In this Aug. 2, 2019, file, photo, people walk by the logo of Toyota at a show room in Tokyo. Toyota will pay $180 million to settle U.S. government allegations that it failed to report pollution control system defects in its vehicles for a decade. The company, on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, also agreed in court to investigate future emissions-related defects quickly and report them to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a timely manner. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
By Tom Krisher
Toyota will pay $180 million to settle U.S. government allegations that it failed to report and fix pollution control defects in its vehicles for a decade.
The company also agreed in court to investigate future emissions-related defects quickly and report them to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a timely manner.
“Toyota's actions undermined the EPA's self-disclosure system and likely led to delayed or avoided emissions-related recalls,” Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. Attorney in Manhattan said Thursday in a prepared statement.
The Japanese automaker's actions from 2005 to 2015 brought financial benefits and excessive vehicle pollution, the statement said.
The company was accused in a government lawsuit of delays in filing 78 emissions defect reports as required by the Clean Air Act. The reports covered millions of vehicles, and some of them were as many as eight years late, the statement said.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday and settled on the same day, according to the statement.
In a statement, Toyota said it reported the problems to the EPA five years ago after finding a “process gap" that brought delays in filing the defect reports. “Within months of discovering this issue, we submitted all relevant delayed filings and put new robust reporting and compliance practices in place,” the company said.
The company said the reporting delays resulted in a “negligible” impact on emissions, contradicting the government's statement alleging excessive pollution. The company said that despite reporting delays, it notified customers and fixed vehicles that needed to have emissions recalls.
Automakers have to report to the EPA if there are 25 cases of the same pollution control defect in a model year. But Toyota decided to report the defects only when required under a less-stringent California standard, the Justice Department said.
Toyota is the third automaker in recent years to pay penalties for Clean Air Act violations. The worst was cheating by Volkswagen, which for years programmed its diesel vehicles to turn pollution controls on for EPA lab tests and turned them off for roadway driving. In 2019, Fiat Chrysler agreed to a settlement over allegations that it rigged pollution tests on diesel pickup trucks and SUVs. Fiat Chrysler has maintained that it didn’t deliberately cheat emissions tests and the company didn’t admit wrongdoing.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
