EoW March 2010

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The company also expanded a previous recall in which owners were told to remove the oor mats on their cars to avoid jamming the pedals. In the view of Jake Fisher, a senior automotive engineer with Consumer Reports , the situation was the most critical Toyota has faced in the United States. “There had been some cracks in their armour, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything to this magnitude,” Mr Fisher told the New York Times . “We’ve never seen multiple production lines shut down. If you go to a Toyota dealer right now, they can’t sell you a Camry. They can’t sell you a Corolla or a Highlander.” (“US House Committee Plans Hearing on Toyota Recall,” 29 th January) The House Energy and Commerce Committee was to hold a hearing on 25 th February to examine complaints from Toyota drivers that the gas pedal sticks in the depressed position, causing the car to speed up uncontrollably. Reporting from Detroit, the Times ’s Micheline Maynard noted that, with the involvement of the law makers, Toyota now faced the most publicised investigation in the industry since the recall, in the year 2000, of Firestone tyres on some Ford models. “The committee said sudden unintended acceleration in all Toyota vehicles had resulted in 19 deaths in the United States over the last decade,” wrote Ms Maynard. “That is nearly twice the number of deaths associated with similar events in cars built by all other auto makers combined.” Toyota said it welcomed the opportunity to appear before the committee and pledged its full cooperation. The company said also that that it was working with the manufacturer of the accelerator pedals – CTS Corp (Elkhart, Indiana) – to develop and test modi cations for the cars owned by Toyota’s US customers. As to its clientele in Europe, Toyota said it had not yet, ❈ in late January, determined which models and how many vehicles might be a ected by a recall there. But it added that it had already made necessary changes to its European production lines to obviate any need to curtail output. In China, the Toyota recall includes about 75,000 RAV4 sport utility vehicles made in 2009-10, according to the website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine — the Chinese government’s product safety watchdog. “In addition,” wrote Ms Maynard of the Times , “Ford Motor Company said [28 th January] that it had stopped production of some commercial vehicles in China because they used the same accelerator pedals built by the supplier whose products led to Toyota’s recall.”

Dorothy Fabian USA Editor

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EuroWire – March 2010