Toyota to announce 2010 Prius brake recall for U.S.
Monday, February 8th, 2010
An anonymous source has confirmed that Toyota will be announcing a recall for the 2010 Prius in the U.S. market within a few days, coming just days after the same recall was announced in Japan. The recall will address a confirmed problem in which the Prius can suffer momentary failure of the ABS braking system while driving over pot holes or rough surfaces.
According to early reports, the recall would only affect the 2010 model year of the Prius – Toyota has sold 103,000 units in the U.S., 176,000 in Japan, and a grand total of 311,000 worldwide. Of those, not all will be affected by the recall as Toyota implemented a change on the assembly line in late January after discovering the problem, but prior to publicly considering a recall.
Because Toyota implemented a change in the brake design, only 277,000 of the 311,000 units sold will likely be subject to recalls – with 37,000 located on U.S. soil. Although the source who spoke to the NY Times about the imminent Prius recall did not mention the Lexus HS250h, Toyota has confirmed that it is also looking into the HS250h and Sai model (Japan only) as they share the braking system with the Prius.
According to NHTSA reports, the 2010 Prius has logged more than twice as many complaints than the sum of all other 2010 Toyota models combined – including the models included in the latest recalls. High complaint rates are not new to the Prius, however, as from 2004 to 2009 the Prius received 2,310 driver complaints with NHTSA, with the rest of the Toyota lineup garnering 2,340 complaints during that period.
Toyota says that the likely fix will be a software re-flash, but it has yet to confirm a definite solution for the vehicles already on the road.
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