TOKYO—Mitsubishi Motors Corp., the Japanese automaker under investigation for lying about fuel economy data for some models, said Wednesday such tampering is suspected in all of its vehicles sold in Japan.
The company has said it carried out false tests and gave inflated mileage on minicars known as “kei,” whose production began in 2013, called eK wagon and eK Space light passenger cars under its own brand and Dayz and Dayz Roox that it produced for Nissan Motor Co.
The company said the extent of such fraudulence was wide, possibly affecting all current and discontinued models sold in Japan. It abided by mileage-test requirements for vehicles sold abroad, it said.
The latest scandal surfaced last month after Nissan pointed out discrepancies with its own mileage tests. Mitsubishi also was embroiled in a massive scandal 15 years ago involving a systematic cover-up of auto defects.
U.S. environmental regulators have ordered additional testing to verify gas mileage on the five models Mitsubishi sells in the U.S., including three cars and two SUVs.
Although managers were fully aware of the difficulties involved in attaining good mileage, it did not bother to communicate with those on the ground doing the cheating to investigate, the company said in a statement to the government.
Employees simply made up some of the data, raising the mileage fraudulently five times during the development of the minicars, it said.
Tokyo-based Mitsubishi is still working on how to compensate the customers.
