Toyota’s Hino Motors fined $1.6bn for US emissions fraud

Hino Motors, a subsidiary of Japanese carmaker Toyota, pleaded guilty on Wednesday over a multiyear emissions fraud scheme in the US and must pay $1.6bn (R29.05bn) in penalties, the US justice department said.

US district court judge Mark Goldsmith in Detroit accepted the Japanese truck and engine manufacturer’s guilty plea and sentenced the company to pay a fine of $521.76m (R9.47bn) and serve five years of probation during which it will be prohibited from importing diesel engines it manufactured into the US.

The court also entered a $1.087bn (R19.73bn) forfeiture money judgment against the company.

“Companies who intentionally evade our nation’s environmental laws, including by fabricating data to feign compliance with those laws, deserve punishment and will be held criminally accountable,” said US Environmental Protection Agency acting enforcement chief Jeffrey Hall.

Toyota declined to comment and Hino did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

In January, Hino said it would plead guilty over excess engine emissions in more than 105,000 US vehicles from 2010 to the end of 2022.

A company-commissioned panel said in 2022 Hino had falsified emissions data on some engines going back to at least 2003.

The settlement included a mitigation programme, valued at $155m (R2.81bn), to offset excess air emissions from the violations by replacing marine and locomotive engines, and a recall programme, valued at $144.2m (R2.62bn), to fix engines in 2017-2019 heavy-duty trucks, the EPA said earlier.

Hino admitted that between 2010 and 2019, it used “illicit shortcuts” and submitted false applications for engine certification approvals and altered emission test data, conducted tests improperly and fabricated data without conducting any underlying tests.

Hino president Satoshi Ogiso said in January the company had improved its internal culture, oversight and compliance practices.

Hino said in January it booked an extraordinary loss of ¥230bn (R28.15bn), in its second quarter results in October to cover the expected litigation costs.

Over the past decade, several carmakers admitted to selling vehicles with excess diesel emissions. Volkswagen paid more than $20bn (R2.45-trillion) in fines, penalties and settlements after it admitted in 2015 it had cheated emissions tests by installing “defeat devices” and sophisticated software in nearly 11-million vehicles globally.

Reuters