Hino Motors, a fully owned subsidiary of Toyota Motors Corporation, is facing the consequences for a decade-long emissions fraud scheme dating back to 2010 that's in direct violation of the Clean Air Act.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced this week that U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Goldsmith has accepted Hino Motors' one-count guilty plea for falsifying emissions and fuel economy test results for over 100,000 diesel vehicles sold in the country.
Last January, the state of California and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) confirmed a separate $236.5 million settlement with Hino over the same fraudulent issues.
[Related: Hino reaches $236 million settlement with CARB]
The plea deal includes a criminal fine of $521.76 million, a five-year probation during which the company is barred from importing diesel engines into the U.S., as well as a requirement to complete a compliance and ethics program and reporting structure. Hino will also pay $1.087 billion in a forfeiture money judgement.
Total penalties against Hino amount to over $1.6 billion.
Hino's criminal activity dates back to 2010 until 2019 when its engineers began submitting false applications for diesel engine certification approvals to the EPA. These applications contained fraudulent emissions and carbon dioxide emissions test data, resulting in false fuel consumption values for these engines. Furthermore, Hino engineers failed to disclose software functions that could adversely affect these engines' emissions control systems.
This resulted in over 105,000 non-conforming diesel engines being sold and put into service, mostly in heavy-duty trucks, from 2010 through 2022.
“Hino unlawfully imported over 105,000 engines that did not comply with U.S. emissions standards and lied about what it was doing. Hino’s criminal conduct gave it an unfair business advantage over other law-abiding companies, including American companies, and generated over $1 billion in gross proceeds,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). “We are committed to upholding the rule of law by prosecuting fraud and enforcing our Clean Air Act emissions standards."
Manipulating emissions tests results and then knowingly selling noncompliant engines gave Hino an unfair business advantage over competitors for over a decade.
“Hino falsely certified compliance with the Clean Air Act so that it could profit off Americans by sending illegal, polluting engines into the United States,” added Acting Assistant Administrator Jeffrey Hall for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Today’s plea and sentencing demonstrates that 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.”
