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It's 2015 all over again, only this time Ram pickup trucks are involved. And there are a lot of them. Cummins is recalling 600,000 Ram vehicles as part of a $2 billion settlement with federal and California authorities for using unlawful software to manipulate diesel emissions test results.
The settlement was reached in December, but additional details surfaced yesterday, stating that Cummins agreed to pay $1.675 billion in civil fines, the most ever paid under the Clean Air Act, as well as $325 million to repair environmental harm, according to the Associated Press. The total bill is more than $2 billion, in what federal and state officials dubbed a historic settlement.
“Let this settlement be a lesson: We won’t let greedy corporations cheat their way to success and run over the health and well-being of consumers and our environment along the way,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters yesterday.
The breadth of the scam is mind-boggling, with Stellantis-owned Ram producing hundreds of thousands of Ram 2500 and 3500 pickup trucks over the last decade, all of which were outfitted with Cummins diesel engines and illegal software known as defeat devices. The software, according to the study, controlled nitrogen oxide production during emissions testing but then let it fly during "normal operations," according to the government.
Between 2013 and 2019, about 630,000 pickups from the 2013 to 2019 model years were fitted with the software, which is now being recalled. Stellantis declined to comment on the matter.
Cummins, which has denied any wrongdoing, must conduct a countrywide recall of all noncompliant Ram trucks, with Ram truck owners presumably being told of what measures to take. According to estimates, the malfunctioning vehicles created "thousands of tons of excess nitrogen oxide emissions," according to US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in a statement.
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