Once again, a corporate scandal is being revealed in Japan, when an automobile company is investigating emissions and consumer fraud. Last on the list is the company Hino Motors, which is part of the Toyota concern. Employees of this company have been committing fraud against the authorities for about 20 years.
It turned out that data on consumption and emissions were hidden in order to obtain a certificate for some engines. The first victim was the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism of Japan, which for years received false data and took it for granted.
At first, it was assumed that the scandal would affect about 115,000 cars sold in Japan. Three engine models are marked as falsified. There were suspicions that there were more of them. Following an official investigation by the ministry, the company conducted its own investigation and suspended sales of the affected models.
“The investigation took months, until today. The scandal was even bigger because the manipulated emissions data do not relate to 2016, but to 2003, so more engines were impacted. Hino Motors has published a 17-page report explaining all the information gathered.”
The origin of the problem lies in the corporate culture that existed at that time, in which employees did not have the courage to tell their superiors that something could not be done, for example, to make a certain engine meet the emissions standards of the day. And of course, it is easier to manipulate data so that something can be done so that the authorities do not offend.
It is worth remembering the emission scandal at Mitsubishi Motors, which has been engaged in emissions fraud since the 1990s. Everything was revealed by her partner Nissan, which absorbed its shares. This allowed Nissan to take over a significant part of the company in one fell swoop and establish control over it. Thus, Mitsubishi joined the Renault Nissan Alliance.
But that’s not all, Subaru and Nissan were monitored for emissions fraud in 2017. The following year, in 2018, Japanese government sources reported that Mazda, Suzuki, and Yamaha manipulated fuel consumption and emissions data for several of their models.
Hino Motors has already withdrawn from the market 47,000 units of trucks and buses produced between April 2017 and March 2022.