Daihatsu, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Company, is in sizzling water after admitting to rigging autos to carry out higher in crash assessments. The difficulty impacts 4 fashions: the Toyota Yaris Ativ, Perodua Axia, Toyota Agya, and an undisclosed upcoming product.
Throughout side-impact crash testing, these autos had a notch within the inside panel of the entrance door. This averted the potential for the collision creating a pointy edge that might have injured an occupant when the facet airbag deployed. When the fashions went on sale, they did not have the notch.
Daihatsu’s announcement mentioned it offered 88,123 examples of those fashions. It delivered 76,289 models of the Toyota Yaris Ativ to Thailand, Mexico, and the Gulf Cooperation Council international locations of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. The automaker additionally moved 11,834 Perodua Axias in Thailand.
The Toyota Agya does not enter manufacturing till June 2023, so none are in buyer fingers but. Clearly, the unannounced mannequin is on sale but, both.
Daihatsu dealt with the event of those autos and their security testing. Toyota then branded them as the corporate’s personal merchandise.
“Since this downside occurred with a Toyota model passenger automotive, we consider that the issue isn’t restricted to Daihatsu. We’ll start by conducting an in depth investigation and totally gathering details to grasp the state of affairs, decide the true trigger, and work diligently to forestall a recurrence. We may even inform the general public in a well timed method relating to the details we be taught by way of our investigations,” mentioned Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda.
A whistleblower suggested Daihatsu about this downside in April. The corporate carried out an preliminary investigation to see if the claims had been correct.
It isn’t but clear who determined to chop the notch into a number of autos throughout crash testing. We additionally do not know the way many individuals knew this was occurring earlier than the whistleblower got here ahead.
Daihatsu is stopping gross sales of those autos. It can re-test them with inspection and certification authorities current.
