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Mitsubishi Starts Finding Excuses for Cheating, More Cars Are Affected

Mitsubishi bit more than it could chew, as the company not only admitted to cheating on fuel economy testing but also said more cars could be involved than initially expected.
Mitsubishi Concept XR-PHEV 1 photo
Photo: Mitsubishi
The latest news concerning Mitsubishi’s MPG Gate announces nine more models that could have been tested in a manipulative way to provide better fuel economy results.

The nine models are not Japanese Kei cars anymore, but SUVs. This means that Mitsubishi’s scandal might reach a global scale, but it all depends on the cars involved in the scandal.

Among the affected SUVs is the RVR, whose ongoing generation was sold as the Outlander Sport and ASX, depending on the market.

Because Mitsubishi has been selling the RVR since 1991, the year when it started cheating, it’s unclear which RVR is affected. Previous generations of this model were also called Chariot, Space Runner, and other names.

As a Bloomberg report reveals, the Mitsubishi RVR’s fuel economy was calculated using a base model, but no actual testing was conducted. The company noted, though, that the fuel economy of the nine models they suspected of being intentionally misstated did not differ from the declared figures.

However, Mitsubishi raised the claimed fuel economy targets five times for its minicar models just to outperform the competition on paper. The entire cheating scheme will be unraveled by a third-party group, which will investigate the falsified fuel economy labeling used by the corporation. The investigation will take around three months, Mitsubishi Motors estimates.

The automaker’s supervisor in charge claimed that they wanted to boost efficiency to meet stringent government targets, so they mishandled the testing. Unlike preceding situations where Mitsubishi required a bailout, the automotive branch did not request the aid of distinct Mitsubishi Group companies and planned to solve the crisis alone. According to Osamu Masuko, the company's chairman, the automaker expects to afford to compensate all parties involved.

It’s easy to understand why Mitsubishi Motors would attempt to work things out on its own - its shareholders might not want to bail out the carmaker for the third time in its existence.

The last bailout happened over a decade ago because Mitsubishi covered up deadly defects in some models. If you take into account the fact that they have been falsely declaring fuel economy for the last 21 years, you can notice a small overlap of cheating for the carmaker. As if that were not enough, they stopped building the Lancer Evolution and will not make a replacement for it.
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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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