Toyota to recall 112,500 U.S. vehicles on possible safety issues

 

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A Toyota logo is seen on a car inside a showroom at a Toyota dealership

(Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp's <7203.T> U.S. arm said it was recalling about 112,500 vehicles due to possible safety issues.

The recall affects about 110,000 Camry, Camry Hybrid, Highlander and Highlander Hybrid vehicles of model year 2015, RAV4 vehicles of model year 2014-2015, and 2,500 RAV4 EV vehicles of model year 2012-2014, the company said on Wednesday. (http://toyota.us/1BxlhUh)

Toyota said components in the RAV4 EV vehicles being recalled might cause them to shift to "neutral" gear due to a software issue, increasing the risk of a crash.

The other vehicles being recalled might have possible manufacturing damage in their electric power steering circuit boards, Toyota said.

The company said it was not aware of any crashes, injuries or fatalities caused due to these issues.

(Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey)

• Transportation
• Consumer Discretionary
• Toyota Motor Corp
• Hybrid vehicles

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/toyota-recall-112-500-u-vehicles-possible-safety-183908548--finance.html

 

 

 

TOYOTA: King of Spaghetti Software!

TOYOTA'S software was described as SPAGHETTI!

In TOYOTA'S ARROGANCE, did they hire 'EXPERTS' to correct TOYOTA'S problems?

NO! TOYOTA worked and continues to work to silence its critics!  

.....Toyota played hardball with critics. A public relations manager named Masami Doi had spelled out the approach in a December email. "There are at most around 10 people who are the sources of negative tone communications. If they can be suppressed, I think we will be able to manage it somehow. Like you said, let's go with an intention of destroying each individual person's ability to oppose us, one by one…."


FROM: TOYOTA'S CORPORATE PLAYBOOK: Chapter 2: DISCREDIT THEM ALL!




Here's yet another example of TOYOTA'S SOFTWARE FAILURE:


Toyota recalls 2 million Prius hybrids, including 5,500 in Australia, due to software fault


Toyota is recalling 1.9 million of its Prius hybrid cars, including 5,500 in Australia, because of a fault which might cause the vehicle to slow down suddenly.

The Japanese carmaker says the recall of the current model is due to faulty programming of the control software in its hybrid system.

"In limited cases, the hybrid system might shut down and the vehicle will stop, perhaps while being driven," the company said in a statement.

The world's biggest automaker added that the most likely scenario is that the defect could set off a vehicle's warning lights and "probably" cause it to enter "failsafe mode", in which the car can still be driven but with reduced power.

"The car may stop while driving, but not suddenly," a Tokyo-based company spokeswoman said.

"It would slow down, eventually to stop."

Toyota is aware of more than 400 cases of the problem, including 300 in Japan and 90 in North America, she said.

The company said no accidents had been reported as a result of the defect.

Toyota and other Japanese automakers have been hit by a series of mass recalls in recent years that damaged their long-held reputation for quality and safety.



http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-12/toyota-recalls-5500-prius-hybrids-in-australia/5255644

Toyota recalls two million Prius cars over software defect

By Staff Writer on Feb 12, 2014 5:26 PM
Filed under Software

 

Toyota has issued a recall covering all 1.9 million of its third-generation Prius cars sold worldwide due to a programming glitch in their hybrid system.

About half of the recalls are in Japan and 713,000 in North America, a Toyota spokeswoman said. No accidents have been reported related to the defect.

Toyota said the problem was in the software used to control the boost converter in a module in the hybrid system.

"The setting of the software could cause higher thermal stress in certain transistors within the booster converter, and these transistors could deform or become damaged as a result," Toyota said.

"This will result in various warning lights being illuminated, and will probably cause the vehicle to enter a failsafe mode," it said.

In limited cases, the hybrid system could shut down, causing the vehicle to stop, possibly while it is being driven, Toyota said.

The latest action is the third recall for the current five-year-old Prius.

Toyota issued the previous recall last June for problems related to the brake accumulator. The Prius is one of Toyota's best-selling models, and has become synonymous with the fuel-saving hybrid technology.

It declined to disclose cost estimates for recalls.

The number of vehicles called back for a single defect has ballooned over the years as car makers increasingly use common parts across multiple models to save development and procurement costs.

Since a damaging quality crisis in 2010 that led to the recall of more than 10 million vehicles and marked a turning point in Toyota's 70-year history, automakers in general have become more proactive in addressing safety concerns.

