Toyota's Hino Motors Pleads Guilty to US Emissions Fraud, Fined $1.6 Billion: Report

Toyota subsidiary Hino Motors pleaded guilty on Wednesday over a multi-year emissions fraud scheme in the United States and must pay $1.6 billion in penalties, the U.S. Justice Department said.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith in Detroit accepted the Japanese truck and engine manufacturer's guilty plea and sentenced the company to pay a fine of $521.76 million and serve five years of probation during which it will be prohibited from importing diesel engines it manufactured into the United States, Reuters noted. 

The court also entered a $1.087 billion forfeiture money judgment against the company, the newswire further noted. 

Toyota refused to comment and Reuters could not elicit a timely response from Hino. 

In January, Hino said it would plead guilty over excess engine emissions in more than 105,000 U.S. vehicles in the United States from 2010 through 2022. A company-commissioned panel said in 2022 Hino had falsified emissions data on some engines going back to at least 2003.

Hino admitted that between 2010 and 2019, it used "illicit short-cuts" and submitted false applications for engine certification approvals and altered emission test data, conducted tests improperly and fabricated data without conducting any underlying tests.

Over the last decade, several automakers admitted to selling vehicles with excess diesel emissions. Volkswagen paid more than $20 billion in fines, penalties and settlements after it admitted in 2015 it had cheated emissions tests by installing "defeat devices" and sophisticated software in nearly 11 million vehicles globally.