Transportation Department Plans To Meet With Major Automakers Amid Industry Scandals

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has announced his plans to call in major automakers for a meeting in the wake of a series of scandals in the auto industry.

“It’s time to bring everybody in here and have a deeper conversation about go-forwards,” Foxx said at a roundtable discussion this week at the department’s headquarters. “There are a number of issues on the table right now that probably merit discussion across many of the manufacturers. And one of them is, ‘Look folks, we have millions of people who rely on what you make every day to get everywhere from work to putting their most precious cargo – their kids – in cars, and we need to have confidence that the information that we get is real and accurate.'”

This month, Volkswagen admitted to cheating to avoid emissions standards in 482,000 2009-2015 cars, and the company could face $18 billion in fines from the Environmental Protection Agency. This follows the $900 million fine this month of General Motors for failing to properly recall 2.6 million cars linked to at least 124 deaths, as well as Toyota’s $1.2 billion fine last year for not properly recalling vehicles for sudden acceleration issues.

And it doesn’t end there. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) handed out a record-setting $105 million penalty to Fiat Chrysler in July for failing to properly conduct nearly two dozen recalls affecting 11 million vehicles. The NHTSA said that it is now investigating failures by Fiat to disclose death and injury reports.

In January, the NHTSA fined Honda $70 million for failing to properly disclose death and injury reports. Hyundai was also fined last year for a delayed recall, and BMW is now under investigation for a delayed recall as well, just three years after it was fined $3 million for not properly recalling vehicles.

“We’ve fined heavily where we can,” said Foxx. “We’ve also added in on top of that consent agreements that give us greater authorities to peer behind the veil.” Foxx has repeatedly called on Congress to increase the maximum fines for failing to recall vehicles to a maximum of $300 million from the current $35 million.

NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind has indicated that he wants to call a meeting of major automakers, but hasn’t set a date, and Foxx says that he hasn’t invited automakers yet.