Cummins Fined $1.6B for Diesel Defeat Devices in 630K RAM Trucks
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
> "The company has seen no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith and does not admit wrongdoing," Cummins said in a statement.
The fact that someone caught cheating red-handed still thinks this an adequate stance is beyond reprehensible.
>The fact that someone caught cheating red-handed [...]
They haven't though, at least in the eyes of the law, because they haven't been convicted. Furthermore, I can't seem to find a complaint from the DoJ (presumably because they settled), so it's plausible that they really haven't seen any evidence from the government.
I’m still trying to gather wtf they’re are talking about.
I know what diesel defeat is, but can not think of what this is from Cummins. All these vehicles have functioning DEF and particulate systems.
My best guess is there is a way to turn on the defeat… which is strange because the last of the people doing that do so with custom PCM/ECM (engine computer) calibrations.
If there is a backdoor, I’m not sure anyone knew about it before this.
If there isn’t a backdoor, and the only way to remove DEF equipment is to cut out the cats, remove the EGR, reflash the computer with modified and signature-bypassed software - then how the shit is that Cummins or RAM’s fault?
I’m waiting to find an explanation that even remotely makes sense.
A little like students who cram a subject just before the test and then forget it all afterwards.
In both cases, there was no requirement to have all the knowledge/have low NOX emissions outside the test - but regulators kinda assumed that they would.
Not good, what's wrong in our society where iconic brands like this feel the need and go out and commit fraud? Hundreds of people had to have been involved in this, conspired to cheat ourselves out of clean air.
We must do better.
destroyed their reputation and trust with the public
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/27/busi...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/27/busi...
In Europe VW has a 9.8% market share down almost 2% from the previous year: https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/volkswagen-europe-sales-figure....
This is relevant because it shows that VW is loosing significant market share in US and Europe. It's loosing about 20% market share per year (2% off 10%). This is after dieselgate. One could infer that dieselgate caused consumers to no longer trust VW, along with other systemic problems within the company and its products, could be a cause of this downturn in market share.
EDIT: I wrote this comment before parent's ninja edit.
VW the brand, not the group including Skoda, Seat, and the rest, is loosing market share in Europe because their cars are meh and overpriced for what they offer when Skoda, Kia, Hyundai, Dacia are much cheaper.
What about VW badges specifically, what are the numbers there?
It's relevant because of brand recognition. If the brand differences didn't matter, they wouldn't have kept them, it would all be under one brand.
It seeks pertinent, given the confusion, to clarify that the first comment above was about the Vw brand, second about the group. It's confusing to conflate the two. In service of more clear and concise communication it may he helpful to focus on one or the other to make a point.
I drive a Diesel Super Duty, and almost bought a Ram Cummins when i bought it. I have a good friend who has worked for Cummins for 20 years, and many other friends with various diesel trucks.
I won't buy one of their products now because of this.
I deeply care, I'm right in the middle of their target demographic, and I have 40 years left of spending to do in my life.
Speak for yourself, I'll speak for me and my friends.
Given the amount of unnecessary shite in the air, I'll guess you're about 11 years old and not expecting things to improve much.
Air quality has actually been getting steadily better in the areas the world that I live in because of the other companies following the new emissions laws properly. Im confident my diesel truck and RV will allow my family to seek "greener pastures" if needed.
The key is to stay happy with a modest lifestyle. The people that will be screwed are the people with 5000 Sq ft mansons that need $1500 a month in energy just to keep them from being uninhabitable. The neighborhoods in Arizona that won't have water.
If we all do more with less, be kind, and don't complain - we will be fine.
Editing because I can't reply to the awesome comment below. Love it, so true. Statistics changes as you move through space and time. Thank you for this lovely perspective!
Could you plausibly get your pickup-truck related work done with, say, a pair of Ardennaise draft horses?
I am also positive they have not been caught doing it. If they are, I will have a similar, likely higher, level of outrage.
Yes, but it would take way longer and my apartment building doesn't have stables.
The nytimes has an entire section dedicated to it: https://www.nytimes.com/section/climate
And this article on the front page right now: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/23/us/politics/electric-vehi...
The first thing most owners of a Dodge RAM with a Cummins do is install performance modifications. They will flash a custom tune in the engine control system, change the fuel injection, intake and turbocharger, etc. and set it up so that it can "roll coal" they don't care one iota about emissions.
The Dodge RAM was the last full-size truck made with a manual transmission. I have been watching Craigslist and FB marketplace for one of these with a Cummins to come up in factory stock condition. They are rare. They've almost all been modified.
Yes, a Ram diesel will hold its value better than a car, but it's the bottom out of the big 3 diesel truck makers. The "old guys" always say with the Rams that the truck falls apart around the engine. The engine lasts, but the rest of the truck has all been replaced by then.
