Toyota has officially announced a delay in the shipment of 10 different vehicle models equipped with potentially problematic diesel engines. Some of them are available worldwide and may have been certified in violation of the law.
The list of affected vehicles includes the Toyota Land Cruiser 300 and Prado, the Fortuner, the Hilux, the Lexus LX500d and a few models offered only in India and Japan, including those rebadged as Mazda models.
The issue concerns the engines designed and produced by the company’s subsidiary, Toyota Industries Co (TICO). As it turned out, the certification process was performed on a wrong hardware/software combination not meant for mass-market manufacturing. As a result, the company believes that some of the data it had gathered on the working parameters of the engine might be false.
Toyota adds that it has already conducted a check of some vehicles produced so far and found that their parameters were still within the norm. Even so, it decided to halt the deliveries because of the erroneous compliance certificates. It looks like the whole certification process may have to be redone from scratch for all affected models.