In regards the announcement from Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd. on April.28th, on the procedural irregularity of the side impact test (UN-R95) for the Yaris ATIV produced in Thailand, Mr. Akio Toyoda, Chairman and Representative Director of Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota), visited Thailand on May 8th, to be close to the impacted stakeholders, and express his apologies for the inconvenience and concern this may cause to Thai customers, dealers, employees and authorities.
Taking this opportunity, and on behalf of the Toyota Group, Chairman Toyoda provided assurance on the quality of the vehicle. In his comments, he said that the reason coming to Thailand this time is to ensure the Thai customers that “Yaris ATIV” meets all the necessary safety regulations of Thailand, and that they can continue to use the vehicles with peace of mind.
Chairman Toyoda also commented, “Toyota is a company where, whenever a problem occurs, everyone stops, seeks the true cause, and works to improve and prevent recurrence. This is the Toyota philosophy that we have cherished since the company’s founding. I myself will take the lead in returning to this philosophy once again and promote group-wide efforts.”
At the press conference, Masahiko Maeda, Chief Executive Officer of Asia Region, added, “There are 3 steps before a vehicle reaches a customer: development, certification and sales. We would like to assure customers that there were no issues for the safety and quality of the car during “development” process. This is an issue about the next step, certification, where procedural irregularity was discovered, which we take seriously and have taken actions to resolve.”
In order to comply with the regulations in Thailand, we have suspended shipments and sales from April 29th until we confirm there is no safety issue together with the authorities.
<Updates of certification process>
- After discovering the procedural irregularity, Daihatsu, which was responsible for upper body development and certification, conducted internal UN-R95 tests for the Yaris ATIV with genuine mass production parts, and confirmed that it complies with all UN-R95 requirements.
- Thereafter Daihatsu consulted with the independent 3rd party inspection and certification authority, Vincotte, and confirmed that there is no need for modification or any action for existing vehicles and that the vehicles running in the market comply with the safety standards and can be used as normal.
- In addition, a confirmation test of the Thai Mass Production vehicle, in the presence of the 3rd party testing agency was again conducted on April 28, who validated that all UN-R95 requirements are met.
- On May 2nd, we received an extension of our UN-R95 certification. And now, we are undergoing discussion with the local authorities.
Toyota takes this matter very seriously and commits to make utmost efforts to comprehensively review our certification procedures and operations.
Toyota always aims to produce and provide safe and high-quality vehicles and will continue to put safety as the first priority. Toyota deeply apologizes for any inconvenience that this incident has caused to customers and stakeholders who trusted the Toyota brand, but will always work to be open, gain trust from all stakeholders and continuously take efforts to improve our products and services for our customers.