Nissan Admits to Falsifying Car Emissions Tests

Car manufacturer Nissan had revealed that it uncovered falsified car exhaust emissions test data at its Japanese factories.

Nissan has revealed that a number of emissions and fuel economy tests performed in its Japanese factories “deviated from the prescribed testing environment,” BBC News reports. Nissan did not reveal how many cars were affected by this issue but stated that the problem was caused by inspection reports that had been “based on altered measurement values.” The company stated that they would be performing a “full and comprehensive investigation” to discover how the alteration took place.

Nissan claims that “appropriate measures” have been taken to ensure that this does not happen again in the future. The car company stated that it has checked “reliable” data and have confirmed that all of their vehicles, apart from the GT-R sports car, have met Japanese safety standards — there is currently no explanation behind why the GT-R did not meet these standards.

It appears that this issue was widespread across Nissan’s many Japanese factories meaning that many of the company’s cars could be affected. Nissan’s current situation is not unlike VW’s situation in 2015, when it was discovered that the company had purposefully faked their emissions tests. Currently, it’s believed that Nissan’s issues are down to error rather than an attempt at improving emissions ratings, but until a full investigation is completed it cannot be known how this error took place.

VW was fined $1.1 billion by German prosecutors last month for their sale of approximately 10 million cars between 20007 and 2015 that had emissions test cheating software installed. A VW executive in the United States was sent to prison over the scandal. Nissan can only hope that their situation is resolved in a less costly manner than VW’s.