FRANKFURT — The French automaker Renault said on Thursday that government officials had searched its offices, including its headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, as part of an investigation of its vehicles's emissions but had found no evidence of cheating.
Word of that investigation sent the carmaker's stock plunging on Thursday, after news reports suggested it might face an emissions scandal similar to the one that has plagued Volkswagen. But the shares recovered somewhat after the company said that government investigators had so far found no wrongdoing.
Renault said that officials from the consumer protection and fraud office of the Economy Ministry had searched several company facilities, including its headquarters, as well as technical centers in Lardy and Guyancourt in the suburbs of the capital.
Those searches were intended to validate earlier findings by a government technical commission, which did not uncover evidence that Renault had cheated on emissions tests, the company said.
Volkswagen has been struggling to recover from revelations in September that 11 million cars with diesel engines had software that produced artificially low readings during official emissions tests.
"The continuing investigation has not produced any evidence of the presence of cheating software on Renault vehicles," the company said in a statement. "For Renault, this is good news."
Details of the searches of the Renault sites appear to have first emerged in a newsletter published on Thursday by the CGT labor union. The newsletter reported that fraud office representatives visited at least three Renault sites and seized the computers of "several directors and managers" in charge of operational areas that included "adjustment" of engine control systems, quality control and certification, and testing.
Renault shares, which had been down by more than 20 percent early Thursday, were still down 10 percent in midafternoon trading.
Searches of Renault sites by officials responsible for competition, consumer protection and fraud were conducted in parallel with tests by a technical commission and were to validate the findings of those tests, Renault said.
The company said it was cooperating fully with the government's investigation.
Shares of the French automaker PSA Peugeot-Citroën were down about 4 percent Thursday afternoon. But the company issued a statement saying it had not been the subject of any raids and that French government tests of its cars had found no emissions anomalies.
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How Volkswagen Got Away With Diesel Deception
Volkswagen has admitted that millions of its diesel cars worldwide were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emissions tests. The company is now grappling with the fallout.
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