Toyota Industries Corp. falsified results of emissions tests because of ‘insufficient knowledge and experience about legal regulations’, says company president

11 comments

1. Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Eisuke Eguchi and Takeshi Narabe:

   >World leading forklift manufacturer Toyota Industries Corp. has been found to have fabricated results of parts testing, forcing some forklift shipments to be halted.

   >The fabrication marks the second member of the Toyota Motor Corp. group to be involved in a data reporting scandal since 2022.

   >Officials of Toyota Industries admitted on March 17 that results of emissions tests on gasoline and diesel engines had been falsified.

   >The company has halted domestic shipments of three models of forklifts that use the engines in question.

   >At a March 17 news conference, company President Akira Onishi apologized and said the cause of falsification was “insufficient knowledge and experience about legal regulations.” But he said he would refrain from speculating about the motive until an internal special investigation was completed.

   >Onishi and Tetsuro Toyoda, the company chairman, will take responsibility and return six months’ remuneration.

   ^1 Eisuke Eguchi and Takeshi Narabe for the Asahi Shimbun, 18 Mar. 2023, https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14864449

2. I, for one, am shocked that such an upstanding company would cheat in pursuit of profit maximization and cause environmental damage in our extremely efficient and wonderful capitalist system.

3. So they admit to being stupid? Ok…

4. What a fucking excuse. I wonder how many palms were greased.

5. put him in prison like ghosn

6. *You’re honor, my defendant is too stupid to understand the law so he can’t be charged.*

7. “I’m sorry your honor. I didn’t know I couldn’t do that.”

8. IIRC, VW was also caught falsifying emissions tests a while back. This is probably an automotive industry regular occurrence. I’m surprised he didn’t say Shouganai after apologizing.

9. From a PR and legal perspective, ignorance is certainly a better approach than fraud.

   Franky though I can’t believe gov’t agencies rely on the manufacturer’s very own data to verify or validate compliance…its utterly bonkers. Who snuck that one into the legislation…

10. VW: So you are telling me you just need to say that you didn’t know that faking test results was illegal?

11. This is clearly careless mistake rather than lack of knowledge