Nissan Fakes Inspectors

As if following Kobelco, one of the big carmakers in Japan, Nissan, revealed its wrong habit in inspection of new cars. Even after the company was accused of its involvement of the non-licensed engineers in the inspection last month, Nissan did not correct it. Nissan has to stop its shipping of the cars, which may affect its business as a whole.

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism found on September 18^th that the cars produced in Shonan Factory of Nissan Car body had been checked by the inspectors without official license, eroding the credibility of the cars. In the internal research in Nissan after the finding, Nissan reconfirmed that supervisors in the factory continued such inspections without replacing the personnel. The research found that the check of steering had been done by non-licensed inspectors and the licensed inspectors had been authorized those results with data brought by machines.

In addition, it was found that the factories with that kind of unlicensed checking amounted to four, including those in Oppama, Tochigi and Kyushu. It meant that false checking was made to two thirds of the all Nissan factories in Japan. The process conducted by non-licensed inspectors was the final check before shipping each car. “I apologize our betrayal against our clients,” told President Hiroto Saikawa in his press conference on Thursday.

Nissan decided to bring back all the cars it had already shipped from the factories. While the company had recalled 1.16 million of the cars earlier this month, it will make inspection again for 34 thousand cars, including additional recall of 4 thousand. The inspection is going to include final check on braking system. Nissan announced that it would stop all the shipping from those six factories.

Why Nissan cannot correct its own wrongdoings? Saikawa explained that communication gap between the leaders in factories caused insufficiency of correcting errors. But, it is unlikely that those professional workers could not understand the meaning of the order from the top managers. The problem is irresponsible mind of their products, which may cause fatal accident costing human life.

Credibility on Nissan brand will decline in international level. While it had been in the fifth position in car sales inside Japan, new hybrid vehicle, Note, contributed to regaining power. New model of electric car, Leaf, was expected to boost its sales later this year. The scandal revealed that high technology shown in such new models would not be reliable enough, putting negative impact on its strategy for taking international hegemony with foreign carmakers like Renault.