Toyota suspends sales of Yaris in Thailand after safety issue

Bangkok/Tokyo — Japanese carmaker Toyota stopped sales and deliveries of its Yaris Ativ in Thailand, senior officials said on Monday, after its affiliate Daihatsu rigged part of the door in side-collision safety tests.

The problem could have occurred due to pressure on Daihatsu to shorten the development time of the Ativ, Masahiko Maeda, Toyota’s CEO for the Asia region, said at a press conference in Bangkok. The vehicles customers were now using were safe, he said.

Toyota was working with the Thai government to resume sales of the model, which has been produced in Toyota’s Gateway plant in Chachoengsao province, and a further investigation was under way.

“If development had been carried out under appropriate conditions, this kind of problem would of course not have happened,” Maeda said.

“The fact that it still happened means there was some kind of pressure at the development site,” he said, adding that the vehicle’s relatively large size could have posed a challenge to Daihatsu, which specialises in the production of small cars.

In April, Toyota and Daihatsu disclosed that they were investigating how part of the door in side-collision safety tests carried out for some 88,000 small cars had been changed for the purpose of side-on crash safety testing.

Daihatsu has said that some 76,000 of those vehicles were Yaris Ativs mainly bound for Thailand, Mexico and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which comprises Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

Toyota chair Akio Toyoda said he had visited the Gateway plant for the first time in a decade to assure workers.

Toyota president Koji Sato, who took over the top job from Toyoda on April 1, was not at the press conference.

For Daihatsu, which became a wholly owned Toyota subsidiary in 2016 when Toyoda was president, Southeast Asia is an important market with production facilities in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Reuters