DETROIT– Engine manufacturer Cummins Inc. will recall 600,000 Ram trucks as part of a settlement with federal and California authorities that also requires the company to repair environmental damage caused by illegal software that allows it to bypass diesel emissions tests.
New details about the settlement, which was reached in December, were released Wednesday. Cummins had already agreed to a $1.675 billion civil penalty to settle claims – the largest ever imposed under the Clean Air Act – plus $325 million for pollution solutions.
That brings Cummins’ total penalty to more than $2 billion, which officials from the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board and the California attorney general called a “milestone” in a call with reporters on Wednesday. .
“Let this settlement be a lesson: We will not allow greedy companies to cheat their way to success and overwhelm the health and well-being of consumers and our environment along the way,” said California AG Rob Bonta.
Over the course of a decade, hundreds of thousands of Ram 2500 and 3500 heavy-duty pickup trucks – manufactured by Stellantis – had Cummins diesel engines fitted with software that limited nitrogen oxide pollution during emissions tests but allowed greater pollution during normal use, the authorities alleged. governments. .
In total, approximately 630,000 pickups from model years 2013 through 2019 were equipped with the so-called “defeat devices” and will be recalled. About 330,000 additional trucks between 2019 and 2023 had emissions control software that was not properly reported to authorities, but the government says these did not disable emissions controls. Officials could not estimate how many of the recalled trucks are still on the road.
Stellantis has deferred comment on the matter to Cummins, which has denied the government’s allegations and did not admit liability, court documents show.
The engine manufacturer said in a statement that Wednesday’s actions do not entail more financial obligations than those announced in December. “We look forward to receiving certainty as we resolve this long-standing issue and continue to deliver on our mission to enable a more prosperous world,” the statement said.
Cummins also said the engines cited but not recalled did not exceed emissions limits. The penalty for the unreported software is included in the fine, the company said.
As part of the settlement, Cummins will compensate for smog-forming pollution resulting from its actions.
Preliminary estimates suggested the emissions bypass produced “thousands of tons of excess nitrogen oxide emissions,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland previously said in a prepared statement.
The Clean Air Act, a federal law enacted in 1963 to reduce and control air pollution across the country, requires car and motorcycle manufacturers to meet emissions limits to protect the environment and human health.
The transportation sector is responsible for about a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and much of that comes from light-duty vehicles. The limits are intended to limit the amount of emissions from the combustion of gasoline and diesel fuel, including carbon dioxide and other problematic pollutants.
“We are increasingly finding that the public health consequences of car emissions are truly devastating and that it is one of our biggest sources of emissions driving climate change,” said Jacqueline Klopp, director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development of the Columbia Climate Institute. School.
“To the extent that automakers try to evade our emissions standards, which are our greatest tool to protect us from these public health and climate change impacts, these types of evasion fines are hopefully a very important deterrent,” she added. “There are deep justice and equity issues surrounding air pollution caused by transportation emissions.”
Diesel exhaust is harmful to human health; it is carcinogenic. Long-term exposure to ozone-forming nitrogen oxides can cause health problems such as respiratory infections, lung disease and asthma.
Officials said Wednesday that it is not lost on them that the Cummins settlement follows several other notable emissions fraud cases involving the auto industry in recent years.
Wednesday’s details come seven years after German automaker Volkswagen agreed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor count following investigations into its use of similar defeat devices in a massive emissions scandal known as Dieselgate.
The company installed software in certain 2009-2015 model year diesel vehicles of its brands, circumventing emissions standards and emitting up to 40 times more pollution than those standards allow. Volkswagen said 11 million vehicles around the world are equipped with pollution controls.
In 2017, the automaker agreed to pay a $2.8 billion criminal fine, in addition to $1.5 billion in separate civil resolutions.
Fiat Chrysler faced similar consequences in 2019 for failing to disclose defeat devices used to cause vehicle emissions control systems to function differently during emissions testing. More than 100,000 EcoDiesel Ram 1500 and Jeep Grand Cherokee vehicles were sold in the US with the unauthorized software.
The automaker agreed to pay a $305 million civil penalty to settle claims of fraudulent emissions testing in 2019.
In 2020, Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s car company, agreed to an $857 million civil penalty as a result of the failed disclosures and claims for violations of the Clean Air Act.
“There is a lot of money in diesel engines and people making profits from diesel engines,” Columbia’s Klopp said. “Unless you give them a very large fine and a very large deterrent, they are willing to pay the fines to make that profit. That’s really sad because it puts profits ahead of the health of our communities.”
___
Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Tom Krisher is an Associated Press auto writer.
___
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental reporting receives funding from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s Standards for Working with Charities, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas at AP.org.