Mitsubishi emissions scandal expands as an oil stain?
Posted on 22-04-2016 at 12:54 pm by jaapiyo – 39 Comments”
Ruh-roh. Thunderstorm clouds gather above the headquarters of Mitsubishi in Tokyo. That said someone Metsubsidie-gate?
Mitsubishi will experience anxious days at the time. Earlier this week there was suddenly news that there is tampered with the emissions figures of the two models, the eK Space and the eK Wagon. This came to light because Nissan variants of these models sell. Nissan was working on the old models to benchmark for the introduction of better successors, and came to this the different emissions on the light. With Volkswagen’s sjoemelgate still fresh in the memory of investors and speculators crashed the stock price of Mitsubishi with a whopping 40% down.
As it often goes in such cases, it is the gifbeker, however, not yet completely empty. Where the first messages scurried over to 625,000 affected cars, especially on the domestic market are sold, it now appears that there may be multiple models are involved in the scandal, among other things, the i-MIEV and -oh horror – the Outlander. According to Automotive News Europe, this is at the time the official party line of Mitsubishi:
“The company is checking whether its improper conduct, which affects overseas models and said it’s unable to estimate the impact on its business at this point.”
Meanwhile, Japanese authorities yesterday invaded in the second-largest office of Mitsubishi in Japan to gather evidence before the shredder. The Japanese government calls the case ‘extremely seriously’ and has Mitsubishi ordered no later than april 27, with a report to come out about the abuses.
In an official statement about the facts of earlier this week, says Mitsubishi is now the following:
“We conducted testing improperly to present better fuel consumption rates than the actual rates, and the testing method was also different from the one required by Japanese law. We express deep apologies to all of our customers and stakeholders for this issue.”
A pretty clear mea culpa. Let’s not hope that it leads to a number of harakiri. Lance Bradley, Mitsubishi UK plug for the time being in an interview with Autocar, however, have his head in the sand. Deny, deny, deny.
“Mitsubishi Motors Corporation has acted quickly and decisively. We understand that such issues are of great concern to consumers. I would like to reassure everyone that there is no evidence to suggest that UK or European models are affected.”
We will keep a close eye or in the future, it is necessary for Lance to get some ‘humble pie’ to eat.
Image Credit: @coolsiee via Autojunk