Mitsubishi admits cheating on its fuel-economy tests, and top executives bow in apology.
TOKYO — In the latest scandal to hit the automobile industry, Mitsubishi Motors said Wednesday that it had cheated on fuel-economy tests for an ultrasmall car it produces in Japan. The company acknowledged that its engineers had intentionally manipulated evaluations.
The cheating affected about 620,000 cars sold in the Japanese market starting in 2013, Tetsuro Aikawa, Mitsubishi’s president, said at a news conference.
But the problem could stretch beyond that make of car. Aikawa said that the same testing method, which was in violation of Japanese standards, was used on other models in the country and that Mitsubishi was investigating whether fuel-economy ratings for other lines had been exaggerated as a result.
“It has become clear that improper testing methods were used to improve the appearance of fuel efficiency,” Aikawa said before he and other company leaders bowed in apology. Manipulation ‘intentional’
Company executives called the manipulation of tests on the microcar, called the eK, “intentional.”
Automakers’ reports of fuel economy and pollution ratings have come under especially close scrutiny after a scandal at Volkswagen last year. The German automaker was found to have manipulated software in 11 million diesel vehicles to cheat on emissions tests.
Mitsubishi’s reputation has been battered by scandal before. In 2000, the company admitted that it had been hiding reports on vehicle defects for more than two decades. The news contributed to a sales plunge of nearly 50 percent and nearly pushed the automaker into bankruptcy.
The revelation of cheating put the fuel ratings of other Mitsubishi vehicles under scrutiny. Shares in Mitsubishi fell 15 percent Wednesday after the company released a brief statement saying it had engaged in “improper” fuel-economy reporting. It disclosed the details after the market closed.
The cheating at Mitsubishi appears to have been exposed by an unexpected source: another Japanese carmaker, Nissan.
Mitsubishi manufactures the eK and sells it at dealerships in Japan. But it also supplies versions of the car to Nissan, which markets them under a different name, the Dayz. Nissan, a larger company with a more extensive dealer network, actually sells more of the vehicles than Mitsubishi does.
Such arrangements are increasingly common in the global automobile industry, as manufacturers pursue greater scale in an effort to lower costs. And for smaller manufacturers like Mitsubishi, whose sales of 1.2 million vehicles a year make it only Japan’s sixth-biggest carmaker, they can be financially indispensable.
Nissan took over development and design work on the eK and Dayz last year. It was then, Aikawa said, that Nissan’s engineers noticed the discrepancy in the published fuel rating — ostensibly an impressive 25 to 30 kilometers per liter, or 60 to 70 mpg, depending on the version — and confronted Mitsubishi. He said the company would pay compensation to Nissan; the amount is subject to negotiation.
Aikawa said he and other top executives were unaware of the manipulation until it was pointed out by Nissan, at which point Mitsubishi began an internal investigation. It remained unclear who ordered the cheating, he said, but Mitsubishi plans to ask an independent commission of experts to conduct a more thorough inquiry.
“We had problems in the past, and we thought that we had overcome them as an organization, but that wasn’t the case,” said Ryugo Nakao, a Mitsubishi executive vice president in charge of product development.
The car is a “kei,” a category of tiny vehicles with engines under 660 cubic centimeters — smaller and less powerful than many motorcycles — that is specific to Japan. Subject to lower taxes than full-size cars, keis were introduced in the lean years after World War II to promote car ownership, and they remain popular with budget-conscious buyers.
The manipulation of the eK’s fuel rating involved the way Mitsubishi calculated the effect of wind and tire resistance on the car during driving simulations. Resistance fluctuates, depending on a car’s speed and other conditions, and manufacturers are supposed to operate test vehicles in a way that produces an average over the course of a test.
That, presumably, gives a result closer to real-world conditions.
But Mitsubishi said it had secretly used a test method that can produce lower resistance and that can make the vehicle appear to be able to travel farther on less fuel.
It said that it had used the same method on an unspecified number of other vehicle models, and that it was examining test results dating back to 2002 to determine if they were faulty. Different method
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, which regulates the automobile industry, said the method Mitsubishi used differed from Japan’s nationally mandated standard.
Many countries, including the United States, set their own detailed rules for fuel-economy testing, and Nakao said Mitsubishi, like other carmakers, tested the cars it makes for export with methods different from those used on cars it sells in Japan. But he said Mitsubishi would also review the fuel-economy standards it had reported overseas for possible discrepancies.
Mitsubishi’s admission is the latest blow to the credibility of automakers, said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at AutoTrader.
Krebs said the willingness to take shortcuts reflected difficulties that automakers face as they strive to meet new standards for emissions and fuel economy that regulators in Europe, the United States and elsewhere have set.
“There’s intense pressure to reach these standards,” she said, “and some are doing it by not actually having the performance to back it up.”