Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd. (ダイハツ工業株式会社, Daihatsu Kōgyō Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese manufacturer of cars, well known for its smaller models. Many of its models are also known as kei jidosha (or kei car) in Japan.
The name "Daihatsu" is a combination of the first kanji (Chinese character, also shared in Japanese language) for Osaka (大) and the first of the word "engine manufacture" (発); when put together they are pronounced "dai hatsu". (In Japanese, it is pronounced as Da-i-ha-tsu, NOT Dai-hat-su, but in practice, even in Japanese, the name is often slurred and doesn't sound too different than the latter pronunciation.)


It was reported on 31 March 2005, that Toyota would exit Daihatsu from the Australian market, after sales fell heavily in 2005, in spite of the overall new-car market in Australia growing 7%. Daihatsu wound up its Australian operations in March 2006 after almost 40 years in the market.
Daihatsu's operations in Chile – where Daihatsu is a well-known brand for its 1970s models such as the Charade or Cuore – were also threatened after very low sales in 2004 and 2005. However, Toyota has stated that it intends to persist in the Chile market for now.
Daihatsu has supplied cars under different badges to various different automakers in the past, and also supplies engines and transmissions to one of Malaysia's largest car makers, Perodua, which sells cars in the United Kingdom.