A manager from Stellantis has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act over his involvement in a costly emissions cheating scandal that impacted Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ram 1500 models in the United States.
The manager, 43-year-old Emanuele Palma, is scheduled to be sentenced on October 17. However, he could escape jail time as his defense is expected to recommend a time-served sentence of one day with reports indicating that the government will not oppose this sentence.
Court documents and Palma’s own admission reveal that from as early as 2010, FCA US developed a new 3.0-liter diesel engine for use in the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ram 1500. Palma and others developed and tuned this engine. They intentionally calibrated it to produce less NOx emissions during federal test procedures when compared to being driven by customers. To do this, they created a piece of software known as ‘T Eng’ to tweak the rate of exhaust gas recirculation.
Read: FCA US Sentenced In Diesel-Emissions Probe, Will Pay $300 Million Settlement
Palma and his co-conspirators agreed not to disclose the existence of the T Eng function to the EPA. The 43-year-old admitted in court that he agreed to withhold this information and acknowledged concealing material information from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Approximately 100,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ram 1500 models from the 2014, 2015, and 2016 model years were equipped with the software cheat.
“Mr. Palma and those he worked with concealed material information from the EPA about how certain of Fiat Chrysler’s diesel engines operated. Our environmental laws depend on companies being honest and transparent with the EPA about the environmental impact of their products,” U.S. Attorney Dawn N. Ison for the Eastern District of Michigan said, according to UPI. “The conduct in this case falls well short of that standard, and today’s guilty plea provides a measure of accountability for this deceptive conduct.”
The guilty plea is related to the corporate plea that FCA U.S. itself made in August 2022 where it was fined $96.1 million and ordered to forfeit more than $203.5 million.
