Nikkei Asia has reported that the Japanese Ministry of Transport is planning to cancel the production certificates for three car models of Daihatsu Motor following a safety fraud scandal.
Currently, the Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism of Japan is starting the procedure to revoke the production certificates for the following car models: Gran Max, TownAce (sold under the Toyota brand), and Bongo (sold under the Mazda brand). Once the certificates are revoked, Daihatsu will no longer be authorized to produce these vehicles.
In Japan, companies must undergo testing procedures to meet safety requirements in order to produce new car models. Upon meeting these requirements, the company is issued a certification to produce the cars. If a certification is revoked, the car model must undergo a stringent re-testing process, and the manufacturer cannot produce the cars in large quantities until the certification is reissued.
The Daihatsu scandal started 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 and submit the test data for both sides. However, Daihatsu only performed the side impact test on the driver side (left side) and falsified the results for both the left and right sides.
At the time, the fraud case affected 78,440 vehicles, including 56,111 units of Raize hybrid and 22,329 units of Rocky hybrid, which were suspended from sales in Japan.
Further investigation revealed additional abnormalities in 174 areas across 25 test categories.
Currently, a total of 64 car models are implicated in this 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 halt production at domestic plants until at least the end of January 2024.
This scandal may result in over 100 billion yen (equivalent to nearly VND 17,000 billion) in damages for Daihatsu, including costs from factory closures and compensation for suppliers.
On December 21, Toyota Vietnam stated that it will promptly conduct inspections and address the situation. Additionally, the company has temporarily suspended the delivery of car batches related to Daihatsu to dealerships and clarified that the only affected model is the Avanza Premio with manual transmission.
TH (Tuoitrethudo)
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