Toyota considers hybrid car recall
Damage to Toyota’s image plummeted further today with the car maker considering a US and Japanese recall of its flagship Prius hybrid – the symbol of its technological prowess and green car ambitions.
Toyota is also investigating possible brake problems with its luxury Sai saloon, also a hybrid, which is sold only in Japan, it emerged today.
The beleaguered car maker already faces probes of brake problems with the latest Prius model in the US and Japan but remained tight-lipped about adding the petrol-electric hybrid to the millions of cars it has recalled.
Toyota is also investigating possible brake problems with its luxury Lexus hybrid.
Nihon Keizai, Japan’s top business newspaper, said today that Toyota Motor Corporation would soon notify Japan’s transport ministry and the US Department of Transportation of a recall of 270,000 Prius hybrids.
Toyota said it was considering a recall but no decision had been made. “Nothing has been decided on whether we will recall or not,” said spokeswoman Ririko Takeuchi.
Some owners of the 2010 Prius have reported their brakes do not always engage immediately when they press the brake pedal, or that the brakes have an inconsistent feel.
The problem has been fixed with a software programming change for Prius vehicles sold in Japan and overseas since late January, but not for vehicles sold before then.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would assess the scope of the problem in the Prius and the safety risk to about 37,000 cars that could be affected. Toyota, however, has said it sold 103,000 of the new Prius in the US since May last year.
The investigation comes as safety questions surround Toyota, which has already issued broad recalls for millions of its best-selling vehicles, including the Corolla and Camry, because of accelerator pedals that can become stuck.
US officials have approved Toyota’s solution to that problem – a small piece of steel designed to eliminate excess friction in the pedal mechanism – but criticised the car maker for being too slow in responding to customer complaints.
Ms Takeuchi said Toyota was also investigating possible brake problems with its luxury Lexus hybrid, which uses the same brake system as the Prius.
Toyota has not received any complaints about the Lexus HS250h and the probe was to ensure safety, she said.
Congressional investigators expanded their review of Toyota to include the Prius as California Rep Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, asked Toyota for records on its Prius brakes.
The committee plans a hearing next week on Toyota’s recalls, the first of two in Congress this month. Mr Issa said he would focus on whether Toyota or NHTSA failed to properly deal with safety complaints or address them quickly enough.
“We think they should have acted more aggressively or quickly,” said Mr Issa, who owns four Priuses, none of which fall under the investigation.
And Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal said he and his counterparts in other states may take legal action against Toyota over possible deceptive claims to consumers about the safety of the company’s cars.
Paul Nolasco, a Toyota spokesman in Japan, said the time lag drivers feel before brakes kick in stems from the two systems in a petrol-electric hybrid - the petrol engine and the electric motor. The brakes work if the driver keeps pushing the pedal, he said.
Toyota said it had received 180 reports of problems with Prius brakes in Japan and the US. The problem is suspected in four crashes resulting in two minor injuries, according to a NHTSA preliminary safety report.
Despite the preliminary nature of the investigations, analysts said Toyota may be forced to take more decisive action, such as issuing a recall, because of the intense scrutiny it faces from regulators and customers.
“People are hypersensitive right now,” said Erich Merkle, president of the consulting company Autoconomy.com. “I don’t know how they will be able to work around this without doing a recall.”
The Prius trouble comes as Toyota service shops around the country are working round the clock to handle accelerator pedal repairs. Dealers said they had heard little about any issue with Prius brakes or whether any fix was planned for cars already on the road.
The Prius is not Toyota’s biggest seller – the company sold 140,000 in the US last year, far less than the 357,000 Camrys – but holds a cherished spot in its line-up.
Toyota was one of the first companies to mass-market a hybrid that combines an electric motor with a petrol engine, introducing the Prius in Japan in 1997 and to the world in 2001. Its high petrol mileage made it popular among environmentally conscious drivers, especially when fuel prices soared two years ago.
But the complexity of the highly-computerised Prius has led to problems in the past. In 2005, the company repaired 75,000 of them to fix software glitches that caused the engine to stall. It has also had trouble with headlights going out.
