At a press conference held in Tokyo on the afternoon of December 20, Soichiro Okuhira, president of Daihatsu Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota, publicly admitted that his company had violated regulations in the safety test of new cars. He also announced that the company will suspend shipments of all models sold in domestic and international markets, and halted shipments of some models.
At this press conference, a report on the investigation of a third-party committee on Daihatsu's quality violations was released. According to the report, the commission found 174 false records in Daihatsu's documents for models not only of Daihatsu's own brand of cars, but also of cars manufactured to Mazda and Subaru through OEM. The report also noted that 64 models, including other brands such as Toyota, had violations.
The Dafabet fraud scandal was reported as a result of an employee's internal report. After receiving the report, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism conducted an on-site investigation of Daihatsu's headquarters in May. From Daihatsu's first public admission of violations to the announcement of the results of the investigation, the entire process lasted nearly eight months. The results of the survey showed that in addition to safety issues such as durability, environmental data such as exhaust gas were also falsified.
Daihatsu, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota, is responsible for the production of light vehicles under 660cc in Japan and plays an important role in Toyota's business in Asia. In 2022, Daihatsu produced more than 1.7 million vehicles worldwide, about half of which were produced in Japan. However, the recent suspension of shipments of all models by the wholly-owned subsidiary due to large-scale counterfeiting has not only had an impact on Toyota's global sales, but also had a significant impact on its group brand.
Japan's Toyota subsidiary was exposed to 174 violations