Mitsubishi Motors President Tetsuro Aikawa bows during a press conference on April 20, 2016 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo : Getty Images/Tomohiro Ohsumi)
Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corporation admitted recently that their staff had intentionally cheated on fuel consumption tests for different vehicle models. Minicars with tiny engines were the vehicles that had falsified fuel consumption data.
According to the statement from the corporation's official website, their staff had conducted testing in an improper way, to let the public see that the vehicles had better fuel consumption rates, compared to the actual ones. They added that Japanese law required a specific testing method, but their staff did a different version.
The tests with inaccurate data done by the automaker involved its own 157,000 eK wagon and eK Space light passenger cars, and 468,000 Dayz and Dayz Roox vehicles, which were produced for the Nissan Motor Company. All of these models are minicars, which had great mileage as its main feature.
Company president Tetsuro Aikawa told the reporters in a press conference that what the staff had done was intentional, and the act of falsification of data was true. He could not explain why their staff could resort to doing this fraud. As an apology, Aikawa and the other company executives bowed down before the media.
The car company said that they would investigate the matter, and find out if the data for vehicles that were sold overseas were also falsified. According to News 3 Las Vegas, a spokeswoman for the United States Environmental Protection Agency checked to see if they were investigating the car models that were sold in the US. The 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage subcompact was listed by the EPA as getting up to 43 miles per gallon.
Detroit consultant Alan Baum told the publication that it is likely that the US agency will investigate the Mitsubishi vehicles being sold in the country. The car company sold a small amount of their vehicles in the US, so they will not get a high priority as a result, he added.
The car company is now planning to set up a panel of outsiders to make an investigation of the latest scandal. All affected models' production and sales have been halted to give way to the investigation.
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