In late 2012, Toyota issued two multi-million-vehicle recalls - including one affecting more than 7.4 million vehicles to fix power window switches that were a potential fire hazard. That was the industry's biggest single recall since Ford took 8 million vehicles off the road in 1996.

Shares in Toyota were up 0.3 percent on Wednesday afternoon, roughly in line with the benchmark Nikkei average.



http://mobile.itnews.com.au/News/372171,toyota-recalls-two-million-prius-cars-over-software-defect.aspx

 

Toyota Recalls.....

FYI....

Toyota recalling 1.9M Prius models globally for software update

Toyota has announced a set of voluntary recalls covering 960,000 Prius, RAV4, Tacoma and Lexus RX350 models in the United States to address two separate issues. Worldwide, Toyota will have to recall a total of 1.9 million Prius cars.

The Prius recall affects about 700,000 2010-2014 models in the US, due to a fault in the motor/generator control ECU and hybrid control ECU software. It says that the current software could result in high temperatures on certain transistors and possibly damage them. When it fails, the error forces the car into failsafe mode. Toyota says that in rare circumstances, it could even shut the hybrid system down while the car is being driven.

Toyota spokeswoman Shino Yamada told Automotive News that the software update should take about 40 minutes, and dealers would start to be notified about affected vehicles today. She also told them that the first reported glitch occurred in May 2011 in the US when the system overheated and the car entered failsafe mode. The affected cars were built between March 2009 and Feb. 5, 2014, according to Automotive News. Toyota says that it has received no reports of accidents or injuries caused by either fault.

This is the third major recall for the third-generation Prius. In February 2010, Toyota recalled the model to fix an anti-lock brake software glitch, and in June 2013, cars were recalled in the US to fix the brake pressure accumulator.

The second recall affects 260,000 2012 RAV4, 2012-2013 Tacoma and 2012-2013 Lexus RX 350 models due to an electronic flaw that could cause the Vehicle Stability Control, Anti-lock Brake, and Traction Control functions to intermittently shut off. Scroll down for Toyota's full announcement.


Report: Toyota must go to trial over unintended acceleration suits

Toyota is surely readying its trial lawyers, as the Japanese giant is officially headed to court in a pair of cases relating to its unintended acceleration fiascos of 2009 and 2010. In the first case, the United States Supreme Court has actually got involved in matters, ignoring an appeal from Toyota that attempted to use an arbitrator to settle its ...

Report: Toyota documents show knowledge of defects in 2006

Documents that were submitted by Toyota to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in March and obtained by Automotive News reportedly show that Toyota knew of dangerous safety defects on its vehicles as early as February, 2006. The first documented issue was of a 2005 Toyota Prius that experienced floor mat interference with the accelerator. ...

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/09/report-toyota-documents-show-knowledge-of-defects-in-2006/




http://www.autoblog.com/toyota/prius/recalls/

 

Toyota May Pay $1 Billion To Settle Unintentional Accelerations Claims

Toyota May Pay $1 Billion To Settle Unintentional Accelerations Claims by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog February 17th, 2014