After all the ways the government rules have made my purchases worse, I'm inclined trust these companies more, not less.
Watch some documentary footage on children with lead poisoning from leaded gas.
Report back your findings.
I was highlighting ways in which these regulations have made our lives better.
Answering your question, I agree. If we were to defeat those things that make modern diesels better as the parent commenter is suggesting, it would make the air worse.
The vast majority of owners fucking with the emissions equipment on their modern diesels are not doing so to conspicuously assault other motorists/cyclists/pedestrians with soot; they are doing it because in pursuit of that last 10% of emissions cleanup, regulators have burdened the operators of diesel trucks with hundreds of pounds of multi-thousand-dollar components that are delicate, MUST be maintained, reduce engine power by 25% and fuel efficiency by 50%.
If you just tow a boat, or a camper, that's annoying. If you use the truck for an actual business...that's HUGE expense.
Bear in mind, the typical diesel delete isn't something you notice if the person is driving normally in a modern truck. Electronic engine management and electronic common-rail injection are in new trucks, and they're night and day vs. mechanical injection on old diesels.
I have seen this with the current 6.7 Ford Scorpion-series Powerstroke V8 in an F-350.
With the emissions-controls reduced to what was legally required in 2003, a new-ish Mercedes E-class diesel is efficient enough to drive from Framingham MA to Beloit WI on a single tank of fuel, at highway speeds.
But we don’t have terrible air quality (except for when fires burn forests that greenies said we needed to protect, and made worse in the end). So I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be researching.
Not even 5% … but sure, we can go with “most” if you want.
Honestly don't get the point of them. Need >4.5 ton gvm...get a MR or a HR truck and do it properly.
Can't wait to see some of the industrial plant equipment cummins gear get replaced. Used to work on a rig with a cummins that ate roughly 1200L of fuel every 24 hours. Gross innefficient beast of a thing literally just to turn a hydraulic pump. Diesel gear sucks to work on.
Gimme electric motors and some hydrogen fuel cells already.
And there's there's this. This is INSANE if you ask me. It's modifying a diesel engine where the sole purpose is to emit an excessive amount of black smoke. It's a form of 'f*ck you anti-environmentalism.
In non Clown World, everyone responsible for it would be in jail and the company shut down.
In my country (Serbia), politicians basically pocketed the money assigned for filters for most of heavy industry, and there's speculation of importing and burning waste from EU countries - which wouldn't be surprising given the AQI levels of 150-300 on the regular during winter months. We're a red circle in a green sea on AQI map of Europe, together with Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo was the second worst location in the world a couple of days ago).
I can definitely understand corruption and stealing for self-gain, it's a very familiar concept here. But those people, and their kids (!) are living here and breathing the same air - they're doing it to themselves (as well as to everyone else) - how stupid and greedy do you have to be?
Won't their kids leave for London, San Francisco, Vancouver, or New York? At least that's what the children of the Indian and Chinese officials who I know did.
Leaving might leave you open to prosecution for financial crimes, and naturalization can become difficult depending on how high you go.
A couple of my classmates and friends from families lower down the chain naturalized, but those higher basically had to return.
Or, you emigrate as a university student, that's what most do to get around the stricter labor visa rules, and you can easily find a non-top-10% university that will accept anyone to study something easy like "English studies". As long as you pay the tuition fee(very low in most EU countries), nobody will ask you anything.
My American mate who emigrated here for welfare, doesn't work officially, just enrolls in a new university every 2-3 years as an "English student" to get his visa renewed and earns a living by doing private English lessons for cash on the side, and there's others like him as well.
So if you know the system and the loopholes, it's pretty easy to exploit. Talking to Bosnians, Indians, and other non-EU immigrants, the more I learn about the various exploits.
I wish. I'm German, my employer is attempting to hire someone from former Yugoslavia, and HR has been dealing with getting shitwalled by the local Ausländerbehörde for months now.
We've resorted to paying him all the effort required to set him up as a freelancer in his home country, deal with taxes and other crap, until the Ausländerbehörde gets their shit together.
They'd probably attend western universities - not University of Belgrade (I'd assume)
Also it's relatively easier for a Balkan national to emigrate anywhere compared to a Chinese or Indian national irrespective of net worth.
And yet, people continue to poison themselves.
I have no interest in rolling coal, but modern emissions systems are over-complicated, expensive and cause massive reliability issues so some bureaucrat can make some number look good on a spreadsheet.
Related - there are a ton of old Detroit 2 cycle diesel motors on heavy trucks that are being phased out. Its getting harder to find mechanics to work on them. Super interesting motor if your interested in that kind of stuff, 2 cycle diesel, very reliable, highly polluting.
