Green icon: The Prius's eco-friendly credentials have made it a best seller, but now Toyota is planning to repair the brakes on thousands of the hybrid cars Toyota today formally announced a world-wide recall of the Prius because of fears over its brakes.
UK owners of more than 8,500 third generation Prius models, launched last year, will be asked to take their cars to a garage to fix a braking glitch.
Around 400,000 cars sold worldwide will be affected by the recall. No other Toyota or Lexus models are affected by this latest recall in Europe
It comes a day before Toyota bosses face a grilling before a US Congressional hearing into the company's safety record tomorrow.
Toyota says the Prius problem, which creates the feeling of a delay when the anti-lock brakes are activated in tricky conditions, is a 'phenomenon' and not safety related.
However, following the backlash over a sticky accelerator pedal which affected more than eight million cars and was blamed for 19 deaths, Toyota has decided on a swift recall of the Prius.
The Prius, which has become an icon of green design, was Japan's best-selling car last year, with 200,000 models being recalled in the country
Sorry: Toyota's President Akio Toyoda issued a grovelling apologyThere have been 180 complaints about brake problems with the Prius in the U.S. and Japan, and the defect has been linked to at least five crashes.
Toyota's president has issued a grovelling apology as continuing saftey fears have seen £19billion wiped off the company's share price.
Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota's founder, said: 'I would like to take this opportunity to apologize from the bottom of my heart for causing many of our customers concern after the recalls across several models in several regions.'
Official investigations have been ordered in the U.S. and Japan although British ministers have not so far followed suit.
Seven Toyota models are included in the previous recall in Britain - the Auris, Avensis, Aygo, Corolla, iQ, Verso and Yaris - which could have been fitted with faulty accelerator pedals.
It affects 180,865 cars in Britain, but owners have been warned it could take up to four weeks for them to be notified. More than 10,000 motorists have tried to use Toyota's hotline and website and many complaint lines were jammed.
Meanwhile it has emerged that 270 Toyotas here have been reported as having the potentially lethal fault.
Toyota said that it had confirmed 20 cases before announcing the recall, but another 250 were reported in the past week.
The first UK claim of a crash was made yesterday by a solicitor for an unnamed driver in the Midlands, who is said to have received head injuries when his Toyota hit a wall at 30mph last September.
Mr Toyoda bows before the world's media as he says sorry for safety problems that have wiped £19billion off the company's share priceToyota estimates the cost in lost sales and repairs over the recall at £1.25billion but that is set to rise sharply with the Prius now involved.
The car giant reported pre-tax profits of £1.56billion for the last quarter of 2009 and credited the hybrid for its success.
Rival car maker Honda also faced embarrassment this week when it announced a recall of 172,000 of its Jazz cars because of fears they could catch fire.
source: dailymail