Japan revokes production licenses for 3 Daihatsu car models in January 2024

Currently, the Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism of Japan is beginning the procedure to revoke the production certificates of the following car models: Gran Max, TownAce (sold under the Toyota brand), and Bongo (sold under the Mazda brand). After the certificates are revoked, Daihatsu will not be able to produce these vehicles.

In fact, in order to produce new car models in Japan, companies have to undergo testing procedures to meet safety requirements. After that, the company will be issued the certification to be able to produce the cars.
However, if this certification is revoked, the car model will have to undergo a very strict re-testing process, and the manufacturer will not be able to produce in large quantities until the certification is reissued.

The Daihatsu scandal began in May 2023, when a complaint accused the company of cheating in side impact safety tests.

Specifically, Daihatsu violated the UN R135 test, which describes the tests when the car is hit by an object such as a utility pole (or a similar object impacting the sides of the car) on the Toyota Raize hybrid and Daihatsu Rocky hybrid models.

According to regulations, the company must conduct side impact tests on both the left and right sides of the vehicle. After that, the company must submit both side collision test data. However, Daihatsu only performed the side impact test on the driver side (left side) and falsely filled in the results for both the left and right sides.

At that time, the fraud case affected 78,440 vehicles, including 56,111 units of Raize hybrid and 22,329 units of Rocky hybrid that were halted from sales in Japan.

The investigation later found additional abnormalities in 174 spots across 25 test categories.

Currently, there are a total of 64 car models related to the scandal, including 22 models sold under the Toyota brand, and a few models under the Mazda and Subaru brands.

On December 25, 2023, Daihatsu announced that it will temporarily cease production at domestic plants until at least the end of January 2024.

This scandal may cause Daihatsu to incur over 100 billion yen (equivalent to nearly VND 17,000 billion) in damages, including costs from factory closures and compensation for suppliers.

On December 21, Toyota Vietnam stated that it will quickly conduct inspections and handle the situation. Meanwhile, the company also temporarily suspended the delivery of car batches related to Daihatsu to dealerships and announced that only one affected model is the Avanza Premio with manual transmission.

TH (Tuoitrethudo)