WASHINGTON — The Obama administration slapped Toyota Motor Corp. on Monday with $32.425 million in civil penalties, the maximum allowed by law, for failing to properly disclose what it knew about safety defects linked to recalls of millions of vehicles last year and earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Toyota earlier this year paid a record $16.375 million to resolve a related government investigation, and has agreed to pay the new fines without admitting any violations of U.S. auto safety laws, the U.S. Transportation Department and the company said in statements released Monday.
In all, Toyota will have paid about $49 million to the U.S. government for infractions related to the recall of millions of vehicles globally over gas-pedal and sudden-acceleration problems. A fourth U.S. investigation into the recalls is ongoing, a U.S. official said.
The settlements come roughly 10 months after Toyota Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Akio Toyoda testified before Congress to apologize for his company's handling of a series of safety scandals that led to the recalls of more than five million vehicles for defects linked to unintended acceleration. Mr. Toyoda vowed to overhaul the way the company deals with U.S. regulators and consumers, including giving North American executives more say in quality and safety recall decisions.
"These agreements are an opportunity to turn the page to an even more constructive relationship" with U.S. safety regulators, Toyota said in a statement.
Toyota's agreement to pay the fines comes as the company is fighting to regain momentum in the U.S. market after suffering damaging blows to its reputation for vehicle quality and corporate integrity. The company has lost 1.6 percentage points of market share in the U.S. through Nov. 30 this year, while rivals including Ford Motor Co. and Korea's Hyundai Motor Co. have gained ground.
Monday's fines resulted from months-long investigations that determined Toyota failed to report defects to safety regulators in a timely fashion. One investigation was prompted by the fatal crash in August 2009 of a California Highway Patrol officer and his family, who died when the trooper couldn't stop a Lexus from speeding up and crashed into another car.
"Auto makers are required to report any safety defects to NHTSA swiftly, and we expect them to do so," said David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "NHTSA acknowledges Toyota's efforts to make improvements to its safety culture, and our agency will continue to hold all auto makers accountable for defects to protect consumers' safety."
Toyota's board in Japan voted earlier in the day to settle with the U.S., an Obama administration official said.
The Transportation Department said Toyota agreed to pay a nearly $16.4 million fine for failing to properly disclose what it knew about problems with accelerator pedals that stuck open in certain cases, and floor mats that came loose and trapped accelerator pedals. Both problems were linked to reports of Toyota vehicles speeding out of control.
Toyota recalled 55,000 vehicles in September 2007, blaming out-of-position floor mats. But after the 2009 fatal crash of the state trooper in Santee, Calif., NHTSA reviewed crash evidence and other data and found that removing floor mats was insufficient and that the pedal itself was improperly designed, the agency said.
The Transportation Department said sticky pedals and entrapment by floor mats "are currently the only two known causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles," but added that the NHTSA is still investigating other possible causes with the help of engineers from the National Academy of Sciences and NASA.
In the second case, Toyota agreed to pay just over $16 million for failing to promptly tell regulators about problems with defects in the steering systems of certain trucks that could result in the loss of steering control, the Transportation Department and Toyota said.
The department said that after the company recalled certain Hilux trucks in Japan in 2004, it told U.S. safety regulators that the were no reports of problems in the U.S. But in 2005, Toyota told NHTSA the steering defect was present in several models sold in the U.S. and conducted a recall for nearly one million vehicles.
In May 2010, NHTSA received additional information, including complaints from U.S. consumers, that Toyota had not disclosed when it initially notified NHTSA that a U.S. recall was unnecessary, the agency said.
