In the growing imbroglio surrounding truck maker Hino and the scandal over the falsification of emission and fuel consumption figures, its parent company Toyota along with Hino , announced that the truck company would halt production of some key medium and heavy-duty trucks for at least another year following the revelations of the widespread data falsification scandal earlier this year.
The companies announced that the medium-duty 500 Series. or Ranger models and the heavy-duty 700 Series or Profia range will now not be produced until August 2023.
Halting production of some significant sections of its truck model range is the latest sign of the scandal worsening for Hino since it first announced the data falsification affecting some of its trucks in March.
Since then, it has admitted it falsified data on some engines going back as far as 2003, at least a decade earlier than originally indicated. Around 640,000 vehicles have been affected all told, or more than five times the figure initially revealed.
Hino said in August that it would suspend shipments of small trucks after a transport ministry investigation revealed that around 76,000 of its small trucks sold since 2019 had not been subject to the required number of engine tests.
Toyota and others involved in a joint venture commercial vehicle partnership with Isuzu and Suzuki. have since expelled Hino from that group over falsification of engine data by the truck maker.
The widening scandal at Hino over falsification of engine data has become a headache that will not go away for parent Toyota which has a controlling 50.1 per cent stake in Hino.
Hino became a Toyota controlled subsidiary in 2001 and since then nearly all of Hino’s presidents since then, were previously Toyota executives.
