Daihatsu, an affiliate of the Toyota Motor Corporation, faces allegations for rigging portions of their doors during safety tests for side collisions. These tests were performed on about 88,000 small-sized vehicles, and the majority of them were sold as part of Toyota’s brand. This news could be relevant if you’re a Toyota driver in Illinois.
Modified test vehicles
For the cars that were tested, an additional notch was added to the door. It was a modification intended to lower the chances that the interior of the door would break. This could create a sharp edge where the occupant could be injured when the side airbag deploys. However, no additional notch was added to any of the cars in production and sold to consumers.
An investigation is being conducted into the changes made for these safety tests. Part of the investigation is to determine what the perpetrators of this crime truly intended to get out of their actions. In an official statement, Daihatsu announced that regular shipments wouldn’t resume until new safety tests could be conducted with regulators presiding over them.
A company working to regain trust
The Toyota Chairman issued an official apology for the defective products. He deemed it unacceptable and acknowledged that it violates the trust of their consumers. The chairman has also expressed the company’s commitment to stop this issue from happening again.
The Toyota affiliate learned about how the tests were rigged when a whistleblower report came out. In this report, it was detailed how the problem had been brought to the attention of regulatory agencies and how the shipment of the affected vehicles had been halted.
The vehicles that the incident has impacted are the Toyota Yaris Ativs, made in August of 2022 in Thailand, as well as the Perodua Axias, which started production in Malaysia in February of 2023.
Toyota Motor Corporation’s affiliate Daihatsu has allegedly rigged the doors of some of their vehicles for safety tests. The investigation is ongoing to find out who rigged these vehicles and why.