Germany should soon start phasing out petrol and diesel, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) said as Britain announced it would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel-powered cars from 2040. Germany’s car industry is in hot water after Der Spiegel reported on Friday that Volkswagen <VOWG_p.DE >, BMW, Audi and Porsche may have colluded to fix the prices of diesel emissions treatment systems. EU antitrust regulators are investigating allegations of a cartel. The supervisory boards of Daimler and Volkswagen are due to meet on Wednesday to discuss the issue. “We need to start getting rid of combustion technology in the short-term,” Oliver Wittke, a transport expert in Merkel’s CDU, told Deutschlandfunk radio. Herbert Behrens, a transport expert in the radical Left party, also said the government should start taking action now so that it could cope without fossil fuels by 2050. […]