Well step forward Mitsubishi Motors, who have now admitted to falsifying fuel economy data for more than 600,000 vehicles sold in Japan.
According to a company statement tyre pressure figures were being falsified by company employees in order to flatter mileage rates. Shares in the company took a significant knock after Nissan, for who Mitsubishi manufactured 470,000 vehicles, found a growing number of inconsistencies.
The company, by contrast to Volkswagen, has readily admitted that the ‘wrongdoing’ had been intentional and according to the company’s president, Tetsuro Aikawa, “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.”
Mitsubishi is Japan's sixth-largest car maker and sold more than one million vehicles last year, and is now set to investigate whether data were altered for vehicles sold overseas.
The inaccurate tests involved 157,000 of its own brand light passenger cars and 468,000 vehicles produced for Nissan.
While this is the first time that a Japanese car manufacturer has been found to have been cheating fuel economy tests it follows on from Volkswagen and from Hyundai, the South Korean car manufacturer, who was fined for overstating fuel economy ratings back in 2014.
And back in 2000 Mitsubishi Motors revealed that it covered up safety records and customer complaints. Four years later it admitted to broader problems going back decades in what was then Japan's worst automotive recall scandal.
Last year Volkswagen suspended sales of cars containing its four-cylinder turbo direct injection engine, containing software that turned off emissions controls when driving normally, but turned them on when the car is undergoing an emissions test.
With the latest news from Mitsubishi the issue of trust and transparency has yet again come to the fore. Software being amended, sensors falsifying fuel economy data how can we trust the growing claims of energy efficiency and the like from the leading automotive manufacturers?
