Toyota to Announce Prius Recall for Brakes

February 9, 2010, 6:00AM. By Gordon Gibb

Tokyo, JAPANToyota has announced a recall of more than 400,000 vehicles worldwide over problems with complex anti-lock braking systems. Papers were filed with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in Japan, and filings formalizing a recall in the US are expected today, according to CNN.

The global recall involves a total of 437,000 units of the 2010 Prius and Lexus HS250h. Another car on the recall list, the Sai, is sold primarily in Japan.

The Prius braking problems were found to be a software glitch, for which Toyota claims to have identified a solution and fixed the problem at the factory. However, the automaker has not been determined how it will fix the cars currently on the road.

In announcing the recall in Japan, the President of Toyota Motor Corp., Akio Toyoda, made his second sweeping apology in as many weeks. "Quality is our lifeline for Toyota," he said, promising to win back his customers' trust.

Growing Suspicion over Electronics

Meanwhile, the automaker continues to work through the millions of vehicles recalled for sticking accelerator pedals. Toyota had concluded that it was sticking pedals—either from mechanical wear, or from being wedged into floor mats, or both—that lay at the heart of unexplained acceleration. The automaker launched a massive effort to retrofit accelerator pedals with a metal shim in an attempt to eradicate the sticking problem.

However, there is a growing groundswell of suspicion that the problem is not mechanical at all, but lies with the complicated electronics that link the accelerator pedal to the engine.

Michael Pecht, a professor at the Clark School on Engineering in Maryland, has authored a book on sudden acceleration in modern automobiles and is convinced the complicated electronics is to blame. Pecht is an expert in failure analysis

Three other safety analysts contacted by CNN held the same view.

"From what people have told me about their sudden acceleration incidents, most of them have got nothing to do with the sticking pedal at all," said Antony Anderson, an electronics consultant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. "We've all had that type of experience, and I'm afraid that is the sort of experience that can happen with any piece of electronics, with an electronic throttle."

Sean Kane, of Safety Research Strategies in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, told CNN, "Toyota's explanations do not account for the share of unintended acceleration complaints that we have examined."

And Clarence Ditlow, of the Center For Auto Safety, said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which conducted tests on a Lexus in 2007 to find possible electronic interference, had not done an adequate job.
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"They didn't do any real testing," he told CNN. "For all I know, they just took a garage door opener, pointed it at the engine compartment and snapped it, and that's electronic interference to see whether or not anything happened. They closed the hood, and off they went. No problem."

Anderson said that tests need to reflect what happens during the everyday life of a car. "[The manufacturer is] testing for certain conditions, for certain standards, but they test, for example, signals one at a time. They don't do a whole lot of signals altogether. Whereas in a car, you've got a great cacophony of electromagnetic interference going on all the time, and you really can't rely on testing of a single frequency at one time."

Drivers and occupants introduce numerous devices into a car such as multiple cell phones and mobile devices, GPS systems and other such devices.

Toyota continues to say publicly that it stands by its own "exhaustive" testing and has found "no evidence of an electronic problem in our electronic throttle control systems that could have led to unwanted acceleration," said John Hanson, Toyota's spokesman on quality-control issues.

Meanwhile a class-action lawsuit has been filed against the manufacturer on behalf of disgruntled Toyota owners.