The United States and the state of California have reached an agreement in principle with the truck engine manufacturer Cummins on a $1.6 billion penalty to settle claims that the company violated the Clean Air Act by installing devices to defeat emissions controls on hundreds of thousands of engines, the Justice Department announced on Friday.
The penalty would be the largest ever under the Clean Air Act and the second largest ever environmental penalty in the United States.
Defeat devices are parts or software that bypass, defeat or render inoperative emissions controls like pollution sensors and onboard computers. They allow vehicles to pass emissions inspections while still emitting high levels of smog-causing pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, which is linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
The Justice Department has accused the company of installing defeat devices on 630,000 model year 2013 to 2019 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines. The company is also alleged to have secretly installed auxiliary emission control devices on 330,000 model year 2019 to 2023 RAM 2500 and 3500 pickup truck engines.
Stellantis, the company that makes the trucks, has already recalled the model year 2019 trucks and has initiated a recall of the model year 2013 to 2018 trucks.
“Violations of our environmental laws have a tangible impact. They inflict real harm on people in communities across the country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “This historic agreement should make clear that the Justice Department will be aggressive in its efforts to hold accountable those who seek to profit at the expense of people’s health and safety.”
In a statement, Cummins said that it had “seen no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith and does not admit wrongdoing.”
The company said it has “cooperated fully with the relevant regulators, already addressed many of the issues involved, and looks forward to obtaining certainty as it concludes this lengthy matter. Cummins conducted an extensive internal review and worked collaboratively with the regulators for more than four years.”
The Justice Department worked with the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the matter. The E.P.A. has ramped up its investigations of illegal emissions control software since the Volkswagen scandal of 2015, when the automaker was found to have illegally installed the devices in millions of diesel passenger cars worldwide.
In 2016, Volkswagen agreed to pay up to $14.7 billion in a consumer class-action settlement. The company agreed to buy back about 430,000 of the approximately 11 million millions cars that it had installed the cheating software on around the world.
In 2020, another E.P.A. investigation found that individual owners and operators of more than half a million diesel pickup trucks had been illegally disabling the emissions control technology on their vehicles.
“E.P.A. is on the job because of what was learned through the Volkswagen scandal, and their oversight has increased significantly,” said Luke Tonachel, an expert on clean vehicle policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “Our government needs to continue to be vigilant to ensure cheating doesn’t continue.”
