© Reuters. Daihatsu Motors’ logos are pictured on the forty fifth Tokyo Motor Present in Tokyo, Japan October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/file photograph
By Daniel Leussink
TOKYO (Reuters) -Toyota Motor’s Daihatsu unit will halt shipments of all of its automobiles, Japan’s greatest automaker stated on Wednesday, after an investigation into a security scandal discovered points at 64 fashions, together with virtually two dozen offered underneath Toyota (NYSE:)’s model.
An impartial panel has been investigating Daihatsu after it stated in April it had rigged side-collision security assessments carried out for 88,000 small vehicles, most of these offered as Toyotas.
However the newest revelations counsel the scope of the scandal is way better than beforehand thought and will doubtlessly tarnish the automakers’ status for high quality and security.
Daihatsu is Toyota’s small-car unit and produces a lot of the so-called “kei” smaller vehicles and vans which are standard in Japan. The most recent points additionally impacted some Mazda and Subaru (OTC:) fashions offered within the home market and Toyota and Daihatsu fashions abroad, the panel discovered.
Toyota stated “elementary reform” was wanted to revitalise Daihatsu, in addition to a evaluate of certification operations.
“This can be an especially important process that can’t be achieved in a single day,” Toyota stated in a press release. “It’ll require not solely a evaluate of administration and enterprise operations but in addition a evaluate of the organisation and construction.”
Toyota shares have been flat on Wednesday afternoon, lagging a 1.6% rise within the broader market.
Daihatsu was discovered to have cheated on security assessments of just about all fashions it at present has in manufacturing in addition to some vehicles it made prior to now, the Asahi newspaper beforehand reported.
The problem emerged after Daihatsu stated in April it had found the wrongly performed assessments after a whistleblower report. It had reported the problem to regulatory businesses and halted cargo of affected fashions.
The next month, it stated it had stopped gross sales of the Toyota Raize hybrid electrical automobile and its personal Rocky mannequin after additionally discovering issues with testing for these fashions.
Daihatsu produced 1.1 million automobiles over the primary 10 months of the 12 months, practically 40% of these at abroad websites, in keeping with Toyota knowledge. It offered some 660,000 automobiles worldwide over that interval and accounted for 7% of Toyota’s gross sales.
Toyota stated on Wednesday affected fashions included these for the southeast Asian markets of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam and central and South American international locations of Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay.
Daihatsu is the newest security problem to affect the Toyota group through the years.
An engine knowledge scandal at Toyota’s truck- and bus-making unit, Hino Motors, in 2022 led to resignations and momentary pay cuts for some managers.
In that case Hino admitted to falsifying knowledge on some engines relationship again to 2003, or at the very least a decade sooner than it initially indicated.
In 2010 Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda, then chief govt, was compelled to testify earlier than U.S. Congress resulting from a security disaster involving defective accelerators.
