In another blow to its quality image, Toyota Motor announced Thursday a second huge recall of vehicles for another problem that could cause the throttle to stick open.The latest recall involves 2.3 million Toyota-brand cars and trucks dating back to 2005 models. Toyota’s Lexus and Scion brands are not involved.
That follows a recent recall of 4.2 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles because floor mats could jam the gas pedal down. About 1.7 million are on both lists, Toyota said.
In its latest announcement, Toyota cited problems with “certain accelerator pedal mechanisms.” It gave no other specifics about the problem and said it is “working quickly to prepare the correction remedy.”
“This situation is slowly spiraling out of control. As a company with a reputation for steadiness, these must be uncomfortable days for Toyota,” says James Bell, analyst at Kelley Blue Book, a car-shopping and price-researching service.
The floor mat recall triggered a public scolding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government agency that monitors vehicle safety. The NHTSA statement on Nov. 4 accused the automaker of putting out “inaccurate and misleading information” by saying the agency had concluded that there wasn’t a safety problem in vehicles that had no mats, or in which mats fit correctly. NHTSA said it had, in fact, cited additional potential factors and that removing the mats, as Toyota urged, was merely an interim solution that didn’t fix any underlying problem.
Toyota decided to trim owners’ accelerator pedals to keep them from getting trapped under mats and is working on a replacement pedal design it hopes to have ready to install by April.
Toyota also recalled 110,000 Tundra pickups in November because their spare tires might fall off their storage beam under the cargo bed and crash into traffic.
The latest problem “is a tough one,” says Dan Edmunds, an engineer and director of vehicle testing at car shopping service edmunds.com. “There’ll be no (engine control computer) error code for this. The computer doesn’t know the driver’s intention. If you release the pedal and it stays down, the computer thinks you still have the pedal pushed down.”
He says “there’s no reason to wait” if you’re worried about the throttle pedal working properly.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2010-01-21-toyota-recall-gas-pedal_N.htm
Comments
I’ve worked for a Japanese company. Their quotes above are typical. They usually won’t admit to a problem until they have a fix for it. I think the title should read pedal not medal.
#Do you Want to say something?