According to foreign media reports, the U.S. Department of Justice said that on March 19, Hino Motors, a subsidiary of Toyota Motors, pleaded guilty to its years-long emission fraud in the United States and had to pay a $1.6 billion fine.
District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith of Detroit, U.S. District Court accepted Hino Automobile’s plea and sentenced the company to a fine of $521.76 million, while banning Hino Automobile from importing its diesel engines to the United States for five years. At the same time, the court also made a judgment to confiscate the company’s $1.087 billion property.
The EPA said earlier that the settlement included a $155 million reduction plan that offsets excessive air pollutants from illegal emissions by replacing marine and locomotive engines, and a $144.2 million recall plan to repair engines of 2017-2019 heavy trucks.
“Companies that deliberately evade U.S. environmental laws, including those that fabricate data to pretend to comply with them, deserve punishment and will be held criminally responsible,” said Jeffrey Hall, acting head of law enforcement at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Toyota declined to comment on the above report, and Hino did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In January this year, Hino Automobile said it would plead guilty to the excessive engine emissions in more than 105,000 vehicles in the United States between 2010 and 2022. Satoshi Ogiso, president of Hino Motors, said the company has improved its internal culture, supervision and compliance measures. In addition, Hino said in January that it included special losses of 230 billion yen (about $1.54 billion) in its second-quarter financial report released in October to cover the estimated litigation costs.
Hino Motors admitted that between 2010 and 2019, the company adopted an “impaired shortcut” to submit fake engine certification applications, tamper with emission test data, conduct improper testing, and even fabricate data without any basic testing.
In 2022, an investigation team commissioned by the company said that Hino had made false statements on emission data for some engines since at least 2003.
It’s not just Hino Motors, but in the past decade, several automakers have admitted to selling cars with excess diesel emissions. In 2015, Volkswagen admitted to installing “cheating devices” and software on nearly 11 million cars around the world to pass emission testing, and since then Volkswagen has paid more than $20 billion in fines, fines and settlement fees.