But perhaps, with the Trump administration gone, it feels safe to regulate and enforce again. The watershed years were 2014-2015, when the agency, with former Administrator Mark Rosekind at the helm, issued 10 consent orders totaling more than $530 million against a variety of manufacturers, including Hyundai, Honda, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, mostly for untimely recalls and failing to submit Early Warning Reports. It stands out because it’s been a minute since NHTSA has imposed any meaningful penalties on manufacturers uninterested in following safety regulations. Judge Staton ruled that this complaint, filed in August 2020, failed to assign a cause to these symptoms other than poor manufacturing quality.Īnd, six months earlier, NHTSA announced a whopper of a civil settlement with Hyundai Kia – $210 million – the agency’s largest penalty ever. This ruling comes on the heels of Judge Staton’s dismissal last week, with leave to amend, of another California class alleging that Hyundai/Kia vehicles with Gamma 1.6L Gasoline Direct Injection engines were defective – different engine, same complaints: stalling, excessive oil consumption and fires. Representing 3.9 million owners of Hyundai Sonata, Santa Fe, and Tuscon vehicles, and Kia Optima, Rio Sorento, Soul and Sportage vehicles, roughly in the 2011 to 2019 model years, the plaintiffs charged that the Theta II GDI was prone to catastrophic failures and non-collision fires, which exposed vehicle owners to safety hazards and economic losses. Staton approved a $1.3 billion settlement that consolidated several 20 nationwide class action lawsuits, alleging that Hyundai Kia refused to recall vehicles with the Theta II GDI engine, even though the automaker knew the engine was defective. The language of the consent agreement was opaque, but the public record is clear. The Korean automaker’s billion-dollar-plus legal liability is on top of the largest civil penalty the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ever levied against an automaker. A federal judge in California has put one class-action lawsuit in peril and approved a settlement in another alleging defects in Hyundai and Kia engines.

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