Nissan Motor Co chief executive Hiroto Saikawa and other executives of the Japanese automaker are returning a part of their salaries to show remorse over illegal vehicle inspections at the automaker’s plants in Japan.
Saikawa on Friday did not say how big the pay cuts would be or who else would take them.
He said “voluntary return of a part of his pay” started last month and will continue through March next year, the end of the fiscal year.
Photo: AP
Earlier on Friday, Nissan submitted to the Japanese government a report on its investigation into the scandal.
It said the investigation found workers in training, not authorized to carry out inspections, were routinely conducting the tests, borrowing and using the hanko, or traditional Japanese seals that often are used in lieu of signatures, of certified personnel.
The faulty inspections affect only vehicles sold in Japan, not exports.
Because of the problems, Nissan is recalling more than 1 million vehicles for further inspections
Saikawa said it was puzzling why the practice was routine for decades, beginning as early as 1979.
He said plant workers knew what they were doing was illegal and covered it up, including when government regulators came to check on the plants and the inspections.
He also said it was “deplorable” that higher management was so out of touch.
“The style of our management was such that we did not fully understand the real situation on the ground,” Saikawa told reporters.
However, Saikawa denied the scandal was related to Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn’s well-known management style of cost-cutting drives and ambitious targets.
When asked by reporters how else managers were going to take responsibility, Saikawa said managerial changes to fix the deeply embedded inspection problems were coming by March next year.
He declined to elaborate.
Separately, Nissan is squeezing all it can from its US assembly plants and will need to build an entirely new factory if it keeps growing in the lucrative US auto market, a top executive said.
“At some point, we may need it,”Nissan North America chairman Jose Munoz said in an interview, referring to additional production capacity.
The addition would have to be a standalone new factory because the company’s existing assembly plants in Tennessee and Mississippi are “maxed out,” he said.
Nissan’s US sales have increased about 70 percent over the past six years and the Japanese automaker’s strategic plan through 2022 calls for further expansion, Munoz said at Bloomberg’s Detroit office.
The company sold about 1.6 million cars and trucks in the US last year.
More than 8,000 workers make cars and battery packs at Nissan’s Tennessee complex that produced more than 640,000 vehicles last year, including Leaf electric cars, Altima and Maxima sedans and Infiniti QX60 sport utility vehicles.
Its Mississippi operation employs 6,400 people making Titan pickups, cargo vans and Altima sedans among others.
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