The chairman and president of the subsidiary both resigned
Toyota's wholly-owned subsidiary was fraudulent, and the chairman and president resigned.
With a 34-year history of counterfeiting, 174 violations, and compensation for 423 suppliers, the impact of the Daihatsu Motor fraud scandal, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota, continues:
The chairman and president of Daihatsu both resigned.
Inside Toyota, this is not the first time.
Data falsification, scandals exposed, senior executives resigned...... A similar incident was once again played out at a Toyota subsidiary.
The chairman and president of Toyota's subsidiaries both resigned
Toyota said in a statement that Sunao Matsubayashi, chairman of its subsidiary Daihatsu Motors, and Soichiro Okudaira, president, would resign.
Toyota CEO Tsuneji Sato said:
In order for Daihatsu to be reborn, it is necessary to restore the appearance it should be.
The resignation of the company's core figures is directly related to the fraud scandal that was exposed at the end of last year.
△ On the left is Toyota CEO Tsuneji Sato, and on the right is Daihatsu Masahiro Inoue, the new president
On December 20, 2023, Daihatsu Motor issued a statement admitting that it had 174 violations, including falsifying safety crash test data.
The history of violations is long, the impact is widespread, and the harm is great.
The counterfeiting can be traced back to 1989, and the illegal operation involved 64 models, which will recall more than 1 million cars.
This includes not only Toyota's own products, but also models owned by Mazda and Subaru manufactured by Daihatsu.
After the incident, Daihatsu Automobile's four main factories immediately shut down, and originally planned to resume work at the end of January this year, but later postponed the resumption of production of some models to February 26.
The scandal and the work stoppage hurt the interests of Daihatsu Auto's partners, and Daihatsu subsequently announced that it would compensate 423 suppliers with which it had direct business relationships.
Such a big turmoil, of course, Toyota has to be held accountable, and even the veterans who have served for more than 40 years have not let go.
Daihatsu President Soichiro Okuhira has been with Toyota since 1979.
He has held senior positions in the R&D department of Toyota's headquarters for a long time, and was the head of Toyota's Technology Development Headquarters, where he led the development of models such as the Corolla.
Later, in June 2014, he was transferred to Toyota China R&D Center as General Manager.
In 2017, the year after Daihatsu became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota, Soichiro Okuhira became the president of Daihatsu until now.
He will be succeeded by Masahiro Inoue, the current head of Toyota's Latin America region, whose appointment will take effect on March 1.
Perhaps because of this, he was valued by his superiors and sent to "fight fires".
△Masahiro Inoue
Daihatsu Chairman Jun Matsubayashi, who will step down on March 1, joins Daihatsu from 2011 as president of Boltz, a manufacturer of automotive and industrial equipment components.
He later became a director of Daihatsu in May 2016 and was promoted to chairman and chief technology officer at the end of 2019.
In the statement, Toyota CEO Tsuneji Sato said that Daihatsu will no longer establish the post of chairman in the future.
In addition to the departure of the two core executives, there are also a number of personnel changes:
Masanori Kuwata, head of Lexus' electrification program, has been transferred to Daihatsu Motors' executive vice president.
Keiko Yanagi, Deputy Director General of Toyota's Customer First Promotion Group, has been appointed as a director of Daihatsu Motor.
Yusuke Takeda, Toshinori Edamoto, and Masahiro Yamamoto stepped down as directors of Daihatsu Automobile.
In a statement announcing the appointments, Daihatsu Motor also said it would "explain the new organizational policy" in April and expected a wider range of changes.
Daihatsu Automobile, a company with a longer history than Toyota, has cast another shadow on Toyota's aura of global sales crown.
Who is Daihatsu Automobile
Daihatsu Motor was founded in 1907 and its initial business was only to produce and sell internal combustion engines.
After World War II, it began to enter the vehicle market and produce small cars, and began to cooperate with Toyota in 1967.
In 1998, Toyota acquired a 51.2% stake in Daihatsu and achieved a controlling stake.
In August 2016, Toyota and Daihatsu completed a share exchange in accordance with the agreement reached in January of that year, and Daihatsu became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota.
