Toyota plus 4 other Japanese automakers caught cheating on certification tests Several Japanese automakers have been caught falsifying certification tests, and Toyota might be the worst offender. The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) reported yesterday that its ongoing investigation into 85 domestic manufacturers, including several automakers, had found that most …
Ah yes! Good old Mitsubishi.
Lies about vehicle friction data and comes clean six months after the Volkswagen Diesel emisions mess.
Falls on its sword full of apologies. Couple of managers publicly resign. Share price tanks 30% and Nissan/Renault owns them within a week. That's incredibly convenient.
5 Years later Mitsubishi Motors Japan closes vehicle imports into Europe. 36 countries close their import operations. Think France and Germany are still left due to Government Plug-in-Car grants. Not bitter at all. Lot of pissed off dealerships who had just rebranded their premises.
Don't forget the hidden defects scandal, which got the headquarters raided by the police and the CEO arrested in 2000, and the scandal where they paid off racketeers which got said [new] CEO into said position in 1997...
I owned 2 Mitsubishis. Never again. I was a victim of the hidden defect scandal - the timing belt on the car snapped twice way before the expected time, destroying the head (twice) and requiring a rebuild (again, twice) which at the time was handled as a courtesy way out of warranty. I wondered why they were covering it but exceedingly grateful, and later of course found out it was a hidden defect that they were covering up with those extended courtesy repairs. Driver's door started to fall off, requiring a weld job on the hinge plate, etc.
I loved driving the cars (1989 Mirage Turbo, then the original Galant VR4). The Mirage was a total go-kart on steroids, miss it to this day...when it worked. By the end I hated OWNING it and stopped driving it because I was sick of worrying about being stranded. The idiot fanbois on YT's Donut channel fawning over the old Mitsu...it never existed. It was ONE model that everyone cared about, the Evo. Everything else was an average to mediocre, bug-ridden, hidden defect riddled, (DSM) crankwalking time bomb.
I work in the commercial vehicle side of the industry, so we're subject to many of the same regulations as passenger cars. Thanks to VW, emissions testing is almost a "guilty until proven innocent" level of regulation in our world.
From my time in this and other industries, I doubt any manager or engineer just walked in to work one day and decided to cheat the regulations. What drives this is what I call the "Star Trek School of Engineering Management": Set impossible goals and yell at the nerds until they quit telling you something's impossible and they achieve your stated goal.
Sometimes that approach works and they achieve miracles. Most of the time they already detated their estimates to account for manglement demands ("oh laddie, how will you convince anyone you're a miracle worker..."). Other times you back them into a corner so far that cheating or quitting are the only options (real world Kobayashi Maru ).
Unfortunately, in the real world, consequences eventually show up.
The physics of combustion of one molecule of Octane with Oxygen in Air do not, and cannot be changed.
Put a quantity of heat in. Break and Reform the bonds, and a different quantity of heat comes out alongside a cocktail of molecules. Everything else is then at the mercy of that rudimentary chemistry. Temperature and O2 content have bearing on the split of co2, Carbon Monoxide and NOX production of course. You can faff with pressure to some extent too, but not much else.
Anyone that fudges the equations after that is either uninformed or a liar, and probably a cheat.
paying road taxes for a 3-litre petrol that was honestly characterised by its emissions while millions of 4-pots with cheat methods making up the majority of the vehicle population paying next to nothing has inevitable consequences. You would have thought that the taxman would actually want revenue. Once again we have hopeless failures of the watchmen that have taken decades to surface. It is perhaps also the strongest argument for taxes reflecting usage I.e. put it in the fuel bill. The cheats then are automatically sifted out by reality.
While putting the tax on the fuel does look attractive - it basically means "burn more, pay more" - there are downsides.
1) There are already incentives to cheat on that - e.g. filtering red diesel, or looking for ways to get stuff without the taxman knowing
2) It disadvantages those who by necessity drive further - e.g. people who dare not to live in a big city with something resembling public transport.
I have no problem with user pays. The alternative is socialising the cost!
Incentives to cheat exist whether you do road tax, emissions testing or put the tax on the fuel. Plenty cars in circulation with no MOT, no Insurance. How much extra do you pay to tick the box for cover against the uninsured...
Here in the UK it's something which appears to affect many industries, not just car manufacturers. There's the Post Office scandal, the NHS infected blood scandal, the Social Services recent admission of their deprivation of children's liberty. Then there's the Social Housing providers penchant for financial reporting fraud, combined with the bullying of vulnerable tenants, not to mention the construction industry and local government getting down with their deceptions, the like which led to the Grenfell Tower disaster. Add these serious embarrassments to the number of dodgy police officers going about their business unchallenged, the sewage pumped into waterways, and our Go Vermin says, "lets get fracking" and "it's safe to go nuclear", so we can share more cat videos and they can make even more money etc, etc. What UK CO2 targets ?
Are you depressed yet ?
Now to add salt to your wound, I have been told IN WRITING by BOTH, the Information Commissioners Office and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, that it is NOT a breach of ANY regulations when a prosecuting solicitor hides the defendants evidence from the judge, by not including those documents in the Court Bundle. Additionally, altering a defendant's evidence which does appear in the Court Bundle - is also NOT an issue to WORRY about THESE DAYS - in here in Rishi Sunaks unicorn UK.
The social housing provider and their legal beagles are now UNLAWFULLY DEMANDING that I take down a legitimate web site which forms a case study of their performance between 2018 and 2022. So much for our Data Protection Act and GDPR.
Way to go UK. I often find myself wondering why I ever bothered to learn about all this at University, as anyone in employed in the management of the above industries/services seems to think that regulation is a load of bollox.
ALF
Any exec, or worse, a civil servant in a suit is literally employed to lie for the benefit of their organisation.
Anyone not acknowledging that reality is deluded.
See also, lies spouted by the outgoing PM on national TV last night and debunked by multiple outfits.
Of course, will the incomer be any better? Well, dirty pants have to be changed occasionally.
Any exec, or worse, a civil servant in a suit is literally employed to lie for the benefit of their organisation
That's rather offensive to the many of us civil servants who do understand, and follow to the best of our ability, the civil service code - and specifically in this context, honesty.
Perhaps I should caveat it with top bosses of corporates and civil servants?
We've all seen enough to know that all of our respective organisations, be they corporate or public have dirty laundry, to a greater or lesser extent. Top bosses in particular, have absolutely vested reasons to lie to the public and are paid to do so.
They occasionally get caught by it. It's treated as an occupational hazard.
Heck, one place I contracted for required us to all sign onto the official secrets act to not disclose the details of what we were investigating.
This old cynic would love to believe that most people are decent, honest and hardworking; they probably are. But the long, long list of evidence, both public and that privately witnessed says that reality is rather warped.
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