Crashed Lexus. Photo: minds-eye. Used under Creative Commons license Toyota is expected to announce a billion dollar settlement with the U.S. government for failing to disclose complaints by drivers that its cars were accelerating unintentionally. News of the negotiations were reported by the Wall Street Journal. The issue first hit the deadlines when Mark Saylor, an off duty police officer, was killed together with his family when his car failed to slow down on a highway in San Diego in 2009. The details of his final moments were captured in a phone call that he made to emergency services. Auto-safety advocates called for criminal charges against Toyota after 34 deaths and hundreds of injuries were documented from sudden acceleration. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors in the New York district attorney’s office began investigating the company in 2010. “If Toyota had been an honorable company and recalled the defective vehicles when it first learned of the problems in 2003/2004, or perhaps even earlier, and taken steps to redesign subsequent production, many of the resulting deaths and injuries would not have occurred,” Joan Claybrook, the former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told a hearing in the U.S. Congress in 2010. “Now the only remedy for the families of these Toyota victims is a product liability lawsuit and payment by Toyota for the death — a few dollars for each precious life,” she added. An NHTSA investigation published in 2011 has failed to determine the cause of the unintentional acceleration. The company continues to deny that its products are at fault. "In the nearly four years since this inquiry began, we've made fundamental changes to become more responsive and customer focused, and we're committed to continue to improve," Julie Hamp, a Toyota spokeswoman, told reporters in an emailed statement. "Toyota continues to cooperate with the U.S. attorney's office in this matter." Just last week Toyota recalled 1.9 million Prius vehicles after discovering a programming error that could cause their gas-electric hybrid systems to shut down. The company has recalled five million cars a year for the last two years to fix problems. Critics of the agreement say that the federal government is allowing companies to buy their way out of criminal prosecution, noting that multi-billion dollar settlements have become the normal way to deal with criminal charges. “Regulators, prosecutors and attorneys general have learned a valuable lesson from their private counterparts, class-action attorneys. Build a big enough case, and the target company will settle,” writes Daniel Fisher at Forbes, noting that company’s cannot afford to take the risk of being judged by a jury. “There’s a problem when government officials adopt this sort of regulation, however. It invites corruption of its own.” Fisher points to the complex $246 billion settlement that the major tobacco companies negotiated to pay over a 25 year period with the attorney generals of over 40 U.S. states in 1997, following which the companies made a $100 million donation to the National Association of Attorney Generals. Economists also calculated at the time that the settlement also virtually guaranteed that the tobacco industry would actually increase their profits. Over a dozen years later, a study by the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids showed that the money paid out by the tobacco companies - $25.7 billion in 2013 – was hardly making a major dent in the finanical cost of cigarette smoking in the U.S. which were estimated at $193 billion a year, including $96 billion in health care costs. Global profits for the industry in 2012 were estimated at some $35.1 billion on sales of close to $500 billion for the year.       http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15930

Protecting TOYOTA's Negligence & Criminal Conduct

When the LEMON LADY bought the TOYOTA LEMON from ROUTE 44 TOYOTA, who ever thought such a cover-up of defective products and software would be revealed?

All they had to do was fix my car before it was discovered to be MORE THAN A LEMON!

Who can drive a LEMON TOYOTA with NO BRAKES? Yet, every day, Americans are forced to drive TOYOTAs that are unacceptable - TOYOTAs that accelerate, TOYOTAs with AIR BAGS that fail to protect, HEADLIGHTS that don't work, WINDOWS with NIGHT TIME GHOSTNG.....

Let's never forget: The COSTS of TOYOTA's lies and defective products has been injuries and deaths of innocents.





Beware of Toyota. Their next victim may be YOU... offered this newest entry about TOYOTA's cover up:

Software-related recalls, police-state press, federal criminal investigation being bought off

No wonder renowned software expert Michael Barr found bugs in Toyota's software causing sudden unintended acceleration. Toyota's latest recalls involve defective software in the Prius, RAV4, Tacoma, and Lexus RX350. Some of the software issues affect anti-lock brakes, stability control, and traction control. Meanwhile, Toyota is in talks with NHTSA regarding another recall involving computer-related brake problems in Camry Hybrids. Software glitches galore. Whew.

Protecting TOYOTA's Negligence & Criminal Conduct

When the LEMON LADY bought the TOYOTA LEMON from ROUTE 44 TOYOTA, who ever thought such a cover-up of defective products and software would be revealed?

All they had to do was fix my car before it was discovered to be MORE THAN A LEMON!

Who can drive a LEMON TOYOTA with NO BRAKES? Yet, every day, Americans are forced to drive TOYOTAs that are unacceptable - TOYOTAs that accelerate, TOYOTAs with AIR BAGS that fail to protect, HEADLIGHTS that don't work, WINDOWS with NIGHT TIME GHOSTNG.....

Let's never forget: The COSTS of TOYOTA's lies and defective products has been injuries and deaths of innocents.





Beware of Toyota. Their next victim may be YOU... offered this newest entry about TOYOTA's cover up:

Software-related recalls, police-state press, federal criminal investigation being bought off

No wonder renowned software expert Michael Barr found bugs in Toyota's software causing sudden unintended acceleration. Toyota's latest recalls involve defective software in the Prius, RAV4, Tacoma, and Lexus RX350. Some of the software issues affect anti-lock brakes, stability control, and traction control. Meanwhile, Toyota is in talks with NHTSA regarding another recall involving computer-related brake problems in Camry Hybrids. Software glitches galore. Whew.