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Toyota subsidiary Daihatsu Automobile is about to undergo personnel adjustment after the fraud incident.

Soichiro Okudaira, president of Toyota's subsidiary Daihatsu Motors, will resign and be replaced by Masahiro Inou, CEO of Latin America and the Caribbean, effective March 1, according to Toyota officials. At the same time, Daihatsu Chairman Song Linchun will also step down on March 1.

Of course, the imminent resignation of the president and chairman of Dafa Automobile has something to do with the fraud that was exposed earlier. In April last year, Daihatsu Motor issued a notice saying that the front door trim of four of its models had been improperly modified in side impact tests, violating the test procedures and methods stipulated by regulations. The models involved are the new 2023 Perodua Axia, Toyota Vios (known as Yaris Ativ in Thailand), Toyota Agya and a new car that has not yet been launched since August 2022. It is understood that these four models sold a total of 88123 vehicles in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Mexico. The door linings of these models were modified with notches to minimize testing risks.

After discovering the problem, Dafa issued an apology, saying it had immediately reported and consulted with inspection and certification authorities and suspended shipments. In addition to the internal investigation committee, an independent third-party committee has been established to clarify the details of the incident, analyze the root cause, and develop measures to prevent recurrence accordingly. At that time, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda also apologized to Volkswagen for the incident, saying that Dafa Motor Company's misconduct involved safety issues, which is the most important aspect of vehicles. This is a betrayal of customer trust and absolutely unacceptable behavior. The company will begin with detailed investigations and comprehensive fact-gathering to understand the situation, determine the real cause, and strive to prevent recurrence.

It is worth noting that less than a month later, it was reported that two hybrid models violated the side impact test. The test data of the driver's seat and the co-driver's seat should have been submitted separately, but the data of the co-driver's seat was submitted to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Japan as the driver's seat data. The models involved this time were Daihatsu Rocky and Toyota Raize.

More than half a year after the two violations, big news broke again in December last year. In December, Daihatsu released a 162-page third-party investigation report. In addition to the door trim fraud in April and the pole side crash test fraud in May last year, 174 fraud cases were found in 25 new test items, involving 64 models and three engines. As the fraud escalated, both Daihatsu and Toyota decided last year to suspend sales of all Daihatsu development models currently produced in Japan and overseas. After this incident was exposed, Dafa Industry's three complete vehicle factories in Japan were also shut down one after another.

In addition to Daihatsu being exposed to violations, Toyota Industrial Company has also been reported to have violated the rules. In January, Toyota issued a notice saying it had received a report from a special investigative committee that found Toyota Industrial Corp. may have violated emissions certification related issues, including older models of engines used in forklifts and construction machinery and some Toyota Industrial Corp. car engines.

Later, in response to a series of recent vehicle violations, Akio Toyoda held a press conference at which Akio Toyoda apologized and expressed "deep reflection." Toyota CEO Hisashi Sato also revealed in an interview with the media that Toyota will consider whether to break the business boundary between it and Dafa as part of the rectification measures, that the company may send engineers to Dafa, and that changing Dafa's high-level structure may also be part of the measures.

According to public information, in 1907, Dafa Automobile mainly expanded its business scope in the field of small cars. It was a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Co., Ltd., accounting for about 4% of Toyota's global sales. With the new personnel changes of Dafa Automobile, it remains to be verified whether Dafa Automobile can get out of the illegal storm.

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