Toyota Recalls and Class Action Lawsuits

It was just a few weeks ago that federal safety regulators found that Toyota's unintended acceleration incidents were not caused by the automaker's electronic system. But that doesn't mean there haven't been any incidents.

Now Toyota is recalling 2.17 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the United States to inspect and, if necessary, replace accelerator pedals that may get trapped in floor mats or carpeting. Toyota conducted a massive recall in 2009 to address the same problem.

A 10-month investigation by NASA engineers determined that electronic flaws were not to blame for widespread consumer complaints of unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus models, the U.S. Department of Transportation said this month.

The Japanese automaker has now recalled a total of 19.2 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles worldwide and more than 13.7 million in the United States to address safety problems since the fall of 2009.

Toyota said 20,000 2006 and early 2007 Lexus GS 300 and GS 350 all-wheel-drive sedans will be recalled to modify the shape of the plastic pad embedded in the driver's side floor carpet. Owners of the affected vehicles will be notified in early March.

If the floor carpet around the accelerator pedal is not properly replaced after service, Toyota said there is a possibility that the plastic pad embedded into the floor carpet may interfere with operation of the accelerator pedal.

If this occurs, the accelerator pedal may become temporarily stuck in a partially depressed position rather than returning to the idle position. Toyota said it recently received two complaints about the problem.

In addition, Toyota is recalling 372,000 2004 through 2006 and early 2007 Lexus RX 330, RX 350, and RX 400h units, and about 397,000 Toyota Highlander and Highlander HV vehicles sold from the 2004 through 2006 model years to replace the driver's side floor carpet cover and its two retention clips.

Not electronic

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said on Feb. 8 that federal investigators had found no evidence the automaker's electronic throttle system played a part in incidents of unintended acceleration.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched the study ten months ago and called on NASA engineers to help determine whether cases of unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus models were caused by any cause other than sticky gas pedals and floor mats that trapped the gas pedals.

“We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics system, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended, high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.” LaHood said.

After giving a warning last week that it was considering a recall, Toyota today announced it would indeed recall 270,000 luxury Lexus models, including 139,000 sold in the U.S.

The Japanese carmaker said the vehicles' engines are prone to stall while running.

Toyota said it has informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of its intention to file a Defect Information Report (DIR) regarding the Lexus vehicles, powered by 4.6 and 5.0 liter V8 and 3.5 liter V6 engines in certain 2006, 2007 and 2008 GS, IS and LS models in the U.S. The formal report will be filed later this week.

"In the covered vehicles, due to slight variations during the manufacturing process, some foreign material may have contaminated a small number of the valve springs," Toyota said in a statement.

If a vehicle is affected, the company says there is a "remote" possibility that abnormal engine noise or idling may occur. In extremely rare instances, the engine may stop while the vehicle is in operation.

According to Reuters, Toyota received reports of the defect more than three years ago.

Lexus estimates that the likelihood of a customer vehicle experiencing this condition is two-tenths of one percent. Lexus said it has received no reports of accidents or injuries related to this condition. No vehicles from the current 2010 model year nor 2009 are affected.

Lexus said it will send owners of the involved vehicles a recall notification via first class mail. Owners are requested to contact their local Lexus dealer for diagnosis and repair after receiving their notification. The repair will involve replacement of the engine's valve springs at no charge.

The company say owners can continue to drive their vehicles. If symptoms are noticed, such as vibration, rough idling, unusual engine sounds or poor performance, the vehicle should be brought to a Lexus dealer for service.

Certain Lexus vehicles produced among the following models and years are covered:

Not a new problem

While Toyota conceded that it had received complaints of the problem dating back to 2007, it said that it was not until October 2009 that the complaints of "total engine failures" began to spike.

The company said that on July 1, it decided to issue the recall after tracing the problem to the strength of valve springs with a wire diameter of 3.3 mm.

By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com

July 14, 2010
After reviewing nearly 2,000 cases of sudden, uncontrolled acceleration events reported by drivers of its cars, Toyota says it has found no problem in the vehicle electronics that control the throttle.

In some of the cases, the carmaker said, it has evidence that the driver mistook the accelerator for the brake.

Toyota elaborated on a subject raised Wednesday when The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. safety investigators had reached a similar conclusion.

The newspaper quoted sources within the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as saying that, in a few of the reported cases of sudden acceleration, a review of the electronic event recorder showed the car's throttle was wide open while there was no pressure applied to the brakes.

Since the incidents of uncontrolled acceleration began to occur, Toyota attributed many to driver error. When Audi vehicles were investigated two decades ago for similar reasons, safety investigators concluded that drivers, in most case, slammed on the accelerator when they believed they were applying the brakes.

NHTSA

After launching an investigation of reports of sudden acceleration in Toyotas during the early 2000s, NHTSA reported in 2004 that it was unable to find a cause for the problem. The agency said it analyzed many of the cars involved in the mishaps and found nothing abnormal with the throttle controls.

