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MILWAUKEE – Harley-Davidson has settled with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over illegal engine devices that the EPA said caused excessive pollution. Harley-Davidson will pay a $12 million civil penalty plus $3 million to mitigate air pollution as well as buy back and destroy thousands of “super tuners.”
The EPA reports in a press release that the settlement requires Harley-Davidson to stop selling the illegal devices and “to sell only models of these devices that are certified to meet Clean Air Act emissions standards.”
The original complaint alleges that “Harley-Davidson manufactured and sold approximately 340,000 illegal devices, known as ‘super tuners,’ that, once installed, caused motorcycles to emit higher amounts of certain pollutants than what the company certified to the EPA.”
“This settlement immediately stops the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices used on public roads that threaten the air we breathe,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Harley-Davidson is taking important steps to buy back the ‘super tuners’ from their dealers and destroy them, while funding projects to mitigate the pollution they caused.”
The $3 million will be spent in a project “to replace conventional woodstoves with cleaner-burning stoves in local communities.”
In a separate release, Harley-Davidson said the settlement has no impact on the company’s other performance product offerings.
“This settlement is not an admission of liability but instead represents a good faith compromise with the EPA on areas of law we interpret differently, particularly EPA’s assertion that it is illegal for anyone to modify a certified vehicle even if it will be used solely for off-road/closed-course competition,” said Ed Moreland, Harley-Davidson’s Government Affairs Director.
“For more than two decades, we have sold this product under an accepted regulatory approach that permitted the sale of competition-only parts. In our view, it is and was legal to use in race conditions in the U.S.”
According to the EPA, “Since January 2008, Harley-Davidson has manufactured and sold two types of tuners, which when hooked up to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, allow users to modify certain aspects of a motorcycle’s emissions control system. These modified settings increase power and performance, but also increase the motorcycles’ emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx). These tuners have been sold at Harley-Davidson dealerships across the country.”
Under the settlement, Harley-Davidson will stop selling the illegal aftermarket defeat devices in the U.S. by August 23. The complaint also alleges that Harley-Davidson made and sold more than 12,000 motorcycles from model years 2006, 2007 and 2008 that were not covered by an EPA certificate of conformity.
– By Bud Wilkinson
Regardless of what we might think about the wisdom of the EPA’s stance, it seems to me that a $12 million fine after HD sold 340,000 of these, which comes out to only $35 per device, is small potatoes. It’s likely that HD made much more than $35 profit on each one it sold. Plus, HD (unlike you and I) can deduct the penalty from it’s taxable income, so the net penalty will be significantly less than $12 million.