Featured Toyota Fined $180 Million By DOJ For Emissions Reporting Failures

So do we add this to the list of Toyota financial losses due to not switching to electric cars fast enough?

Also related to this article that I find interesting is some people with healthy Gen2 who are cashing in on selling their Cat before the thieves get it are noticing an increase in performance in power and MPG with cheap aftermarket cat.

Even ran across one guy the other day who is convinced his tail pipe emissions are cleaner with cheap aftermarket. Sure hope we test this on a smog machine soon because using the best cat for cleaner air is only reason I'm reluctant to cash in on my OEM cat?

 

that's got to be embarrassing.
Especially where the article points out Toyota as having some of the worst CAFE stats.
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Yes, Toyota paid a fine for violating reporting requirements between 2005 and 2015. But Electrek's take on it is a farce. It's pretty much Tesla's marketing arm, and we all know it.

 

On this note, I may be trying it this weekend. I recently picked up a 2008 that has some brake codes. I have a COSA 707 analyzer. Not exactly designed for automobile emissions, but setup includes CO, CO2 , O2 and NOx. It should at least provide some reasonable comparisons. I think I'll get some readings with the OEM exhaust, install my latest aftermarket purchase and then take some more readings. Then do readings on some of the other Gen2s in the family with aftermarket cats. Hopefully it's nice weather this weekend.

 

Hino Trucks has also shut down production until September 2021, because of issues with emissions certifications. They aren't meeting carbon dioxide and green house emissions with the diesels, which simply means low efficiency.

Hino Halts Truck Production in North America Through September 2021 | Transport Topics

 

never heard that "we all know it" that electrek works for tesla .... asked around to see if I was the only one living under that rock, & sure enough no one i ask new it either. Did some investigating who the owner of Electrek is. Interesting reads.
Electrek owner Seth Weintraub, divested some 99.9% of his Tesla stock this year. If huge capital gains on stock ownership is the requisite barometer to be branded farcical news - then that must mean that Sandy Munro too, is a tesla shill... a bought-off hack as well - since he's made over $145K during the last 9 months of 2020.
so .... conversely - this being the formula, any people that lay waste to investors by assassinating their unbias opinion means that they are a hater and or a stock shorter, right?
or ....
Its just that people who have a hunch about a good product & hope to get in on the ground floor, simply invest in the product.
For nearly a decade, GM bashed the Prius. Bashing a product does not sell your own product. Toyota can rise or fall on their own merits regardless of us fans & customers coming to the rescue.
If we call Toyota's actions a simple "reporting error" ... then one might as well call VW's diesel gate a reporting error.
"oops, we were gaming the system but intended to make it right, eventually"

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Lol... Maybe do a bit of fact checking before making such spurious remarks?

I've had Electrek in my feed reader for years and I've not missed a single article they posted and calling it a Tesla Marketing arm is ridiculous. Tesla doesn't do advertising and marketing themselves because their products speak for themselves. Other than their website and Musk tweets and customers talking about it there's no such thing as a marketing arm for Tesla.

"9to5 sites are consistently at the top of Techmeme’s leaderboards and cited by publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and many others. Our reporters have won numerous awards and recognitions for their journalism." About 9to5 - 9to5Mac

To be clear Electrek's about page that above quote came from explains their affiliate linking strategy and there is zero mention of Tesla:

"We use affiliate links whenever possible; 9to5 sites run software that adds affiliate tags to any outside linking as a revenue-generating mechanism. You support 9to5 by using our links to buy products. 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, and 9to5Toys, Electrek, DroneDJ, and SpaceExplored are also a participant in the Amazon Services, LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. 9to5Toys is a gear, shopping deals, and news site where we aim to be first to post original news on new gadgets and notable price drops. 9to5Toys also aggregates relevant technology deals from leaders in this industry, including StackSocial and others."

 

Awesome... Please post your results as a new post so we can get other to do tests and add to the discussion. Also if you can post that link to this thread, as there's so many forums on here it's easy for people to miss stuff.

 

toy couldn't afford to write a few reports? who gets the money?

 

It fell behind a desk for eight years.

 

We were actually considering giving the $180 million to you for all your hard work commenting on Prius Chat over the years but boss said he didn't like people who were into brevity. He likes long-winded replies, which is actually why he decided to hire me.

 

That doesn't explain how it took 8 years to file some reports.

 

They did what all conservatives do and pretended like clean air act was a vast conspiracy to take away their guns/air pollution rights and refused to cooperate and it actually took the government 8 years to create a meaningful consequence.

 

Clever tagline. But maybe the likes of Electrek do the speaking. Or Tesla found that giving perks to social media influencers is cheaper than traditional advertising.

 

Yet another example of people refusing the facts when it comes to how much they don't like it when the truth interferes with their conspiracy. What part of Tesla doesn't spend money on advertising don't you understand?

"For years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has famously said that he despises advertising. ... Instead, Musk says that Tesla uses what other automakers spend on advertising to improve their products: Tesla does not advertise or pay for endorsements. Instead, we use that money to make the product great." Tesla uses influencer in massive stream — rare move away from no advertising - Electrek

 

that statement too, is a clever tagline. However, if that were such an effective form of advertising, the competition would have followed what the same philosophy. Maybe word of mouth is the best thing, if your product is worth word-of-mouth. Why else would so many tesla owners bother to make their own feelings known on YouTube in the form of spoof commercials like this;

To really understand the Tesla advertising plan, it can be found here;

Toyota on the other hand does tons of advertising, telling you, "oh What a Feeling".
Some of Toyota's flagship company's advertising, Lexus, just simply chooses to bash Tesla as an advertising strategy.


As stated above, no one buys a car because another company bashes it. GM learned that lesson when they tried to continually bash the Prius.
In any event, trying to deflect a $180-B fine into a website quid pro quo issue as the 'real', issue makes no sense. The issue is why such a heavy fine was imposed, and an electric vehicle promoting website has nothing to do with that.
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It was Millions, not Billions. That makes a difference. And most of the delayed reports appeared to be related to delaying recalls. It will be interesting to find how many of those delayed reports resulted in owners paying for repairs that should have been covered under a recall.

Dan