Mitsubishi Revealed It Cheats On Its Fuel Economy Test Results

By Jenn Loro - 21 Apr '16 11:07AM

Mitsubishi Motors Corp., Japan's sixth largest automaker, is currently under fire after a recent admission by its top brass of the intentional test data manipulation carried out by unscrupulous employees in hopes of overstating the fuel economy of more than 600, 000 cars sold in Japan, causing the value of its traded shares to plummet by as much as 15% or a loss of $1.2 billion off its market value.

Suspicion emerged after Nissan Motors discovered a discrepancy in the fuel efficiency test data. Apart from its own brand of fuel economy cars, Mitsubishi is also producing similar models for Nissan. Fuel economy vehicles have seen a major breakthrough in advanced markets as regulations on global emissions tighten and buyers increasingly become environmental and cost-conscious.

"We'd like to apologize for the issue. The focus right now is to resolve this problem and prevent it from happening again ... it could be quite damaging," remarked a highly embarrassed Mitsubishi Motors President Tetsuro Aikawa as he bowed in apology before the press, Yahoo News reported.

The scandal marked the first major corporate defect cover-up by Mitsubishi in 15 years

"The wrongdoing was intentional. It is clear the falsification was done to make the mileage look better. But why they would resort to fraud to do this is still unclear. I feel responsible," the embattled exec said further as quoted by ABC News.

Meanwhile, the transport ministry has sent officials to raid the Mitsubishi Motors office following the company's public apology over its falsified fuel economy data.

"The troubles at Mitsubishi Motors are likely to get much worse now that the government has weighed in. Japan's transport ministry investigators have raided the research center of the car-maker's Nagoya plant, presumably to find out how these fuel-efficiency tests were falsified, and how much bigger the problem might be," wrote BBC Business Asia correspondent Karishma Vaswani.

Vaswani noted further, "Estimates for how much this scandal will cost...hundreds of millions of dollars - but the real damage will be to the company's brand, still reeling from a defects scandal in the early 2000s."