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Ford Sued Over Alleged False Fuel Economy Claims
A new class-action lawsuit has been filed in a US District Court, claiming that Ford is lying when it comes to fuel economy and emissions.
Hagens Berman and Hilliard Martinez Gonzalez filed the class action lawsuit against Ford, alleging that an emission-cheating device has been installed in the Ranger, F-150 and possible other Ford vehicles.
The lawsuit also accuses Ford of deliberately miscalculating fuel economy, specifically during the “Coast Down” test and the “Road Load” calculations.
The lawsuit comes just weeks after Ford disclosed that the Department of Justice is currently investigating the company’s emissions certification processes. Back in February, before the feds got involved, Ford had an outside company perform an internal investigation, looking into how its fuel economy numbers were being calculated. This investigation looked at how Ford calculates Road Load, and it also concluded that no emissions cheating devices had been installed in these vehicles.
“Ford deceptively advertised its Rangers to consumers as ‘best-in-class’ in fuel economy,” said Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman. “Ford knew that consumers pay a premium for fuel efficiency and that less fuel burned means less emissions, and therefore more profits.”
Ford has been in trouble before for misstated fuel economy, and was forced back in 2014 to change the MPG rating on six different vehicles and compensate customers who had been sold a vehicle with the wrong fuel economy rating.
At this point, these are just accusations, so we have to wait until the DOJ is finished its investigation to find out what is truly going on.
Update 5/8/19: We reached out to Ford for a comment, and this was their response: “We haven’t been served with this complaint yet. When we are, we’ll review it and respond appropriately.”
Here at TFLTruck, we have run the Ranger in fuel economy tests and have also hit numbers lower than advertised. Watch the video below to see for yourself.
