The Japanese car manufacturer Daihatsu announced on Monday, December 25, that it was suspending production in all of its factories in Japan, at least until the end of January 2024. The Toyota subsidiary admitted last week to having committed irregularities in safety testing of its vehicles for more than a decade. The opening of an investigation by the Ministry of Transport forces the management of Toyota and Daihatsu to interrupt production at Daihatsu factories.
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With our correspondent in Tokyo, Frederic Charles
Daihatsu began by stopping deliveries of all its models sold in Japan, Asia and Latin America. The mini-car specialist produces certain models for Japanese manufacturers Mazda, Subaru and Toyota. In April 2023, a whistleblower revealed that Daihatsu was tampering with the crash tests of its vehicles. An independent expert report identified 174 irregularities in the safety testing procedures of these vehicles. Some date back to 1989.
Meanwhile, the Japanese Ministry of Transportation carried out an inspection at Daihatsu headquarters. And the Japanese manufacturer now announces the suspension of its production in Japan until the end of January. This is a hard blow for its subcontractors. More than 8,000 companies provide products or services to the manufacturer, with an annual value of $15 billion. Daihatsu will have to compensate them, as well as its employees reduced to unemployment.
This scandal has consequences for Toyota, which for its part recalled a million vehicles in the United States for an airbag problem. Toyota executives sit on Daihatsu’s board of directors. They are responsible for monitoring vehicle safety certification processes. The Transport Ministry is investigating whether Daihatsu’s falsifications are seen as a systemic problem. If so, he could demand a thorough reform of the Toyota group’s production operations.