Derive Systems, which makes “Bully Dog” and “SCT” tuning software has been slapped with a $300,000 fine. The Environmental Protection Agency found the company’s products in violation of the Clean Air Act and named the software as emissions “defeat devices,” The Drive reported on Wednesday.
The company will also need to spend $6.25 million to bring the company and its products up to code in accordance with the Clean Air Act. The EPA found its tuning software included access to overwrite vehicle controls in stock software for diesel particulate filters, exhaust gas recirculation, catalytic converters and more. The tuning software was available for both gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.
To bring the company up to standard, Derive must stop producing noncompliant software and retrofit existing tuners. All software must show that it will not increase a vehicle’s emissions. To do so, the company must limit access to emissions controls and create a verification program for the software that includes training about the software, emissions, and Clean Air Act requirements. The company must also cease marketing any products that contain “defeat device” software.
Derive concluded the products it sells today are “legal” and that the fine pertains to “pre-merger activities of legacy companies before they joined under the new company Derive and that had not been revealed to Derive management.”
The Department of Justice, however, stated in its decree:
Defendants shall not manufacture, offer for sale, sell, convey, or otherwise transfer any product intended for use on vehicles of model years 2000 and newer that contains user-adjustable features for the following: rear oxygen sensors, EGR, or any DTCs associated with these emission controls.
Defendants shall remove these user-adjustable features from any of its Calibrations intended for use on vehicles of model years 2000 and newer prior to sale by the following dates: no later than June 1, 2019, for all of their Calibrations compatible with any Ford vehicles; no later than December 1, 2019, for all of their Calibrations compatible with any General Motor (GM) vehicles; and no later than August 1, 2020, for all of their Calibrations compatible with any other vehicles.
“Defeat devices” quickly became a household phrase after the VW diesel scandal of 2015. The automaker was found guilty of including software to shut down a vehicle’s emissions controls when it was operating on the road. The scandal had led to millions in fines, criminal charges, and probes that continue in Europe to this day.
Comments
This is what’s wrong with the world! You are forced to follow these laws even if you have zero desire to. Its ridiculous, if you want to drive a gas guzzler and get 5 mpgs then you should be able to with out penalty.
Once you buy your car or truck you should be able to do what ever you want to it. If you want to void the warranty and build a street monster you should be able to!
And if you’re an axe murderer the laws were passed to stop you, even if you have no desire to do so.
This world is full of people who want and Require clean air to survive!
Your comparing the murder of a person to a car! That’s sad! If you want clean air then you should have the right to move to the countryside but the problem is people like yourself wont do that! You want to force people to change!
“You are forced to follow these laws even if you have zero desire to.”
So laws should only be enforceable if select members of the public wants to uphold them? Therefore, I can freely drive on the left side of the road because I choose to ignore the rules of the road that say I must drive on the right.
Wow. I didn’t think someone could be that dumb, but you typed it and proved it to the world.
You should stop breathing my air. Your brain cells are just wasting them.
Driving on the other side of the road would directly impact other people. Driving a modified car or truck only affects the person driving it! He’s the one that deals with the cost and if he wants to pay for that he should be able to!
You can go to your extremes like the other guy tried to, nobody is talking about murdering or intentionally harming someone. We are talking about modifying something that you own!
That is not a dumb idea! When you focus on other laws that have zero to do with the topic it shows just how dumb you really are!
“Driving a modified car or truck only affects the person driving it!”
The particulate emissions from coal-rolling trucks impacts the air that EVERYONE breaths and it also impacts the ability of other motorists to see the road, therefore it’s breaking the law that “would directly impact other people”; those quoted words are you own.
It doesn’t matter if it’s driving on the wrong side of the road of modifying your emission controls; both are there to protect the public and to make the driving safe for the public that uses it.
I mean even you know that my LHD example challenged public safety. Now you know why modifying the emission controls of your car or truck challenges the public safety of other; you just didn’t see it that way.
Case closed. You lose.
Cars and trucks contribute a very small amount of pollution into the air! It doesn’t have a immediate impact on people lives! Nobody dies the moment the exhaust goes into the air!
So no you lose!
Like I said you take things to the extreme to prove your point, we aren’t talking about the 1% of people who modify their cars and trucks to the highest level. We are talking about most of the people who modified their vehicles.
Those people modifying their vehicles are not harming anybody buy getting 100 more hp out of their cars or trucks!
