AUTO SAFETY

Austin police idle Ford Explorers over fumes

The Austin Police Department on Friday pulled nearly 400 Ford Explorer SUVs from its patrol fleet over worries about exhaust fumes inside the vehicles.

The move comes as U.S. auto safety regulators investigate complaints of exhaust fume problems in more than 1.3 million Explorers from 2011 through 2017 model years. In Austin, more than 60 officers have reported health problems since February, and more than 20 were found to have measurable carbon monoxide in their systems, city officials said Friday.

“We need to remove these vehicles immediately,” interim City Manager Elaine Hart said

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found more than 2,700 complaints of exhaust odors in the passenger compartment. Among them were three crashes and 41 injuries.

Ford spokeswoman Elizabeth Weigandt said the company is working with police, customers and NHTSA on the issue.

— Associated Press

BANKING

Wells owes $80 million in insurance refunds

Wells Fargo acknowledged late Thursday that it enrolled roughly 570,000 auto loan borrowers for what’s called collateral production insurance on their vehicles when the customers already had proper insurance.

The bank said it will pay $80 million in refunds and account adjustments to those people.

“We take full responsibility for our failure . . . and are extremely sorry for any harm this caused our customers,” Franklin Codel, head of Wells Fargo Consumer Lending, said in a statement.

Last year Wells admitted that its employees opened up to 2 million accounts for customers without getting their permission to meet aggressive sales goals. The bank is on the hook for $322 million in fines, penalties and settlements.

In this case, Wells Fargo reviewed auto policies placed between 2012 and 2017. If the borrowers did not have certain insurance coverage, Wells bought it and charged them for it. Wells said it signed up customers who already had the insurance. About 20,000 customers were unable to afford the car payment plus the insurance that some did not know had been added, which “may have contributed to a default that led to their vehicle’s repossession,” the bank said.

— Associated Press

RETIREMENT PLANS

Treasury kills myRA program over costs

A savings program put into place under President Barack Obama and designed to get more people to put away money for retirement is being killed by the Treasury Department, which said it is too costly to maintain.

The program, called myRA, was launched about two years ago for those who don’t have access to a 401(k) or another retirement plan from their employer. The myRA accounts had no fees or minimum deposit and were meant to appeal to low-income workers.

“Unfortunately, there has been very little demand for the program,” U.S. Treasurer Jovita Carranza said Friday. “The cost to taxpayers cannot be justified by the assets in the program.”

The Treasury Department said myRA savers had put away about $34 million since late 2015, and the program cost taxpayers nearly $70 million. About 30,000 accounts were opened, and 10,000 have no money in them.

— Associated Press

Also in Business

Shares in Redfin surged Friday in the residential real estate brokerage’s stock market debut. The stock was up more than 45 percent at the closing bell as the major U.S. stock indexes edged mostly lower. The Seattle-based company priced its initial public offering of about 9.2 million shares at $15 each. That was above the maximum offering price of $14 per share that the company listed when it filed plans to go public in June. Redfin began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the “RDFN” ticker symbol.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has settled with federal regulators who found a chilled work environment at a TVA nuclear plant. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection last fall found that from November 2014 to August 2016 the Watts Bar Nuclear plant didn’t follow orders to review whether actions against employees or contractors met worker protection rules or negatively affected the workplace. In March 2016, the commission said the plant’s perception was that operators feared retaliation if they raised safety concerns. The NRC said TVA has started a review, hired safety consultants and agreed to more training and audits.

— From news reports