Carmakers’ False Habits

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism announced that it received reports from five carmakers, including Toyota and Honda, that they committed mishandlings in safety tests. MLIT has issued instructions to stop shipping the cars produced with wrong tests and is going to make inspections in those makers. A series of false tests may affect not only car industries but whole Japanese economy. 

The false tests were made in a process of certification test for registration of new car model. MLIT inspects safety and environmental efficiency of new cars or their parts. Once a car is registered as certificated, other cars in the same model will be produced and sold with no inspection. Passing the certification test is indispensable for massive car producing in Japan.

 

Concerning consecutive detentions of mishandling in safety tests since 2022, MLIT asked 85 carmakers and car device manufacturers to make survey in their production lines for previous ten years. Among 68 companies that finished the survey and 17 companies that unfinished, 5 companies, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Suzuki and Yamaha, reported false habits in their safety tests.

 

Toyota has recorded false data in the collision tests or omitted necessary tests for three models. In the tests for four previous models, Toyota used automatic activation system controlled by timer in operation test of air bag. The Chairman of Toyota Motors Co., Akio Toyoda, apologized in his press conference. “It was something a carmaker should absolutely never do, because it ruins the basis of certification system,” said Toyoda.

 

Mazda committed inappropriate operation in output tests in 2 models. False recording of data was made in 22 models of Honda and in 1 model of Suzuki. Yamaha conducted noise tests for motorcycle under inappropriate conditions.

 

It is supposed that highly competitive situation of carmakers in the world affected the safety tests in Japan. It takes far longer time for Japanese carmakers to ship new model than Chinese makers do. Japanese carmakers are lagging behind foreign countries in developing electric vehicles. With requirement from management section, the workers in factories needed to accelerate their job for early shipping.

 

Workers for car industries, 5.5 million, occupy one-twelfth of all workers in Japan. The production of car industries in price basis marks twenty percent of all production of manufacturers in Japan. It was stopping the line of Daihatsu and Toyota Industries Corporation after they revealed false tests that significantly caused 2.0 percent of annual decline in Japan’s real GDP between January and March 2024.

 

The economic policy taken by former prime minister Shinzo Abe, or Abenomics, is behind this scandal of carmakers. Abenomics supported exporting industries such as carmakers by “bold monetary policy,” one of “the three arrows” of Abenomics, which guided Japanese yen to depreciation.

 

Carmakers became the top runners of Japanese economy and they were regarded as responsible for the growth of Japan. Before Abenomics succeeds in creating “positive cycle of growth and distribution,” Japanese economy thus became dependent on car industries. It is possible that growth-oriented economic mind has distorted the works in the lines of carmakers. They might be paying their dues.

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