Material fraud or will affect the safety of vehicles

According to foreign media reports, Japanese automakers such as Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda have conducted investigations to confirm whether products such as aluminum, copper and steel supplied by Kobe Steel will affect the safety of their vehicles.

As Japan's third-largest steel plant, Kobe Steel acknowledges that it has forged its test data (including tensile strength, dimensions, etc.) for its aluminum, copper, and steel products, which may have already flowed. Nearly 200 customers have spread to various fields such as aviation, automobiles, and space rockets.

The Kobe Steel Group acknowledged that during the period from September 2016 to August 2017, aluminum and copper products delivered by the four Japanese factories of the company were subject to falsification material data and falsely labelled. This approach tricks the customer into thinking that the material received meets the material specifications and performance requirements required for his product.

Toyota dismissed Kobe Steel as a violation of industry ethics and stated that the consequences of the problem are very serious. At present, the company is working to re-examine this type of “issue material” and confirm whether this kind of material will affect Toyota’s The adverse effects of the vehicle (eg safety). Toyota said that the materials provided by Kobe Steel are mostly used in the bonnets, rear doors and peripheral areas of vehicles.

Nissan stated that the company is in the process of urgently testing the performance of the vehicle because the material delivered by Kobe Steel is used in engine hoods and other equipment. When the vehicle is on the road, it may affect the safety of surrounding pedestrians.

Honda said that the material properties of its doors and hoods are in doubt and are still under investigation.

Mazda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki and Subaru all said that the company is conducting tests to identify which parts of its vehicles use the products provided by Kobe Steel and confirm whether such materials will affect the safety of vehicles.

According to the Kobe Steel Institute, the company’s internal investigation in August this year found that product existence data was altered (falsified) from September 2016 to August 2017, but it was not disclosed to the public. At present, there are no reports that the batch of "problem materials" will affect the safety of vehicles.

The company still said that its metal and alloy products have been sent to more than 200 companies, but declined to disclose the list of customers. For this reason, it is still unclear whether the above-mentioned more than 200 companies have received data on the existence of data modification. According to Bloomberg, GM and Ford are customers of the Kobe Steel Institute.

All four aluminum plants under the Kobe Steel Corporation in Japan have been involved in changing the inspection certificate, product size and tensile strength data, and thus making their products meet the customer's specifications. It is worth mentioning that the above-mentioned misconduct is systematic and organized. Dozens of employees, including senior executives, have participated in misconduct. The counterfeiting of some products can even be traced back to ten years ago.

In the fiscal year ending in March 2017, the sales of the aluminum and copper division of Kobe Steel fell by 6.4% to 323.3 billion yen (approximately US$2.87 billion), and the recurring profit was drastically increased. The drop of 21% fell to 112.3 million U.S. dollars.

Kobe Steel has been aggressively expanding its aluminum applications. As major car companies have been devoting themselves to lightweighting, the demand for aluminum has continued to rise. However, this data fraud scandal at the Kobe Steel Institute is tantamount to giving the big car companies a heavy blow.