In the wake of safety scandals that rocked it, Toyota is cleaning house over at their affiliate, Daihatsu.
In a bid to win back customer trust and repair its brand image, Toyota CEO Koji Sato replaced the top leadership at Daihatsu with Toyota career executives. This will tighten control over Daihatsu and overhaul its operations.
Daihatsu Chairman Sunao Matsubayashi and President Soichiro Okudaira will resign. Toyota will dispatch Masahiro Inoue to be the new president and Masanori Kuwata to be a new executive vice president in charge of reforming corporate culture, effective March 1. The position of chairman will be abolished.
Inoue is currently the CEO of Toyota’s Latin America and Caribbean region. Meanwhile, Kuwata is currently the head of electrification initiatives at the Lexus and the executive vice president of the Kyushu production site that manufactures Lexus vehicles.
As part of the overhaul, Toyota will refocus Daihatsu’s business on minicars and last-mile mobility needs, and outsource some of its overseas operations to partner companies. The overall idea is to relieve the pressure for growth that overstretched the company’s development and production resources.
More details about Daihatsu’s restructuring will come in April.
Toyota Chairman Akio Toyota said last month he had ordered the leaders of Toyota group companies to buckle down on basics. Toyota is now rethinking the pace of production to cope.
Daihatsu’s cheating stretched back three decades. Toyota has said it is unaware of any accidents tied connected to the rigged testing, which centered around the cars’ airbag control units.
More on the Daihatsu safety scandal below:
Too late the hero.
ReplyDeleteHow can a 30 year rigging made undone?..
In Japanese culture, dahan dahan yan. Years din siguro bago nila maaayos image ng daihatsu. Pero if i'm the head of toyota, i'll just abandon ship. But then again, i'm not japanese.
DeleteGood move, now the best time to buy DNGA
ReplyDeleteVW Philippines can hire these ex Daihatsu execs. LOL
ReplyDeleteGood that Toyota tightened its leash with Daihatsu
ReplyDeleteThe interesting bit here is that there is a possibility that Toyota themselves will now helm EMCC (Emerging Market Car Company, division created by Toyota and Daihatsu). This division developed the latest generation of Avanza/Veloz and Wigo, the Raize, ASEAN Yaris Cross, and the 4th-gen Vios. As we know, all of them use the DNGA platform, which is obviously a Daihatsu-led design.
ReplyDeleteIt could now be entirely possible that if Toyota takes full control of EMCC rather than take a leadership role, we may see development of DNGA-based Toyotas be cut short (no more DNGA Toyotas from this point onward) and Toyota could make a TNGA-LC (low-cost) platform that may be a cheaper version of TNGA-B as a replacement. Emerging market Toyotas could be 100% Toyota underneath again.
I don't think so, the only solution for Toyota to get rid of this dilemma is that they should have acquired Nissan from Renault during the period the latter two were embroiled in the Carlos Ghosn controversy and made Nissan's financial record worse, and instead of using its own mechanicals, Toyota could just use Nissan technology for most of its cars and in turn many Toyotas would behave like Nissans all around. (Nissan however isn't in the World Rally Championship but the developed markets-only version of the Yaris and its GR version for example would end up using the same technology as the Nissan Almera aka Versa and therefore Nismo would go bankrupt as the whole Nissan and Mitsubishi companies too.)
DeleteI guess that's why Toyota should've bought Nissan and Mitsubishi from Renault when the latter three were involved in the Carlos Ghosn scandal back in 2018, thus instead of Daihatsu, Lexus and Hino, Toyota would have Nissan, Mitsubishi and Mazda - sorry Infiniti and sorry Subaru - while at the same time Toyota would end up using Nissan's platforms that are still in use in the Almera aka Versa in North America.
ReplyDeleteThat means, instead of using Daihatsu chassis, Toyota cars for developing markets would all use Nissan mechanicals as they're also shared with ones sold in developed markets in the scenario Toyota already own Nissan, Mitsubishi and even Mazda - therefore Mazda is a very good alternative to Lexus and Infiniti since the the former is just offering glamed up Toyotas while the latter are unrecognizable-looking Nissan that the name never made it outside North America. (Infiniti started by Nissan to focus on the North American market while having the Nissan guys enforce buyers to stay away from Cadillacs, Lincolns, Chryslers, Volvos and the Germans too.)