2010-Feb-4 - Toyota Says Prius Brakes Had Design Problems |
| A spokesperson Puma shoes for the company said Toyota had found design problems in Prius models sold before late January, but had corrected those problems in models sold since then, the Associated Press reported. The Prius was drawn into the mounting crisis for Toyota on Wednesday as Japanese officials ordered the company to investigate problems with the brakes on the 2010 model. American safety officials also said they had received dozens of similar complaints. With Toyota basing many of its recent hopes on the Prius, the admission raises new questions about a model that was not part of the recent global recalls of more than nine million vehicles. “Prius is the gold standard,” said Brian Johnson, the senior global auto industry analyst with Capital in Chicago. “We know Toyota puts its best engineering and its best talent into that car,” added Mr. Johnson, a Prius owner whose wife and mother-in-law also drive Priuses. “This hits at its flagship.” The puma shoes sale problems battered the company’s stock, which plunged to its lowest level in 10 months on the Nikkei market in Tokyo Thursday. Its shares have now dropped 20 percent over the last two weeks. But after the market’s close, Toyota released earnings that beat expectations for the last three months of 2009, a period before the quality-control issues drew wide notice.Adding to its woes, the transportation secretary, said Wednesday that owners of recalled Toyotas should stop driving their vehicles, though he quickly backtracked on the comments. On Wednesday, Democrat of New York and chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked the president of Toyota’s North American operations, Yoshimi Inaba, for more information about the small Tacoma pickup. Mr. Inaba is scheduled to testify next week before the committee, which will hold the first of two Congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls. The Tacoma, built in the United States, was involved in a recall for problems with floor mats but was not included in the second recall, over sticking low puma shoes accelerator pedals. Even so, the has received more than 170 complaints about unintended acceleration on 2006-10 Tacoma trucks. Mr. Towns, in a letter, asked why the Tacoma had not been included in the second recall. The reason, Toyota said Wednesday, is that Denso, a Japanese supplier, makes the Tacoma’s pedals, and they are not part of the sticking-pedal recall. The recalled models have pedals from an American supplier. “Even if five years from now this is all a statistic fluke for Toyota, while the narrative plays out, you will see consumer anxiety,” said Mr. Johnson, the Barclays analyst. Toyota has sold 1.2 million Priuses worldwide since 1997, about half in the United States. Last year, it was Toyota’s third-best-selling American car, behind the Camry and the Corolla. Earlier Prius models were involved in the recalls, in which buyers were advised to remove floor mats so they would not block accelerator Speed Cat puma shoes pedals. |
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