On Tuesday, a Florida owner of a 2016 Chevrolet Traverse filed a class-action suit in U.S. District Court in Detroit against GM on behalf of owners who bought vehicles with overstated fuel economy ratings.
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It’s unclear if the compensation would be cash, a gift card or come in some other form, but it is meant to cover the differences in actual fuel economy and what was on the sticker and miles driven. GM has sold about 170,000 2016 SUVs in the United States, and about 130,000 are retail sales which will qualify for the compensation program.
The program, which aims to reimburse customers who paid more for fuel than they expected after viewing incorrect mileage labels, is expected to cost GM roughly $100 million, said a person familiar with the matter.
The correct labels have all been printed and with the stop-sale order lifted GM will now have to address buyers who had purchased these three crossovers with the incorrect labels.
General Motors Co is expected to announce plans to compensate about 130,000 individual USA owners of SUVs that had inflated fuel economy labels, sources briefed on the plans said on Wednesday.
GM’s reimbursement program assumes fuel prices of $3 a gallon and 15,000 miles of annual driving for five years, GM said.
GM spokesman Nick Richards says he doesn’t know why the pollution hardware was changed.
The Detroit automaker said on Friday it was temporarily halting sales of about 60,000 new 2016 U.S. SUVs because the vehicles’ window labels overstated their fuel efficiency.
The ratings for front-wheel-drive models – 15 mpg city/22 highway/18 combined – also were listed incorrectly on the label.
Separately, a Florida man on Tuesday filed a purported class-action lawsuit against GM in a MI federal court accusing the auto maker of marketing and selling the vehicles with false fuel-economy ratings.
A GM spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit. GM continues to work with regulators on the issue, it said. The Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman said Friday it has asked GM “to provide all relevant information to the agency”. This isn’t the first time an automaker has compensated owners over a mileage discrepancy.
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Ford in 2014 lowered fuel economy ratings on six vehicles and agreed to pay anywhere from $125 to $1,050 to more than 200,000 owners as compensation for the extra money owners will spend on gasoline because of lower-than-promised fuel economy.
