Daihatsu suspends vehicle shipments as safety test scandal widens

The news: Toyota has halted shipments of all vehicles under its subsidiary Daihatsu after an investigation found the Japanese carmaker had carried out improper testing on 64 models.

The numbers: An independent probe found 174 new instances of irregularities in safety testing across 25 test categories, affecting 64 car models across the Daihatsu and Toyota brands. According to Reuters, Daihatsu produced 1.1 million vehicles over the first 10 months of 2023. The carmaker sold 660,000 vehicles during the same period, amounting to 7% of Toyota’s sales.

The context: Daihatsu announced in April that it had failed to properly carry out side-collision safety tests on 88,000 small cars which were largely under the Toyota brand. An independent panel was appointed to investigate the failure, and has subsequently found that the testing failures extend much more widely than previously reported. Daihatsu “deeply apologises” to customers and stakeholders in a statement.

What they said: “We believe in order to prevent recurrence, in addition to a review of certification operations, a fundamental reform is needed to revitalize Daihatsu as a company. This will be an extremely significant task that cannot be accomplished overnight. It will require not only a review of management and business operations but also a review of the organization and structure, as well as a change in human resource development and awareness of each and every employee,” reads a statement from Toyota.