Once again NHTSA pointed to the driver. The agency said sudden surges are sometimes caused by drivers who are unfamiliar with their new vehicles.

The Transportation Department declined to comment on the subject, noting that a NHTSA probe of Toyota's electronics system is still underway and will not be completed for several months. The agency is conducting an investigation to determine if electronics played any role in hundreds of reported incidents.

The reports of uncontrolled acceleration resulted in a massive recall of Toyota and Lexus vehicles in late 2009 and early 2010. Toyota has steadfastly maintained the problem does not lie in the electronics, but rather in the design of the accelerator pedal. The recall removed floor mats and modified the pedals in affected cars and trucks.

Consumers, who only a few months ago just couldn't get enough of the hulking, gas-guzzling SUVs that have stolen America's heart, are now turning in droves to diminutive, energy-sipping hybrids, waiting months and paying premiums of a thousand dollars or more, all in a sudden quest to save fuel and money.

Not long ago, someone paid $500 on eBay to be first in line for a new hybrid.

All this sudden fuel-saving fervor is admirable. But the question many consumers may not ask is whether hybrid cars and SUVs really will save them money. There's no question they achieve superior gas mileage but they don't cost less to operate, at least not yet.

ConsumerAffairs.com compared three hybrid vehicles with three top-of-the-line vehicles in the same class by the same automaker. We calculated gasoline costs at $3 a gallon over 120,000 miles and 80,000 miles to arrive at the likely operating costs.

The results would seem to demonstrate that people are buying hybrids for reasons other than saving money.

Prius vs. Corolla

Toyota Prius sales have tripled as gasoline prices shot up this year. Toyota sold 22,880 Prius cars in the first three months of the year, more than double the number it sold in the first three months of 2004.

The Corolla sells for a Blue Book reduced price of $17,083. The car, according to the EPA, gets 26 miles to a gallon in the city and 34 on the highway.

With the Prius we find a new car Blue Book price of $21,900 for the base model. The EPA gas mileage estimate for the vehicle is 60 mpg in the city and 51 on the highway.

But wait, there's more. An additional $800 buyer incentive is tacked onto the Corolla. Only "market adjustments" (read dealer mark-ups) are added to the Prius.

So let's look at the cost of owning a hybrid from another perspective. Let's drive a Prius for 120,000 miles. Once again we will pay an average of $3 a gallon for gasoline. Half of the miles will be driven in the city, and half on the highway. No other maintenance costs will be considered, despite the possibility that the hybrid costs might be higher.

The Prius produces 60 miles to a gallon in the city and 51 on the highway according to the EPA tests. The means we consume 2,178 gallons of gasoline or $6,528.

Over the same distance, the Corolla consumes 4,071 gallons of gasoline costing $12,213. So we would spend $5,685 more over 120,000 miles driving the Corolla than driving the Prius. But we paid $5,617 more for the Prius after the Toyota incentive for the Corolla.

So the additional cost of driving a Corolla instead of a Prius for 120,000 miles is $68 and you don't have to stand in line to buy one.

Cutting the driving distance 80,000 miles -- 40,000 in the city and 40,000 on the highway -- increases the Corolla advantage to just more than $1,000.

Accord Hybrid vs. Accord EX

Honda Motor Co., with sales of just over 100,000 hybrid vehicles worldwide since 1999, might be just a little smarter than Toyota when it comes to marketing gasoline-electric hybrids. Honda's new Accord hybrid is priced so high that most people won't be able to afford it. So Honda avoids the Prius problem of too many customers and too few cars.

The Honda Accord Hybrid Sedan sells for $31,575. The price includes roughly a $1,000 markup. The EPA mileage estimate for the Honda is 30 MPG in the city and 37 on the highway.

The top of the line Honda Accord EX sells for $25,176 which includes roughly $2,000 in price reductions. The EX gets an EPA estimated 21 mpg in the city and 30 on the highway.

The top of the line conventional Accord goes 63,990 miles on the highway or 44,793 miles in the city after pouring the price differential into the gas tank at $3 a gallon.

Over 120,000 miles the hybrid Honda uses $3,707 less gasoline. However, because of the increased purchase price, the hybrid is $2,692 more to operate. Over 80,000 miles the hybrid burns $2,470 less gasoline but is $3,929 more expensive to operate, again because of the high purchase price.

Escape Hybrid vs. Escape Gas

The Ford Escape follows the same pattern as the Toyota and Honda, but the operating cost is much higher for the hybrid when compared to a top-of-the-line Escape XLTS.

But wait there's more here. The XLTS carries an additional $3,500 in incentives that could add 21,000 more miles in the city or 25,666 on the highway.