Its the people who dont want to see those people with those types of vehicles and they create laws to stop them. It’s not about the environment (that’s just the excuse) it’s about the control that people want over other people!
Again you should be able to modify your vehicle anyway you want!
No, you still loose because you failed to address the other half of my safety concerns; vision.
You’re still hanging this on an environmental charge when you leave yourself wide open to charges of making the road unsafe for others.
Deliberately impairing other drivers (by rolling coal) from being able to see the road, other drivers, or posted signs IS a major public safety concern.
I bet you’d back down on your claims like a little pussy if the ambulance you called for was coal-rolled, couldn’t see the road, and crashed into a tree.
And all you have left in your arsenal is ‘You are forced to follow these laws even if you have zero desire to.’ Moron.
You flat out suck. You never think any of your bright ideas through, and every time we find holes in them and point out how flimsy they, you play dumb and double down as if it was admirable.
It far easier to just admit that you were wrong, reassess everything, and move on.
Instead, you stalk your ex, make snap judgement, and think laws that govern public safety on public roads are a personal attack on you and the fantasy world you live in.
If you want to live in a bland world of stock this and stock that then you go right ahead! This is exactly the reason we have these laws today. Because people except this and allow our personality to be taken away.
Your safety concerns are no concerns to me! And there you go again using extremes to try to prove your point. How many times will that type of accident happen?
So Alex are we now allow to use this type of language on this site without getting banned? Please tell me we are!
Brian, your ignorance astounds, but then there are a lot like you around these days.
First try shutting up. Then embrace a fact based informed position. Make it a life style, we will all be grateful.
No you shut up! One day when all of your rights are gone and you are left to wonder how did we get to this place you will h as ve nobody to blame but yourself and the people who follow your ridiculous points of view!
Am I not empathic to the people who just want to give up the rights that we should still have in this world. If a person wants to turn their vehicle into a smoke stack then they should be able to do so! Remember they are the ones that purchased the vehicle! NOT YOU!
Telling people what they can and cant do with their personal items is wrong. The only reason people like yourself is against this is because its something your not interested in doing to your vehicle. If the government wanted to take something away from you that you enjoyed doing you would probably have a different opinion.
And just so you know I dont own one if these trucks but I support their right to have one!
Brian, Critical and empathetic thinking aren’t your forte, so abandon the keyboard and find some shade as apparently your brain is fried.
The fine wasn’t near big enough considering the harm done to the environment, the young, growing /developing children, and those with respiratory issues. The government should padlocked the doors.
Coal Rollers and their facilitators should suffer serious consequences for their actions.
I agree!
Though this Brian rarely ceases to amaze with his asinine comments, this one is at the top of stupid!
Brian there is an old saying – I’ll paraphrase a little “ better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to speak (or write) and remove all doubt“!
See I dont care what you or any of these other guys think about me! I voice my opinion and I am not going to change my opinion just so I can blend in with the masses!
Let me ask you, do you enjoy losing your rights and freedoms? Because that is what’s slowly happening.
REDNECK ALERT!!!!!!!
Now go back and hide in your trailer park next to the swamp.
This makes me wish for my old 2001 Ram 2500 with the 24V Cummins!
Some of us are old enough to remember when our cities pollution was much worse than it is today, but by no means fixed. It’s regulations like these that are responsible for that improvement, nothing else, no other way to accomplish it. Companies won’t do it if they don’t have to, and apparently some still won’t, this is the penalty.
This is a bad bad precedent. We’ve seen the EPA submit regulatory language that extented Agency control to anything that changes a vehicle’s stock emissions controls (basically the entire aftermarket). SEMA picked it up last minute and put on industry pressure that made them back walk it but it was only partial, the EPA decided not to pursue, but did not cede future authority to do so. Power grab comming shortly.
Can’t figure why SEMA, representing aftermarket interest thinks RPM is so great. IMO EPA was never going to regulate organized Motorsports, aftermarket was/is the target, bill only protects race, “vehicles used solely for competition in organized Motorsports.” Noncompetition aftermarket has used off-road label to avoid EPA, but additional regulatory language by EPA will stop that, the bill invites EPA to do just that.
“SEC. 5. IMPLEMENTATION.
Not later than 12 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency shall finalize any regulations necessary to implement the amendments made by this Act.”
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/350/text