Mercedes, VW halt auto-refrigerant use

– An auto refrigerant developed by Honeywell International Inc. and DuPont Co. and forecast to generate billions of dollars in sales is being shunned by two of Germany's largest carmakers after failing Daimler internal safety tests.

Daimler says it won't use the chemical and is recalling Mercedes-Benz cars that contain the product, defying a Jan. 1 European Union deadline to use the refrigerant in new models. Volkswagen Europe's largest automaker, is re-evaluating the product in light of Daimler's tests and won't use it "until further notice," Jeannine Ginivan, a spokeswoman for the Wolfsburg company, said Dec. 20.

The Daimler tests surprised executives in the car industry and at DuPont and Honeywell because the refrigerant had already passed industry and Environmental Protection Agency evaluations. Honeywell, which spent more than a decade developing the product to meet environmental rules, says it's waiting to see how the EU will handle Daimler's objections.

"The key element for the EU government is forcing the implementation of their rule," said Terrence Hahn, general manager of the U.S. company's fluorine products unit. "If you are not doing that, you are going to severely dampen innovation."

General Motors, the world's second-largest automaker by volume, still plans to use the refrigerant, said Curt Vincent, its engineering lead for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Daimler's tests came as a "total surprise" to DuPont, partly because the "mild flammability" of the product was disclosed from the outset, said Thierry Vanlancker, president of the Wilmington, Del., company's chemicals and fluoroproducts unit. The tests don't reflect "real-life conditions" of a crash, he said.

No penalty is specified for not complying with the EU directive, according to Walter Puetz, director of regulatory affairs for Mercedes.

The stance taken by Volkswagen and Stuttgart-based Daimler means other automakers may do the same, said David Doniger, a policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.

"Then the oomph goes away, the market doesn't grow for DuPont and Honeywell and it could all start to unravel," Doniger said by phone from Washington.

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