Toyota plant raided as part of probe into cheating over engine tests

Japanese transport officials raided the plant of a Toyota group company on Tuesday to investigate cheating on engine testing, as the company reported it kept its status as the world’s top automaker in 2023, selling 11.2 million vehicles.

Hours after the probe began at Toyota Industries’ plant in Hekinan, Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda vowed to steer the company out of scandal and ensure the Japanese automaker sticks to “making good cars”.

“My job is to steer the way for where the overall group should go,” Mr Toyoda said.

He apologised, bowing deeply, and stressed the group vision was rooted in the Toyoda founding family’s ideas of empowering the “genba”, or the workers on the plant floor, “to make good cars that lead to people’s happiness”.

Its group global vehicle sales for 2023 were a record 11.22 million units, up 7% from the previous year and topping Volkswagen AG of Germany’s global sales of 9.2 million vehicles.

Mr Toyoda spoke in a news conference that was live-streamed from a memorial hall in Nagoya that serves as a museum for the founding family.

Sakichi Toyoda invented the automated weaving loom. His son Kiichiro Toyoda, Akio’s grandfather, founded Toyota Motor Corporation.

Reporters were called late on Monday to Toyota’s Tokyo office, where its CEO, Koji Sato, who succeeded Mr Toyoda, apologised for the latest mess: flawed testing at Toyota Industries, which makes diesel engines.

That followed the discovery due to a whistleblower that Daihatsu had been cheating on its testing for decades.

Daihatsu makes small cars and is 100% owned by Toyota.

In 2022, Hino Motors, a truck maker that’s also part of the Toyota group, said it had systematically falsified emissions data dating back as far as 2003.

No major accidents have been reported in connection with any of the cheating. But production has been halted on some of the models, including the 10 models affected by the latest cheating.

Japan’s business daily Nikkei reported the alleged violations at Toyota Industries occurred because management would not listen to workers who had questioned an overly aggressive development plan for engines.

Mr Sato has acknowledged Toyota group companies need better communication and education about the importance of complying with rules.

The latest problem affects models including Land Cruiser and Hilux sport utility vehicles sold in Japan, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, but not in North America.

In an unrelated quality problem, Toyota and General Motors Co told owners of about 61,000 older Corolla, Matrix, RAV4 and Pontiac Vibe models, mostly in the US, to stop driving them because their Takata air bag inflators are at risk of exploding and hurling shrapnel.

The urgent warning on Monday covers certain Corolla compact cars and Matrix hatchbacks from the 2003 and 2004 model years, as well as the RAV4 small SUV from 2004 and 2005.

Also covered are about 11,000 Pontiac Vibes from 2003 and 2004, which are essentially the same as the Matrix and were made at the same California factory.