Akio Toyoda, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) exposed Daihatsu’s mistakes and also exposed old sins that had occurred in the Toyota group last Friday (28/5/2023). In an official statement published by Toyota Times Global, Akio Toyoda firstly apologized to consumers and shareholders of Toyota Motor Corporation for Daihatsu’s mistake in wrongdoing the crash test certification for their three products.
The incident began when a whistle blower inside Daihatsu spoke about wrongdoing in certification process carried out by Daihatsu on the three cars they produced. The three cars are the Toyota Yaris ATIV, Perodua Axia and the new Toyota Agya.
The three cars apparently received special treatment during the crash test. Especially the side crash test. Daihatsu apparently deliberately added a new layer on the door trim during the crash test.
Daihatsu engineer intentionally made a cut on the door trim of the car. Then put an additional layers inside it. They hope this new layer will make passenger of the three car will remain safe if crash happened.
Actually, this a wrongdoing and violates the proper certification process. The crash test process must be carried out by a car with standard condition in order to meet the demands of crash test certification the car involved not added with new elements .
Akio Toyoda regretted this process and wrongdoing in his press conefrence. This make him even sadder because the mistake was made by a member of the TMC Group, Daihatsu.
“This should not have happened. I am very concerned that this is happening. In addition, Toyota will also work hard to comprehensively investigate this mistake. As well as analyze the root cause of why this happened. We will immediately announce the results publicly and nothing will be covered up,” ,” said Akio Toyoda.
Apart from expressing his disappointment at Daihatsu, Akio Toyoda actually shared old sins that had occurred in the Toyota Motor Corporation group. According to him, these sins have become very important events for Toyota Motor Corporation to make improvements.
The first sin mentioned by Akio Toyoda occurred in 2009. At that time, 10 million Toyota cars were recalled or recalled due to production defects.
The Toyota cars had defects in the pedals and gas rubber. This failure causes the car to lose control due to unintended acceleration.
Akio Toyoda said the incident left a deep mark on Toyota. He also said that he was directly involved in solving that tragedy.
“From then on, I swore that Toyota would not cover up or lie when explaining the problem. So i do take this as a serious matter because it involves members of our group of companies,” he said.
The second sin is the emission counterfeit scandal that made by Hino in 2022. Without consent, Hino has been falsifying emission data since 2003 and involving many models.
Initially, Hino Motors only admitted that it had falsified emission data since 2016. Even in the initial report submitted, they only falsified emission data for four engines and 117.000 vehicles.
However, after further investigation, it turned out that counterfeiting had been going on for about 20 years and was being carried out systematically. The report was revised to include 26 engines and around 567.000 vehicles.
In the press conference Akio Toyoda said that he doesn’t interfere to solve Hino failure. Because when the case occurred, Akio Toyoda’s position was only President Director of Toyota Motor Corporation.
However, at that time the group immediately stopped production of several Hino-made truck models. It’s just that according to him, the mistake should not hinder the productivity of the Toyota group members.
“But I trust all members of the Toyota Motor Corp group to pay great attention to safety issues,” he said.
In the Daihatsu case, Akio Toyoda admits that so far there has been no punishment for them. Moreover, at this time Toyota Motor Corporation is still developing an investigationfor Daihatsu wrongdoing.
“I want to give a message so that we don’t hide anything and lie. For those who hear this message, please let’s work together to make better cars and make our consumers happy. So that this doesn’t happen again in the future,” he hoped.
