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"Not being able to participate fully in that growth and capturing market share cannot be a good thing," Toprak said. "At the end of the day, if you're not selling cars, you're missing an opportunity." The company's slower growth this year is all related to its lack of factory capacity and has nothing to do with fierce competition in the key small and midsize car markets, Krafcik said. The slower-than-market sales growth also is not related to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's determination that Hyundai and Kia overstated gas mileage claims on window stickers of 900,000 vehicles in the past three years, he said. The inflated mileage was uncovered late last year by the Environmental Protection Agency in an audit of gas mileage tests by the two South Korean automakers. The agency monitors automobile fuel economy. The EPA found inflated mileage on 13 models from the 2011 through 2013 model years, including Hyundai's Elantra and Tucson. The window sticker mileages were overstated on about one-third of the cars sold by the companies during the three years. The companies were forced to knock one or two miles per gallon off the window stickers. Some models lost three or four mpg. A EPA spokeswoman said Friday that its investigation into the overstated mileage is continuing.
Company executives have apologized for the discrepancies and promised to compensate customers because they're using more gasoline than expected. The executives said the higher mileage figures were unintentional, caused by errors in following EPA mileage test procedures. Hyundai and Kia are owned by the same company and share factories and research. Their cars have the same underpinnings but different styling and performance.
[Associated
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