Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corp. has completed the filing of recall reports on defective vehicles and defect cover-ups found since March last year, with the number of vehicles subject to recall totaling 2.64 million, the automaker said.
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Of the vehicles – made in 1974 or after – 1.87 million are still on the road, while the others have been retired or junked, the company said. The defects in 1.15 million vehicles, or about 60% of the vehicles on the road, have been fixed, it said, according to Kyodo News.
The figures include vehicles subject to multiple recalls. In one case, a vehicle was recalled eight times.
Excluding such multiple-recall automobiles, the number of vehicles which were subject to recall and are still on the road comes to 890,000.
The company estimates the repair costs for the recalls will reach 149 billion yen by the end of this fiscal year, next March 31.
”We apologize anew for the series of problems that cost two precious lives,” Mitsubishi Fuso chairman Keisuke Egashira said at a news conference held at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
According to Kyodo News, the vehicle defects resulted in 24 physical injuries, including two deaths, among other accidents.
The company said it hopes to complete 90% of all recall-linked repairs by next spring.
The cover-ups came to light as a result of the death of a young mother in Yokohama in 2002 who was hit by a wheel that flew off a heavy Mitsubishi Fuso truck with a faulty hub.
With the completion of the recall filings, Egashira said his company will step up efforts to revive its management under the wing of German automaker DaimlerChrysler, the Japanese automaker’s largest shareholder, Kyodo News noted.
