Suara.com – The Japanese Ministry of Transport, on Tuesday (16/1/2024), announced that it would revoke the Daihatsu Gran Max certificate. With the revocation of the certificate, Daihatsu’s flagship commercial car can no longer be mass produced.
This decision was taken after Daihatsu was proven to have cheated in the safety test results of a number of its production cars, the Kyodo news agency reported.
Japanese Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Tetsuo Saito said the punishment was imposed on Daihatsu to prevent the same mistake from being repeated.
“This is a big problem regarding confidence in the Japanese manufacturing industry and has shaken the foundations of our automotive certification system,” said Saito at a press conference in Tokyo.
Apart from the Daihatsu Gran Max, the Japanese government will also revoke similar certificates for the Toyota Town Ace and Mazda Bongo. Both are products that are identical to Gran Max and are produced by Daihatsu.
Last December the Japanese government announced that it had discovered fraud by Daihatsu, which manipulated the safety test results of a number of its cars since 1989.
Included in the problematic cars are those produced and exported from Indonesia by PT Astra Daihatsu Motor (ADM) and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indonesia (TMMIN).
Since last December, Daihatsu decided to stop producing its cars in Japan. The plan is to stop production until the end of January 2024.
A similar policy was also implemented in Indonesia, but at the end of the same month ADM resumed operations and exported its cars after receiving the green light from the government.
The Japanese government is currently inspecting 45 Daihatsu production vehicle models, including 27 models that are currently still in production.