General Motors is hatching a plan to compensate almost 170,000 crossover vehicle owners in response to a class-action lawsuit filed for the overstatement of three models' fuel-economy figures, Automotive News says, citing three people familiar with the process.
GM issued a temporary stop-sale on the Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia, and Buick Enclave while it replaced the window stickers on more than 60,000 vehicles. The automaker said EPA window stickers were misprinted after the impact of "emissions-related hardware" wasn't properly calculated into the EPA fuel economy rating.
A class-action lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan over the issue, which impacts about 168,000 of the 2016 model-year crossovers that have been purchased since last fall. Automotive News says the reimbursement plan will be publicly disclosed within a week. GM spokesman Daniel Flores, in an e-mail sent to Autoblog on Thursday, said the automaker is declining to comment. As a result of the mistake, the three models' miles per gallon figures were all overstated by one to two miles per gallon. GM previously categorized the mistake as "inadvertent."
A number of automakers have run afoul of regulators and the public for misstating fuel economy figures recently. In late 2014, Hyundai and Kia were hit with more than $300 million in federal penalties for allegedly overstating the fuel economy on about 1.2 million vehicles produced for the 2011-13 model years. Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, and others have had to address the issue of either overstating fuel economy or understating greenhouse-gas emissions.