATL batteries.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Ed Davies)
