After an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigation found discrepancies between the official and the actual mileage stated by Hyundai and Kia for some of their most popular models, the Korean manufacturers were quick to take the blame and offered to compensate 900,000 owners of said vehicles.
Both companies’ executives offered public apologies and attributed the wrong statement in a procedural error during testing.To sum it up: it was an error, the company apologizes and pays up, case closed.
Or is it?
Surprise, surprise, this is not the first time that Hyundai has been caught making false claims about its vehicles...
A decade ago, the Korean automaker admitted that it had overstated the output of nearly 1.3 million cars sold in the U.S. from 1996 to 2002 by as much as 10 percent!
The discrepancy was, once again, caught by the EPA, Hyundai execs apologized and - guess what- said that the false statements were caused by an error in calculating the effect of U.S. anti-pollution devices.
Hyundai offered US$85 million to settle the class-action lawsuit filed by nearly 840,000 consumers.
Two different cases, one involving horsepower and the other mileage, both in the U.S., both with nearly or more than a million vehicles involved, over a significant period of years. In both cases, the Koreans immediately fessed up, said it was an honest-to-God mistake and volunteered to compensate the victims.
Are those two, quite similar, cases, unrelated and the whole thing's just pure coincidence or is there a pattern?
The truth is out there…
By Andrew Tsaousis
Story References: Autonews via Consumer Affairs
7 Comments:
It looks like this time the feds are not going to let Hyundai/Kia off with just the class action lawsuit. The EPA got burned once already. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's an AWD Tuscani in the video! I'd be more upset finding out my car was FWD, than finding out it's MPG rating was off by 1.
Shut'em down, no other manufacturer has ever had case of such lying and blatant marketting campaign, this isn't customers, its other "a bit more honest" car companies that suffer from this lying campaigns from Koreans for lets say last 2 decades.
Well, what I see is apologizing for fake numbers which doesn't kill anyone , not even close what "TOYOTA " was trying to hide and was literally lying to customers and was trying to blame people,...
I can see it more like: , that Hyundai-Kia is making an itch in competitors eyes , rather then people complains...
OK it is wrong but do people really think they will change their mind if they knew its achieving 39 not 40.
a big campaign started just like in toyota acceleration issue.
No biggie...
All car companies fudge the MPG numbers. The car company who blew the whistle on Hyundai because of their huge sales success will pay..Karma...
If only our American companies were as quick to admit their mistakes make it right with customers.
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