Daimler CEO to meet German transport minister on Monday

BERLIN (Reuters) - Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche will have a follow-up meeting with German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer next Monday, the ministry and the carmaker said on Wednesday, after they met last week to discuss diesel emissions.

Global carmakers have faced a regulatory clamp-down since Volkswagen admitted to deliberately cheating diesel emissions tests in 2015.

Scheuer questioned Zetsche at a closed-door meeting last week over how many Mercedes-Benz vans and cars need to be fixed after a regulator found illegal software in its Vito vans.

German weekly Der Spiegel said there was considerable evidence that diesel engines of the Mercedes C-Class models were also affected.

It said on Friday that Scheuer threatened to fine Daimler up to 5,000 euros per affected car, which it said could total 3.75 billion euros ($4.4 billion) if as many as 750,000 vehicles are involved.

German weekly Die Zeit on Wednesday cited sources as saying that the number of cars affected could be even higher, at up to 900,000.

Die Zeit also said that software updates to Daimler's diesel vehicles would take until 2020. Initially, the updates were to be completed by the end of 2018, it said..

Daimler declined to comment on how many cars could be affected by the diesel emissions issue or to say how long software updates on the diesel vehicles would take.

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(Reporting by Holger Hansen and Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Paul Carrel and Maria Sheahan; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Adrian Croft)