The latest carmaker to land in the diesel hot seat is Ford, who is facing a class-action lawsuit over the engines in its F-250 and F-350 Super Duty diesel pickups. The plaintiffs are accusing Ford of rigging the engines to beat emissions tests which, sadly, is a story we’ve heard over and over as automakers like Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler battled their own allegations, in the past two years, of similar practices.
Bloomberg says the lawyer representing the victims is calling these Super Dutys “Super Dirty” and claims they are pumping out emissions as high as 50 times the legal limit for specific pollutants.
A Ford spokesperson insists that the vehicles don’t feature defeat devices – or software that disables an emissions control system outside of a test environment. Although the complaint says that Ford and tech partner Bosch worked in tandem to create a system that would hide the real-life emissions in order to maintain the performance promised to vehicle users.
Bosch is also named as a defendant in the case, and vehemently denies wrongdoing, but says it won’t comment further as it sorts out the pending allegations. Or maybe their attorneys are just too busy to comment, considering they have been wrapped up in similar cases with VW, Fiat Chrysler, and GM.
The complaint alleges that the Super Duty diesels were real-world tested and the review uncovered that the diesels, which are supposed to run cleaner and provide better gas mileage, actually performed worse than Ford’s gasoline versions – but cost over $8,000 more.