It has been used for R&D and production of various small cars, and its sales mainly come from overseas markets, such as 600,000 units sold in Japan in 2022, but 1.7 million units were sold overseas.
With the scandal exposed, Toyota will put its overseas business under supervision in the future.
Although sales were good, they did not perform well in China in the early years, and they withdrew from the Chinese market at the end of 2008.
Come early, leave early.
In the early 80s of the last century, Dafa signed a technology transfer agreement with Tianjin Huali Automobile Co., Ltd. to introduce and produce two models, one is a mini-van known as "Huang Dafa" in China.
One is Daihatsu's CHARADE hatchback compact car, which is the predecessor of Xiali.
Because the technical threshold of the cars produced by Daihatsu is not high, it is easy to understand the imitation, so the products of Daihatsu Automobile were quickly caught up by latecomers and went downhill in China.
After its partner, Tianjin Huali Automobile Co., Ltd., was reorganized and renamed FAW Huali (Tianjin) Automobile Co., Ltd., Dafa still did not give up the Chinese market, shifting from the technology transfer route to embracing the wave of joint venture brands.
It has successively launched a number of models such as Terui and Xenia, but the sales performance is not very good, and finally has to withdraw from China.
More than 10 years after withdrawing from China, Dafa has once again become the focus of heated discussions among the Chinese people.
As a result, a few days later, people's attention turned to Toyota Industries.
Toyota Industries, which was also exposed to a fraud scandal, teamed up with Daihatsu to force out Toyota's "craftsmanship spirit".
The king of global sales, the data fraud maniac
In 2023, Toyota will sell more than 11.5 million vehicles worldwide, of which pure electric vehicles account for a very small proportion, only 104018 units were sold, accounting for less than 1%.
However, the total sales volume still surpassed that of Volkswagen, and it topped the global sales championship for four consecutive years.
The sales performance drove Toyota's total market value to exceed 48.79 trillion yen, equivalent to more than 2.33 trillion yuan, setting a new record for Japanese companies.
Defending the sales crown, with a new high market capitalization, Toyota's unlimited scenery is the third consecutive year that its subsidiaries have been exposed to fraud.
In March 2022, Hino Motors, a truck manufacturer owned by Toyota, was exposed to the falsification of engine fuel efficiency and exhaust emission data, involving 4 engines, 8 trucks and buses.
Hino Motors' performance fell sharply that year, with a net loss of 117.6 billion yen (about 5.623 billion yuan).
Three directors resigned, and the company's main leader, President Satoshi Kogi, was deducted from his salary, but he remained in office.
At the end of 2023, Daihatsu Automobile exposed the falsification of safety test data.
As a result, within a few days, another subsidiary of Toyota also did a big job.
On January 29, 2024, Toyota Motor announced that the Special Investigation Committee found that Toyota Industries (TICO) had violated the rules on issues related to emission certification.
The committee reported that Toyota Industries had rewritten engine test results, such as emission component values, in order to obtain certification.
It's Toyota again, it's data fraud again, and it's key component engine data fraud.
Perhaps because of the frequent scandals, he felt that he couldn't do it like the last time Hino was in charge of "self-punishing three cups", and Toyota Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda personally held a press conference, bowed and apologized, saying that he would "deeply reflect".
There have been a series of internal scandals, and there have been many recent recalls from Toyota.
On December 1, the announcement of the relevant departments showed that due to internal parts problems, the inside of the fuel pump may be worn, and Toyota recalled more than 1.01 million vehicles in China.
Around the same time, Toyota also recalled about 1 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the United States due to the hidden danger of airbags.
Previously, in November, Toyota also recalled 1.9 million RAV4SUV in the United States because the battery moved during sharp turns and there was a fire hazard.
Therefore, 2023 is not only a year for Toyota to continue its glory and defend the car sales championship for three times, but also a year when it has been exposed to fraud scandals and frequent recalls.
The transformation of electrification and intelligence is not smooth, and the basic market of fuel vehicles seems to be in a good situation, but there are many shadows under the halo.
In the face of the surging wave of smart cars, relying on the "spirit of craftsmanship" can neither win the trust of users, nor can it keep the fundamentals.
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