Regarding the story "Mitsubishi Motors admits using unapproved tests since '91" in the April 27 edition, if the pressure on the company's development engineers for achieving high fuel efficacy goals was the cause of the cheating, engineers at other carmakers will be under the same pressure, because of the industry-wide hyping of fuel efficiency.
The marketing and advertising strategies they have been using need to be questioned as well. Fuel consumption for a car in real-life conditions and in laboratory tests to verify its fuel efficiency specifications are different. However, every carmaker is airing similar TV commercials touting the laboratory test results, while government subsidies are provided for purchasing their fuel-efficient cars.
Those featureless TV ads show how monotonous the competition has become, eventually putting the engineers under extreme pressure. If MMC, which was once known for its technical prowess, is the only one that cheated on the tests, what caused it to choose a different and wrong path than that of its competitors?
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.