Toyota apologizes for cheating on vehicle testing, halts production of 3 models | Hacker News Reader

Toyota apologizes for cheating on vehicle testing, halts production of 3 models

apnews.com

68 pointstoomuchtodo18 comments

Well it is time to finally learn the lesson here. We dont want companies self-auditing, self-inspect, self-govern themselves

But thats working-society-ism! That sort of regulation will overstimulate innovation like with diesel-gate.

Volkswagen comes to mind. Their diesel models were withdrawn(?) from the US and one of their executives arrested when they travelled to the US.

What outcry will accompany this similar fraud? Will Toyota cars be withdrawn from the US market? Who will be arrested for fraud?

Notably, it seems like most of the automakers were exploiting the tests, and VW got all the attention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal

There was very little prosecution of the other automakers, and I'm not aware of any of the brands being withdrawn.

This is commonly believed and seems to massively let VW off the hook. Almost everyone was overfitting their optimization to the test and thus not delivering real world lower emissions. That's not illegal, just unethical, particularly since they also lobbied to not make the test more realistic. But VW actually detected it was in the test loop and changed the settings. That's a defeat device and completely illegal. There were a few much smaller cases of similar things found in other manufacturers but nothing even close to the scale VW did it.

A bunch of the other automakers had similar 'defeat devices', and they're called out on the Wikipedia page.

Wow. Even Mercedes-Benz were at it:

    Earlier, Feb 2018, German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported that US authorities
    investigating Mercedes have discovered that its vehicles are equipped with illegal
    software to help them pass United States' stringent emission tests. The claimed
    defeat devices include a Bit 15 mode to switch off emissions control after 16 miles
    of driving (the length of an official U.S. emissions test), and Slipguard which tries
    to directly determine if the car is being tested based on speed and acceleration
    profiles.

I mentioned that. There were others but nothing at the scale of what VW did.

Cummins most recently in the diesel category

Toyota, Honda, and Mazda all apologized for cheating here, not just Toyota.

Suzuki and Yamaha too now

Looks like this was a coordinated release with regulating ministry and manufacturers. [1] has a compiled list of models compiled from today's releases, missing in the ministry release from yesterday[2]. Use machine translation as needed.

1: https://smbiz.asahi.com/article/15291835

2: https://www.mlit.go.jp/report/press/jidosha08_hh_005134.html

> The issue does not affect Toyota’s overseas production.

Does this mean it is a JDM-only issue, aka problems with the testing are in Japan only?

Or are they strictly speaking of production of vehicles [not being halted]?

Yes. Toyotas made outside of Toyota City in Japan are tested differently because the rules are different in the American, European, African, and several other Asian countries, all places where Toyota manufactures.

Mostly JDM. I believe this is a followup to Daihatsu scandal from earlier this year[1]. They probably picked up somewhat benign issues and used them as model cases for governance improvements.

1: https://xtech.nikkei.com/atcl/nxt/column/18/02708/010900001/

Weirdly two other Japanese automakers, Mazda and Honda, said the same thing: that they had been testing improperly. Maybe this was brought up by some changes at the regulatory body?

“Testing improperly”, well that’s one way to frame it.

Unlikely. Toyota's cheating came to light last year and Japan started investigating early this year. Once the others saw Toyota was under the microscope and they were probably next, they got their stories together and waited on Toyota to take the PR hit and got their admissions slipped in as an afterthought relieving them of later solo PR failings and potential investigations.

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