GM and Stellantis paid $364 million in fuel economy fines

General Motors and Stellantis paid a combined $363.8 million in fines for failing to meet federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks they produced in previous years, according to federal government documents posted Friday.

GM paid $128.2 million for failing to meet targets with the light trucks it sold in 2018 and 2019, according to documents published on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website. Stellantis, the company created when Fiat Chrysler merged with French automaker Peugeot SA, paid $235.6 million for cars it sold in 2016 and 2017.

GM paid its fine in December, the documents showed, while Stellantis paid in December and May. The payments were first reported by Reuters.

The fines date from years before each company began producing electric and hybrid vehicles in large numbers. The fines were imposed according to the company’s average fuel consumption standards, which are monitored by the security service.

Fuel economy standards date back to before electric vehicles and hybrid cars were widely available. For years, automakers routinely paid fines for failing to meet regulatory targets. But the fines were usually much smaller than the amounts recently paid by GM and Stellantis.

In recent years, GM, Stellantis and other automakers have avoided fines by buying fuel economy credits from manufacturers that produced electric or other zero-emission vehicles. GM had previously covered its 2016 and 2017 fines with appropriations, but it chose to pay fines in 2022, the federal documents said.

GM and Stellantis, along with most other automakers, are racing to roll out new electric models and expect the majority of the vehicles they sell to be electric within a decade.

Stellantis said it was investing $35 billion to develop battery-powered vehicles and related software, and planned to offer 25 electric models in the United States by 2030. direction of the company,” the company said in a statement.

GM has said it hopes to produce one million electric vehicles annually by 2025 and to end production of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035.