Soichiro Okudaira will be replaced as CEO at Daihatsu. — © AP
The Japanese car company Toyota is ousting the CEO of its subsidiary Daihatsu, Soichiro Okudaira, after the scandal surrounding crash test tampering.
Tuesday, February 13, 2024 at 12:52 PM
Toyota Latin America CEO Masahiro Inoue will take over at Daihatsu on March 1. Both companies announced this in a press release on Tuesday.
The top executives at Daihatsu will be replaced and the foreign activities will come under the supervision of Toyota, according to Toyota CEO Koji Sato. A new leadership structure for Daihatsu will be announced in April. “We believe these interventions are necessary to transform Daihatsu into the company it should have been,” Sato said.
The scandal broke in April 2023, when Daihatsu admitted to falsifying crash test results on some models. After investigation, irregularities came to light in 64 models, including almost all Daihatsu models, but also cars from Toyota, Mazda and Subaru. The tampering was specifically related to the airbags: during the crash tests, different control modules were used for the airbags than those used in the cars sold. Daihatsu has allegedly been cheating on tests since 1989.