DETROIT — Engine maker Cummins Inc. will recall 600,000 Ram trucks as part of a settlement with federal and California authorities that also requires the company to remedy environmental damage caused by illegal software that let it skirt diesel emissions tests.
New details of the settlement, reached in December, were released Wednesday. Cummins had already agreed to a $1.675 billion civil penalty to settle claims – the largest ever secured under the Clean Air Act – plus $325 million for pollution remedies.
That brings Cummins’ total penalty to more than $2 billion, which officials from the Justice Department, Environmental Protection Agency, California Air Resources Board and the California Attorney General called “landmark” in a call with reporters Wednesday.
“Let this settlement be a lesson: We won’t let greedy corporations cheat their way to success and run over the health and wellbeing of consumers and our environment along the way,” California AG Rob Bonta said.
Over the course of a decade, hundreds of thousands of Ram 2500 and 3500 heavy duty pickup trucks – manufactured by Stellantis – had Cummins diesel engines equipped with software that limited nitrogen oxide pollution during emissions tests but allowed higher pollution during normal operations, the governments alleged.
In all, about 630,000 pickups from the 2013 through 2019 model years were equipped with the so-called “defeat devices” and will be recalled. Roughly 330,000 more trucks from 2019 through 2023 had emissions control software that wasn’t properly reported to authorities, but the government says those didn’t disable emissions controls. Officials could not estimate how many of the recalled trucks remain on the road.
Stellantis deferred comment on the case to Cummins, which has denied allegations made by the government and is not admitting liability, according to court documents.
The engine maker said in a statement that Wednesday’s actions do not involve any more financial commitments than those announced in December. “We are looking forward to obtaining certainty as we conclude this lengthy matter and continue to deliver on our mission of powering a more prosperous world,” the statement said.
Cummins also said the engines that were cited but are not being recalled did not exceed emissions limits. Punishment for the unreported software is included in the penalty, the company said.
As part of the settlement, Cummins will make up for smog-forming pollution that resulted from its actions.
Preliminary estimates suggested its emissions bypass produced “thousands of tons of excess emissions of nitrogen oxides,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland previously said in a prepared statement.
Wednesday’s details come seven years after German automaker Volkswagen agreed to plead guilty to criminal felony counts following investigations into its use of similar defeat devices, a massive emissions scandal known as Dieselgate.
In 2017, the automaker agreed to pay a $2.8 billion criminal penalty in addition to $1.5 billion in separate civil resolutions.