Hyundai, Kia to pay 900,000 owners for overstating mileage on window stickers

For the past few years, Hyundai has touted itself as selling more vehicles that achieve 40 mpg on the highway than any other automaker. Today, U.S. federal regulators announced that Hyundai and Kia Motors had inflated the fuel economy ratings on 900,000 vehicles sold since 2010. The automakers will compensate owners for their extra burned fuel — and kill their incorrect ads as well.

The errors — covering 39% of the vehicles sold by the two companies since 2010 — are the largest ever uncovered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since the federal government first set fuel economy standards in 1975. The agency says the errors were unearthed after EPA officials couldn't replicate the mileages Hyundai and Kia had claimed on window stickers, which the companies will have to replace on new models sitting on dealers' lots.

"We're just extremely sorry about these errors," John Krafcik, Hyundai's CEO of American operations, told The Associated Press. "We're driven to make this right."

While the two companies are owned by the same family-controlled South Korean conglomerate and share engineering, they treat each other as competitors in the United States. However, Korean overseers have been known for setting aggressive sales targets for both companies and firing top U.S. executives when results didn't meet expectations. And Hyundai's fuel economy ratings have played a key role in its marketing for years, with the automaker buying Super Bowl ads to tout itself as the most fuel-efficient carbuilder in the country and claiming it sold more vehicles with 40 mpg highway efficiency ratings than all other large automakers combined.