Mazda Reacts To Allegations About Cheating In Emission Tests

Reacting to the reports that claim Mazda cheated on the emission and fuel efficiency tests, the Japanese car manufacturer has now come out with a statement denying any improper alteration or falsification of the test data. According to the report published by Nikkei Asian Review, the carmaker had allegedly performed the suspect tests "on samples of manufactured vehicles selected during the quality assurance process." However, Mazda now claims that the anomaly in data occurred due to an error and the company did not deliberately cheat in the tests.

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Mazda claims that following government's request to internally investigate the emission and fuel efficiency data collected using the JC08 and WLTC2 testing modes, the company recently submitted its reports on the final vehicle inspections. In the report, Mazda has mentioned it discovered a speed trace errors in the JC08 testing mode, a situation in which the car being tested deviates more than the permitted amount from the pre-established speed trace pattern as described by the test mode. Mazda found speed trace errors in 72 cases out of 1,472 vehicles that were tested under the JC08 testing mode.

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The carmaker claims that it has identified two reasons for these errors. One, the system was not set up to automatically invalidate results when a speed trace error occurred, or two, the test procedures left the determination of speed trace errors up to each individual inspector. Mazda says that it re-examined the data and the results show there was no effect on-specification fuel economy and emission figures. The company says that no such cases were found in WLTC mode testing.

Mazda says that it accepts the fact that errors were made, but says it was only on a small number of tests and claims that the situation was identified and the company has taken measures to avoid them from happening again. In order to ensure that Mazda says that it will update the systems to automatically treat test results as invalid in the event of a speed trace error. Additionally, Mazda has also increased the number of employees who check inspection data, including speed trace errors.