Hino Motors Hit with $1.6 Billion Fine for Emissions Cheating

Hino Motors has been fined for cheating on diesel emissions, with settlements including a fine reportedly worth up to $1.6 billion.

It has been almost ten years since the global automotive industry was hit with a large-scale diesel emission scandal, but today yet another major automaker has been fined for committing one. This time around, it’s Hino Motors, which has agreed to an eye-opening settlement fee worth up to $1.6 billion (RM7.21 billion approximately) for submitting "false and fraudulent CO2 emissions test data" to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of America.

As reported by Motor1, the settlement will see Hino Motors pleading guilty to false data on approximately 105,000 on-road diesel engines and 6,000 off-road engines in the US. As part of this settlement, Hino Motors will also recall certain trucks and commercial vehicles that used the involved engines, which were manufactured from 2017 to 2019.

The criminal fee given to Hino Motors is the highest in US history since the infamous Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal, where the German automaker was also caught cheating on diesel emissions on their vehicles. The total $1.6 billion fine includes a $236.5 million civil penalty to the state of California, another civil penalty of $525 million, a criminal fine of $521.7 million, and other related costs.

In response to this settlement, Hino Motors CEO Satoshi Ogiso, via his official statement, said, “This resolution is a significant milestone toward resolving legacy issues that we have worked hard to ensure are no longer a part of Hino’s operations or culture.”

"We deeply apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers and stakeholders. In order to prevent a recurrence of this kind of issue, we have implemented company-wide reforms, including meaningful improvements to our internal culture, oversight, and compliance practices,” the CEO added.

Given that Hino Motors is majorly owned by Toyota Motor Corporation since 2001, this emission scandal could possibly be the biggest ever experienced by the Japanese automaker. Not to forget, this is also not the first time Toyota Motor Corporation was under a fire in recent years, where the automaker was previously hit by several testing irregularities concerning Daihatsu—another brand majorly owned by the automaker—which resulted in temporary production shutdowns and sales halts.