Toyota Vios DNGA sales suspended in Thailand due to ‘notchgate’ but here’s why it’s still on sale in Malaysia

Toyota today announced that it has stopped selling the Toyota Yaris Ativ (known as Toyota VIOS in Malaysia) in Thailand awaiting retesting in Japan.

Even so, the same model will continue to be sold in Malaysia, where 539 units have already been delivered. Details in the timeline of events released by Toyota reveal why this is the case.

Here is the chronology of events:

• A whistleblower warned management about a Abnormal with side crash tests required for R95 certification. A notch on the door of the test car was not present on the production car. Upon discovery of this, shipments to countries requiring R95 were suspended.
• Daihatsu (the party in charge of testing) consulted with testing and certification bodies.
• A first re-test was conducted internally. The car passed the test. It was decided that there was no need for a recall to replace parts of a car in production because the car had passed the test without notches.
• The second re-inspection was conducted on 28 April in the presence of the Belgian inspection agency Vincotte. The vehicle has passed the test again and this has been verified with the testing authority.
• The third re-examination had to be done specifically for the Thai market to meet the specific witness test requirements in that country, but has not yet been done.

So from what we understand, Toyota and Daihatsu are currently waiting for a third re-examination under certain conditions to satisfy a specific legal requirement in Thailand, that’s why Sales in Thailand are suspended.

Sales in Malaysia can proceed because our country does not have this specific requirement and the affected vehicle passed the re-inspection twice, even in the presence of an inspection agency.

Toyota and Daihatsu are still investigating how this happened. There is no firm conclusion yet, but Toyota CEO for Asia Masahiko Maeda said Reuters The problem could have been due to the relatively large size of the vehicle, which may have put pressure on the development team.