Nissan admits to additional testing malfeasance in Japan
It only affects cars sold in Japan, not the US.
Late last year, both Nissan and Subaru admitted to decades of "flawed" vehicle inspections for cars sold in Japan. It appears that wasn't the only misstep Nissan committed in its home country.
Nissan has admitted to incorrectly measuring emissions and fuel economy for 19 different models it sells in Japan, Reuters reports. The automaker claims that, of some 2,200 sample tests across six Japanese plants, it found data falsification in 1,200 tests across five plants.
Japanese regulations require automakers to stick to specific speeds and durations during its emissions tests. Per Reuters, Nissan claims that it found data that did not line up with what the Japanese government wants, and in some cases, the testing equipment wasn't even calibrated correctly. It also overstated fuel economy data. A Nissan spokesman directed me to Nissan's full statement posted online and reiterated that this only affects Japanese-market vehicles.
Despite this misconduct, the automaker claims it does not need to recall any of the 19 models involved, since it has no impact on vehicle safety. The issues were found as part of an internal investigation that came after Nissan admitted to finding issues in its vehicle inspection routine.
Last October, Nissan copped to the fact that it hadn't been following Japan's rules on vehicle inspections for over a decade. Registered inspectors must run final safety checks, but Nissan had been using unauthorized employees to conduct those checks since at least 1979. This, too, only affected vehicles destined for sale in its home country. That scandal caused the company to recall upward of 1.2 million vehicles.