Hyundai Accused Of Faking EV Sales Data

A group of Hyundai Motor dealers are dragging the South Korean automaker into a Chicago federal courtroom, claiming the company has been cooking the books on electric vehicle sales and punishing franchises that won’t play ball.

This legal brawl, spearheaded by Napleton Aurora Imports and its affiliated dealerships, alleges Hyundai Motor America (HMA) strong-armed dealers into falsifying sales figures by misusing inventory codes meant for "loaner" cars.

In the wild world of car sales, the dealers who went along with this charade allegedly got sweet deals and incentives. Those who didn’t? They faced Hyundai’s wrath. In a statement that reads like a corporate shrug, Hyundai insists it doesn’t condone messing with sales data and says it’s looking into the claims.

The Chicago lawsuit accuses Hyundai of fraud and flouting the Robinson-Patman Act, which bars price discrimination. The suit paints a picture of a rigged system where cooperative dealers were showered with extra inventory of hot-selling models, leaving others out in the cold and screwing over customers by limiting their choices. Meanwhile, Hyundai gets to parade inflated sales numbers to the public and investors, basking in the glow of their supposed success.

The dealers claim Hyundai’s supposed electric vehicle boom is a house of cards, built not on genuine consumer demand but on a labyrinth of deceit. They quote a Hyundai district sales manager saying they needed to "hit a number for the press and for the Koreans."

Seeking to make up for lost sales, revenue, and profits, the dealers are asking the court for damages. This isn’t Napleton’s first rodeo, either—they settled with Chrysler in 2019 over similar allegations of sales figure inflation. Chrysler, denying wrongdoing, ended up paying $40 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly misleading investors.

This article was co-written using AI and was then heavily edited and optimized by our editorial team.

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