This Is Toyota's Way To Prevent Repeated Vehicle Certification Scandal

Toyota Yaris Cross. (Doc. Global Toyota)

JAKARTA - The last year has been a difficult period for Toyota, especially after the discovery of irregularities in the vehicle certification process.

Following the findings on a number of models from Toyota and Daihatsu, these brands have now submitted comprehensive reports on how to deal with the situation.

Launching from Motor1, Monday, August 12, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and the Global Chief Quality Officer (G-CQO) will share their duties as the person in charge of keeping things on track.

In detail, the CTO will take part in the final decision for vehicle certification. The communication line will be opened at all levels so that there is a better understanding of what needs to be done.

Then, the Legal Supervisor line will audit the process and report to the Chief Risk Officer. That is a brief summary of the plan, which includes a number of new regulations, new methods, and additional accountability during the certification process.

This step taken by Toyota is a suggestion from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation, and Tourism (MLIT) so that a strong foundation is needed in carrying out certification operations.

"Toyota will review the mechanisms and systems designed to implement proper certification operations, find something abnormal, and take immediate action through joint efforts between management and those on site," Toyota said.

In early June, it was announced that the certification scandal involved a number of models such as the Corolla Fielder, Corolla Axio, and Yaris Cross in Japan and had their production suspended.

This number has increased which involved several models, such as Prius and Mebius (Dahihatsu) as well as RX (Lexus) 2014-2015 which failed in the pedestrian protection test.

In addition, the 2017 production RAV4 SUV was found to have failed in the load transfer prevention test. Then, there is the 2017 Camry and Altis (Dahihatsu) model due to an error in the steering impact test.

The manufacturer also failed to test the resident protective equipment in the interior involving the models Noah, Vexy, and Landy (Suzuki) produced in 2021. Then, two other models, namely Harrier, 2022 output and Lexus LM in 2023, stumbled on a side-brake test and a pole-side collision test.