Point is, maybe you don't have to go as old as you think. There are a lot if real nice things about more modern diesel engines that make day to day running and maintenance of them so so much easier. Just be aware you may be trading one gremlin for another.
This is a hurtful stereotype.
I saw a thing recently that "white trash" is the last disenfranchised socioeconomic group that it's ok to make fun of in polite society.
It's not.
I am a professional, educated, respectable, respectful adult man. I drive a diesel truck because my wife and I have a large RV which we travel in visiting friends and relatives all over the country. There are millions and millions of people like me. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, judges, etc.
And even if some of us are hillbillies like you imply. They're OK too.
Passing judgement is passing judgement. This is no better than a comment putting someone down for their country of birth or some other discriminatory thing.
I've spent a decent amount of time in and around small towns, and I've encountered my fair share of coal rollers (including people who demonstrated visible glee at seeing a target on a bicycle). Those people do make the kind of purchasing decisions that are aligned with this corporate behavior; companies are often incentivized to target their most "extreme" purchasing base, knowing that more moderate consumers (like yourself) will shrug either way.
Yes they do, but those people aren't buying new $90k trucks. They aren't driving the marketing department of a billion dollar company. Let's be honest here, they're buying old wrecked stuff and fixing it up.
If you go shopping for these new trucks, really, they're selling them to ranch owners, construction company foreman, lineman, etc. They're sold in trims like "King Ranch", and platinum. You can't get all the coal rolling crap at the dealers. They aren't connected.
It would be like conflating the street racing scene with what features Honda was adding to the new civic. They're just world's apart. Anyone remotely associated with these cultures knows that.
I think the more interesting point is about marketing: companies do market to their extremes, and truck (and adjacent) manufacturers have pivoted towards larger, more internally spacious, more expensive/luxury featured, "meaner looking" trucks knowing that the core of their market doesn't care either way. This is true for every other car style too; what sets trucks apart is primarily their size and incongruity in some purchasing segments (e.g. the $90K luxury-complemented truck that's used for family grocery runs).
That’s just Clarence Thomas.
If hundred(s) of people were involved, but Cummins employs somewhere between 60,000-70,000 people.
It's actually a relatively small number of decision makers who can cause enormous damage to a brand’s reputation.
Their public response to the fines is pretty telling of a culture where no one probably feels like they can or should stand up and say, "This will hit our metrics but are we really doing the right thing?" and not get immediately let go or sidelined.
What's the benefit, why do people do it?
We need to hit the enablers and the users of these horrible machines.
> Rolling (or "rollin'") coal is the practice of modifying a diesel engine to emit large amounts of black or grey sooty exhaust fumes—diesel fuel that has not undergone complete combustion.
> Rolling coal is a form of anti-environmentalism. Such modifications may include the intentional removal of the particulate filter. Practitioners often additionally modify their vehicles by installing smoke switches, large exhausts, and smoke stacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
This must already be illegal right? Or can you willingly increase your pollution, harm the environment and not break any laws?
Are you saying they are using smoke signals to express a divergence in political opinions?
Then I'd say is some kind of speech, and therefore should be protected.
Regulating manufacturing is one thing, but using laws against people using what they have bought to do what they want with it is where I draw the line.
Another example is WIFI firmwares: regulate companies as much as you like, but I want to modify my devices as much as I want to operate in the unregulated spectrum.
Speech causing immediate harm to others is explicitly not protected. If you want to interpret rolling coal as political speech, directing it at pedestrians/cyclists et al is clearly not a protected form of it.
It's ok to be wrong.
I can't tell if your comment is a parody, or if the "free speech absolutists" have really gotten this ridiculous.
Yes, I believe in free speech. If you believe this is ridiculous, it's on you.
> You think literally blasting someone in the face with dangerous smoke ... Potentially blinding someone ...
Now you are being ridiculous: the "danger" of this smoke is very relative: yes, particulates can be hazardous to health, but only in the long run. It's not like throwing acid at someone: it can't cause blindness!
This smoke may only reduce visibility a little and very temporarily unless it's done in a tunnel.
I think it's not a nice thing to do (pollution etc), but I still prefer having laws protecting important concepts like free speech, even if these laws also let people do things I don't like: the concepts these laws protect are more important that the consequences of a few isolated individual actions.
Also, intention matters: if the person doing that is aiming at cyclist faces or focusing on tunnels to risk causing accidents, it's very different from sending smoke towards the open sky and away from anyone: one is malicious and illegal, the other is expressing a political opinion and may be protected.
It's ok to dislike some political opinions, but it's not ok to try to regulate speech with the power of law.
