Xtreme Diesel Performance to pay $1.125M penalty for selling defeat devices
16 September 2021
Xtreme Diesel Performance (XDP), an automotive parts manufacturer and retailer based in Wall Township, New Jersey, with a sales distribution center in Las Vegas, Nevada, has agreed to stop manufacturing and selling parts for diesel pickup trucks that, when installed, bypass, defeat, or render inoperative EPA-approved emission controls and harm air quality. As part of an agreement to resolve alleged Clean Air Act violations, the company will pay a $1,125,000 penalty, which was reduced due to XDP’s limited financial ability to pay a higher penalty.
The complaint, filed simultaneously with the settlement, alleges that the parts are “defeat devices” prohibited by the Clean Air Act. XDP manufactured and/or sold more than 27,000 aftermarket defeat devices between January 2015 and May 2017. XDP suspended sales of the defeat devices in September 2019 in an effort to resolve this matter.
In addition to requiring XDP to pay a penalty of $1,125,000, the settlement requires XDP to destroy any violative products still in its inventory, cease providing technical support or honoring warranty claims for previously-sold violative products, revise its marketing materials, notify the customers that purchased the subject parts that the products at issue violate the Clean Air Act and conduct compliance training for its employees and contractors.
EPA estimates that the products XDP sold may result in more than 12 million pounds of excess nitrogen oxides emissions and 115,000 pounds of excess particulate matter emissions over the anticipated remaining life of the diesel pickup trucks equipped with those products. This enforcement action will prevent additional excess emissions that would have resulted from the continued sale of these illegal products.
EPA said that stopping the manufacture, sale, and installation of defeat devices on vehicles and engines used on public roads as well as on nonroad vehicles and engines is a priority.
In FY 2020, EPA resolved 31 civil enforcement cases for tampering and aftermarket defeat devices—the most for any one year in the agency’s history.
The consent decree for this settlement was lodged in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey and is subject to final court approval.
I am glad to see this but I think that some criminal penalties that resulted in prison time and maybe some addition public service for the executives would be appropriate.
Posted by: sd | 16 September 2021 at 09:24 AM
@sd:
Agree! They should be put out of business at a minimum.
Posted by: Lad | 16 September 2021 at 06:50 PM
This is not the only company in this business. During the last couple of years, I have been stunned to find that companies in the US (seemingly) openly market things like “EGR delete”, “DPF delete”, “DEF (urea SCR) delete” and “Complete delete” kits. To me, it is surprising that US EPA has not reacted to this much earlier. I know there are chip tuning kits available also in the EU. Some of the “dark” cases also imply that the customer may be encouraged to remove, or tamper with, e.g., DPF and DEF, without getting any fault codes on the display. So, the situation here in the EU is not much better but at least some member states make road-side inspections to investigate and curb the problem. EGR is hardly used anymore on new HD vehicles in Europe (as in the USA) but, of course, extensively on LD vehicles. Albeit if no “delete” of hardware is made in the case of chip tuning, it might nevertheless increase emissions, primarily NOx. This might be, for example, by changing injection timing and reducing EGR (on LDVs). This is particularly tempting to do during “off-cycle” driving conditions. Well, now you perhaps recall similarities with the VW “Dieselgate” case.
It is very annoying to find that when new diesel vehicles (finally) can reach very low emission levels of all emission components and under practically all driving conditions, the system is tampered with, not only by vehicle owners themselves, but by commercial companies and this on a profit basis. I agree with previous comments that such companies should be put out of business.
Posted by: Peter_XX | 17 September 2021 at 01:18 AM
@Peter_XX: Worth noting that one reason that people do these deletes and tunes isn't just for performance, it's for reliability and efficiency. (That's also why Dieselgate was a thing - the emissions control systems weren't durable enough, so only using them during cycle conditions meant that they could survive the rated lifetime. In fact, VW was brazen enough to claim that an update would stop the cheating, and instead made it cheat more on one model because they were seeing too many warranty failures as a result of the on-cycle tune being used in real-world driving.)
The solution, of course, isn't to delete the systems, though, it's to switch to electrified and electric technologies that are able to comply with emissions without unreliable Rube Goldberg machines bolted onto them to barely comply.
Posted by: bhtooefr | 19 September 2021 at 11:44 PM
@Bhtooefr you got it 100% correct. Clean diesels are a scam and maintenance pigs. I scraped my VW TDI and went 100% EV!
Posted by: GdB | 20 September 2021 at 02:58 PM
Diesels "barely" comply with emission standards?
Based on in-use testing by EPA itself, the 2021 Chevrolet Colorado Duramax Diesel pickup had 0.002 g/mi NMHC (SULEV II = 0.010 g/mi), <0.05 g/mi CO (SULEV II = 1.0 g/mi), 0.020 g/mi NOx (SULEV II = 0.020 g/mi), <0.0001 g/mi PM (SULEV II = 0.01 g/mi) ass tested in the FTP test cycle. The 2021 Colorado Diesel is certified under Tier 3/LEV III, but it technically would have achieved SULEV under LEV II.
The 2019 Ram 1500 diesel pickup truck had no measurable THC, NMHC, CO, NOx, or PM exhaust emissions as tested on the HWY cycle by EPA.
Posted by: Carl | 21 September 2021 at 11:31 AM