On Tuesday morning, Mitsubishi's vice president announced that they misrepresented the fuel consumption of their vehicles. This official announcement resulted in a 50% loss in sales.
After Nakao made the announcement Tuesday morning, Mitsubishi Motors went down 10% in reputation. As you know, on April 20, MGPgate raised the issue and started a scandal over the fuel economy characteristics. Since that day, Mitsubishi has lost 50% of its stock market price.
This is undoubtedly an unpleasant situation and a reason for Mitsubishi Motors' bad reputation, but not as bad as for the Volkswagen Group with a diesel scandal. The vice president said in a statement that similar fuel economy manipulations had been carried out since 1991. As you know, six Japanese automakers were found to provide inaccurate data on fuel consumption of their cars. Mitsubishi stood out among them (see Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV 2017 review). According to Mitsubishi Motors, this incident happened because they used different standards for measuring drag and aerodynamic drag to determine fuel economy. The results differed by a hundredth of the Japanese standards, which the company's engineers did not pay attention to. But still, not all models had such incidents. Compared to the VW Group, where the number of vehicles subject to recall exceeds three times that of Mitsubishi. Preliminary data show that out of a million cars sold, about 600,000 models will need to be recalled.
Such manipulations with fuel consumption included the Pajero, Outlander, i-MiEV and RVR models. The Nissan brand, which works closely with Mitsubishi Motors, will also be tested. Due to the use of the same technology, parts and fuel consumption test standards developed by Mitsubishi.
According to Mitsubishi managers, 625,000 vehicles are to be recalled. Such differences in fuel consumption will lead to changes in the emission of harmful substances into the atmosphere. Engineers will recalculate standards and change software in the fastest way.
