, Columnist
Fiat Chrysler Needs to Be Cleaner Than Clean
If you're going to make polluting cars, at least make them easy to understand.
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The potential financial impact of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV's run-in with the U.S. vehicle emissions regulator is surprisingly wide. Analysts at Exane are banking on it being only $250 million, while warning it could be as much as $4 billion in a Volkswagen-style scenario. At the top end, that's a quarter of the carmaker's market value before the Environmental Protection Agency said Fiat had breached its clean air rules.
Even if Fiat is not cheating with its emissions technology, it needs to be able to explain why this is the case to the regulator, to customers and to investors -- in ways everyone can understand.