On Wednesday, Toyota Motor announced that its subsidiary Daihatsu will stop sending out any of its vehicles. This decision comes after an investigation into a safety scandal revealed problems with 64 different models, including nearly twenty sold under the Toyota brand.

In April, Daihatsu announced that an external committee was conducting an inquiry into their manipulation of side-impact crash tests for 88,000 compact vehicles. The majority of these cars were sold under the Toyota brand.

However, recent developments indicate that the scandal’s extent is much larger than previously believed and could potentially damage the automakers’ image of being trustworthy and producing safe vehicles.

Daihatsu, a division of Toyota, manufactures a variety of compact vehicles known as “kei” cars and trucks, which are in high demand in Japan. The recent problems also affected certain Mazda and Subaru models sold in Japan, as well as Toyota and Daihatsu models sold internationally, according to the investigation panel’s findings.

Toyota stated that a “fundamental overhaul” was necessary to rejuvenate Daihatsu and also called for a reassessment of certification processes.

Toyota stated that this will be a highly important task that cannot be completed quickly. It will involve evaluating not just management and business practices, but also the organization’s structure.

On Wednesday afternoon, Toyota stock did not experience any change, falling behind a 1.6% increase in the overall market.

According to a report from the Asahi newspaper, Daihatsu has been discovered to have falsified safety tests for nearly all of its current production models and some previously produced cars.

In April, Daihatsu announced that it had uncovered incorrect tests being performed after receiving a report from a whistleblower. The company promptly notified regulatory authorities and paused the delivery of affected models.

In the subsequent month, it announced that it had halted the sale of both the Toyota Raize hybrid electric vehicle and its own Rocky model due to issues discovered during testing.

According to data from Toyota, Daihatsu manufactured 1.1 million vehicles in the first 10 months of the year, with almost 40% produced at international locations. During this time, it also sold approximately 660,000 vehicles globally, contributing to 7% of Toyota’s total sales.

On Wednesday, Toyota announced that the models affected were for the southeast Asian markets of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam, as well as the central and South American countries of Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

Daihatsu is the most recent safety concern to affect the Toyota group throughout the years.

In 2022, a scandal involving engine data occurred at Hino Motors, the truck and bus division of Toyota, resulting in the resignation of some managers and temporary reductions in pay.

Hino acknowledged fabricating information about certain engines, going back to 2003, which is at least ten years earlier than initially stated.

In 2010, Akio Toyoda, the chairman of Toyota and at the time CEO, was compelled to give testimony before the United States Congress as a result of a safety issue related to defective accelerators.