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Mitsubishi Motors Pulls a Volkswagen; Shares Drop (reuters.com)
Reader Zane C. writes: The president of Japan's sixth largest auto corporation has admitted to manipulating test data on fuel economy (mileage test data) for 625,000 total eK Wagon and eK Space models, as well as the Dayz and Dayz Roox models produced for Nissan Motors. The tests overstated fuel efficiency by 5 percent to 10 percent. The offending models have been taken off the market until the problem is fixed, and foreign markets are being investigated for similar violations. Upon the announcement of the manipulations, Mitsubishi's stock dropped 15% and it lost 1.2 billion dollars in market value. The company apologized for the deception and said that it is investigating the employees involved. According to Mitsubishi, it was Nissan's in-house testers that discovered the discrepancy between the cars' published fuel efficiency data, and their real-life results. The affected models are sold exclusively in Japan.
At least it wasn't "Starion". Given that the smaller car was "Colt", you can probably guess what the car was actually supposed to be called...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There is actually very little that is similar between this and what Volkswagen did. It is like saying that a shoplifter "pulls a Blackbeard" or something. In this case, they lied about their fuel economy to increase sales. In the other case, they sold cars with completely illegal emissions and built them to detect an emissions test and cheat on it.
Your claim about "no one wanted to rock the boat" is horse shit. The regulators who uncovered the VW cheat have been testing other manufacturers too, and nobody else appears to be doing that thing. The reason that nobody pointed the finger at VW is that they don't all buy competitors cars and road test the emissions. They test things like comfort and performance of competitors, they don't attempt to re-create all their regulatory compliance. They spend that money on their own compliance! That testing is expensive, and they don't really benefit from it. Performance testing of competitors they do benefit from, because it is more likely to lead to engineering insights.