What really needs to happen is nailing the shops which do these modifications. Individual drivers are hard to track down but if it involved your business going bankrupt they’d decide it’s not worth it very quickly.
Weaponize CAF against them. You get caught coal rolling, the cops get to take your truck. Same thing against the shops doing the installations -- you get caught installing these devices, your entire business is immediately seized.
This would of course be bad for the owners of shops who...also service the town's police vehicles. I know at least one shop owner who would have a free hand in town to burn literal peat in his truck, and none of the cops would stop him if they liked riding in their Tahoes.
those poor souls, I hope they’ll be able to fix whatever underlying issue is making them feel like that’s an appropriate thing to do.
People who think this is a problem should read the instructions for cleaning one.
VW's code looked for things like (lack of) steering input, the fact that the car is stationary during the tests, etc.
What did Cummins' device do? If their statement is that they saw "no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith", is there any reasonable way that could possibly be true? We didn't let VW get away with any statements like that.
No. Automotive development is cost and time sensitive while also having a large regulatory compliance overhead. Every fraction of a cent matters. Every man hour spent on development and testing matters. Designs are peer reviewed. Processes are tracked and logged. A "feature" that significantly alters the performance of a component under certain conditions does not secretly or accidentally get designed, tested and deployed. Every modern component and system is modeled, characterized and tested thoroughly.
> Today, the Justice Department reached an initial agreement with Cummins Inc. to settle claims that, over the past decade, the company unlawfully altered hundreds of thousands of engines to bypass emissions tests in violation of the Clean Air Act.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-me...
To your parent point, that would be an absence of a feature or a feature that takes less development.
The defeat device lets them pass regulatory muster by using lower-performing but cleaner tuning when under test, then the engine uses performance-optimized tuning instead under ordinary driving conditions.
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vw-just-the-latest-in-long-hist...
1) Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That as Normal?https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
3) ICCT and ADAC showed the biggest deviations from Volvo, Renault, Jeep, Hyundai, Citroën and Fiat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
4) “Disguise, defeat and deny:” Toyota loses appeal and must pay $1.3bln for dodgy diesel filters: https://thedriven.io/2023/03/28/disguise-defeat-and-deny-toy...
5) Mercedez-Benz faces over 300,000 UK claims over diesel emissions: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/merced...
6) Daimler to Settle U.S. Emissions Charges for $2.2 Billion: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/business/daimler-emission...
I mean if we have 100% of brands implementing some deception strategy, then you either need to:
1. Admit you can't make diesel engines comply with standards and ban them outright.
2. Relax regulations to what's possible to create with best current tech and accept the cost of pollution on health.
Doing this catch and release shit is just outright corruption and slaps on the wrist for their buddies at the cost of those millions of lives you mentioned.
How about 6,300,000 years in prison served by the stock holders?
If you knew about it, you should be held responsible, if you didn’t then the leadership of the company who did know about made you a victim of a crime. I honestly don’t know how people haven’t gone to jail over this.
Yes, if you own a company that commits crimes, the criminal sentences should be distributed among the owners of the company according to their ownership stake.
If you own 50% of a company that is sentenced to 30 years in prison, you should get 15 years in prison.
If you own 0.01% of a company that was sentenced to 1 year in prison for each of 35,000,000 cases of fraud, you should get 0.01% of 35,000,000 years in prison, which would be 3,500 years in prison.
I guess they just added a device made to defeat controls in good faith then. I'm glad they consider that good, and consequently learned nothing from it.
> The company was accused of installing defeat devices and other "undisclosed" emissions equipment on almost a million engines used in Ram pickups
I get that this is how the settlement works, but we're talking about a million cars with emission level measures considered having been cheated. At this stage it becomes a public safety thing, the details should be made very public. And maybe they should actually try these instead of settling
Absolutely crazy that a company can essentially be dead to rights proven to have committed fraud against the general public and be in a “strong financial position” afterwards.
So the cost of the settlement is ~$2B on 1mil units. I don’t know what the unit economics of engines are but it’s probably safe to assume they made ~$2k profit per unit. How is that justice? Imagine if you or I stole >$1mil and the government just said, “Now give it back.” There’s almost no downside to getting caught in such a situation. There’s a chance you won’t get caught, netting you a cool million. The value prop is basically:
$PROFIT * (1 - P_CAUGHT) - $PENALTY * P_CAUGHT
So if the penalty <= the profit, you better have a _really_ efficient enforcement or the equation will be in the favor of criminals. Criminals are essentially only risking the time investment / opportunity cost.
Yet another huge failure from the US justice system.
Like why did black smoke billowing in the air, and polluting our environment become political