Cummins Confidential : Iniubong Billy Etuk – Regulatory Compliance And The $1.675 Billion Software Problem

By /

Last night, TCAP asked Cummins if it fancied doing another one today.

At some point, they really should stop taking requests.

On 2 September 2026, Cummins published “Creating solutions that matter: Iniubong’s journey at Cummins Inc.” It is an employee profile about Iniubong Billy Etuk, a Controls Electronic Hardware Technical Specialist whose route into Cummins began with diesel generators in Nigeria, continued through electrical engineering studies in Ghana and the United States, and eventually led to an internship that became a full-time career.

Seven years later, Cummins says Iniubong Billy Etuk is helping develop and validate diagnostic systems for next-generation Cummins products.

So far, so wholesome.

Then the newsroom starts cooking.

According to Cummins, Etuk works across teams on solutions intended to improve product performance, regulatory compliance and customer confidence.

Oh, Cummins.

Dinner is fucking served.

Iniubong Billy Etuk And The Right Questions

First things first: Iniubong Billy Etuk appears to be exactly the sort of engineer Cummins ought to employ.

This is not his problem.

It is Cummins’ fucking paragraph.

The company describes Etuk as somebody who enjoys difficult technical problems where the answer is not immediately obvious. When a customer reports an issue, he explains, the challenge is to work through the uncertainty, ask the right questions and uncover the underlying cause.

Excellent engineering principle.

It is also an unfortunate choice of corporate storytelling from a company whose emissions software has already undergone one of the most expensive diagnostic sessions in environmental enforcement history.

American regulators asked some questions too.

Eventually they found the software.

Cummins Regulatory Compliance Meets The Software

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Cummins equipped approximately 630,000 model-year 2013-2019 RAM 2500 and RAM 3500 diesel vehicles with illegal software defeat devices that reduced the effectiveness of their emissions-control systems during normal driving conditions.

Another approximately 330,000 model-year 2019-2023 vehicles contained auxiliary emission control devices that Cummins had failed to disclose through the certification process.

Nearly one million vehicles in total.

And the mechanism is where today’s warm little story about diagnostic systems and regulatory compliance becomes particularly fucking elegant.

The EPA says that when affected vehicles were being tested for compliance with emissions standards, the software activated full emissions controls. Under other kinds of normal vehicle operation, software features reduced or deactivated those controls, making the emissions-control system less effective and allowing higher nitrogen oxide emissions.

That is not TCAP reverse-engineering a conspiracy from a badly cropped screenshot.

That is the regulator’s diagnosis.

In regulatory language, the vehicle behaved differently according to the operating conditions.

In TCAP language:

The fucking software knew when the examiner had walked into the room.

$1.675 Billion Worth Of Customer Confidence

The resulting Cummins regulatory compliance problem was not resolved with a stern email and somebody promising to update the calibration spreadsheet.

Cummins agreed to a $1.675 billion civil penalty, the largest civil penalty imposed under the Clean Air Act.

The wider cost was bigger again. Cummins recorded a charge of approximately $2 billion relating to the settlement, while the agreement required recalls, extended warranties, mitigation projects, additional testing and corporate compliance measures. The EPA estimated the recall and mitigation obligations at more than $325 million.

Customer confidence had acquired a price tag.

And this is not some archaeological dig through a twenty-year-old controversy being stapled onto an unrelated employee profile for sport.

Cummins’ August 2026 Form 10-Q still discusses the settlement agreements. The company says it remains subject to recall requirements, testing, corporate compliance measures and other obligations, and warns that future non-compliance could produce further stipulated penalties and adverse consequences.

That filing landed less than a month before Cummins decided regulatory compliance would make pleasant seasoning for its latest newsroom profile.

Magnificent.

Cummins Does Not Use Defeat Devices

There is another little artefact in the company archive.

In January 2017, Cummins issued a press release carrying the exceptionally confident headline:

“Cummins Inc. Does Not Use Defeat Devices and Is Committed to Meeting Emissions Standards.”

Context matters. That particular release concerned an EPA notice involving FCA vehicles for which Cummins said it did not supply the engines. TCAP is not going to pretend it concerned the later RAM settlement when it fucking didn’t.

Unfortunately for the headline writer, corporate prose has a much longer service life than the average diesel engine.

Seven years later, the EPA’s Cummins settlement page was explaining that Cummins had equipped approximately 630,000 vehicles with illegal software defeat devices.

It is difficult to improve on that.

So we won’t.

Central To Cummins’ Values

Cummins itself subsequently described emissions compliance as central to its values.

The board also concluded that the emissions matter warranted consequences at the top. Jennifer Rumsey’s 2023 bonus was reduced by 50%, while Tom Linebarger’s was reduced to zero.

That is quite a journey from corporate adjective to remuneration committee.

Cummins nevertheless maintained that its internal review had found no evidence anyone acted in bad faith and did not admit wrongdoing when announcing the agreement in principle in December 2023.

Fine.

The regulator still required the controls.

And the controls are where today’s story gets interesting.

Software Lifecycle Management

The Cummins consent decree does not merely demand that the offending vehicles be repaired.

It reaches inside the company’s compliance machinery.

Cummins is required to maintain continuing compliance risk assessments and specific verification and control processes covering diesel emissions certification. Those requirements include checking pre-certification software calibrations for defeat devices, verifying that auxiliary emission control devices match what has been disclosed to regulators, and maintaining controls around software lifecycle management and software deployed in the field.

Read those words again.

Software. Verification. Controls. Compliance.

Now return to 2 September 2026 and Cummins introducing Iniubong Billy Etuk as an engineer developing and validating diagnostic systems for next-generation products, contributing to regulatory compliance and customer confidence.

The consent decree does not need Etuk’s name written into it for the irony to work.

The company itself has spent the last two years operating under enforceable requirements intended to make sure software, certification and compliance remain on speaking terms.

That is what regulatory compliance looks like once the regulator stops reading the brochure and starts checking the fucking calibration.

Creating Solutions That Matter

And perhaps there is actually a positive story buried inside Cummins’ editing.

Iniubong Billy Etuk appears to have built a serious technical career. He grew up watching his electrical-engineer father work on the family’s generator, studied the subject himself, crossed countries to deepen his expertise and eventually ended up working on sophisticated electronic controls and diagnostics for Cummins.

Good.

Maybe engineers like him genuinely are part of building a better compliance culture.

Cummins certainly needs one.

But a company cannot spend more than $2 billion resolving an emissions certification and software scandal, remain subject to ongoing corporate compliance obligations, and then expect to place the words diagnostic systems, regulatory compliance and customer confidence into a glossy employee profile without somebody opening the service history.

Cummins chose the words.

TCAP merely plugged in the diagnostic tool.

Cummins published “Creating solutions that matter.”

The EPA had already created some fucking requirements that matter.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources

Scroll to Top