Driving the hybrid 120,000 miles will cost 11,658 at $3 a gallon. The XLTS burns $18,181 or $6523 more. The conventional Escape is $1,893 more to operate considering the price differential. But when the $3,500 in price incentives is figured into the comparison, the XLTS costs $1,607 less to drive over 120,000 miles than the hybrid.

Over an 80,000 mile distance the XLTS is $283 less to operate before incentives and $3,783 less to operate after incentives.

There is plenty of guesswork in this comparison. No one knows where gas prices will be over a 120,000-mile period. The repair costs for hybrids are still uncertain. Will they cost more to maintain? Or less? While there are no automotive horror stories about hybrids to date neither is there any record on which to estimate repair costs.

What's the Answer?

So does this answer the question of whether your next car or SUV should be a hybrid? It depends. If you base your buying decisions strictly on economics, the likely answer is that a modest, gas-powered car with a stick shift and with minimal use of air conditioning is probably going to be considerably cheaper to buy and operate than a hybrid.

If you are basing your decision on what's best for the environment, there's more than gasoline consumption to factor into the equation. A big part of what's wrong with our environmental situation, not to mention our health, is the excessive amount of time we spend in motorized vehicles.

Whether they're powered by gasoline, hydrogen or fermented seaweed, cars need roads to run on. Roadways are very damaging to the environment, not least because of the effect they have on water runoff. A big reason houses tend to slide down hills in Southern California is that there is so much asphalt that storm runoff is funneled into unnatural -- and dangerous -- escape routes.

Highways also contribute to global warming, even when there are no cars on them. They displace cooling vegetation and their harsh asphalt surface reflects heat back into the environment, which in itself contributes to smog, regardless of what kind of fuel the vehicles on that highway are using.

The real answer to our fuel-cost woes, sedentary lifestyle and dire environmental problems is not a new kind of car. It's a new kind of city -- one that lets us walk, bike or ride transit to where we're going.

But we digress.

What's the Question?

If the question is, will you save money buying a hybrid, we'd have to say it's not likely. On the other hand if the question is, will buying a hybrid make you feel good, we can't answer that. It might, at least for a little while.

If the question is, will your hybrid help save the earth, we'd suggest the answer to that is, the earth will save itself. It was here long before we were and will be here long after we're gone. (It's the date and method of our departure that hangs in the balance).

Ah, but here's another factor. In many major metro areas, hybrids are allowed in car-pool (or HOV) lanes. Thus, by buying a hybrid, you may be able to continue driving alone to work, squeezing into the already congested HOV lanes that were created to reduce congestion by reducing the number of cars on the road.

In that scenario, hybrids are a threat to the environment because they contribute to increased congestion. We know from reading our mail that this is not a popular thing to say but, as our editor constantly reminds us, we're not running a popularity contest.

The company disclosed that a U.S. grand jury in New York has subpoenaed company documents related to flaws in vehicle steering systems. It's possible that criminal charges could result.

A Toyota spokesman said the company is cooperating with the grand jury but would not discuss any specifics concerning the investigation.

In September 2005, Toyota announced what, at the time, was its largest ever recall. The carmaker pulled in 978,000 pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles sold in the U.S. because a steering relay rod on the vehicles may fracture, causing a loss of control.

The recall included the 1989-1996 model years and included power-steering equipped 4Runner sport utility vehicles and compact pickups and T-100 pickups. In May, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced it was investigating that recall, suggesting Toyota might have violated rules for informing safety regulators about vehicle problems.

Specifically, NHTSA wanted to know if Toyota reported the steering defect within five days of discovering it, as it is required to do by law. The agency might be a little suspicious, since Toyota has agreed to pay a record $16.4 million fine for not reporting what it knew about its sudden acceleration problems for four months.

In 2004, Toyota conducted a recall in Japan for Hilux trucks with steering relay rods prone to fatiguing, cracking and possibly breaking, causing the vehicle to lose steering control. At that time, Toyota informed NHTSA that the safety defect was isolated to vehicles in Japan and that the company had not received similar field information within the U.S.

In 2005, however, Toyota informed NHTSA that the steering relay rod defect was present in several models sold in the U.S. and conducted a recall.

Pre-2004 complaints

At the end of April NHTSA said it was alerted to a number of complaints filed with Toyota by U.S. consumers prior to the 2004 Hilux recall in Japan. As a result, NHTSA decided to open an investigation into whether Toyota met its legal obligation to conduct a timely recall of vehicles with the defect in the United States.

"Safety is our number one priority and we take our responsibility to protect U.S. consumers seriously," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "With new assurances from Toyota about their efforts to improve safety, I hope for their cooperation in getting to the bottom of what happened."

It's unclear whether the NHTSA investigation, and that of the New York grand jury, are connected. Though the company has never been hauled before a grand jury in the U.S., Toyota has faced a criminal investigation in Japan.

In 2006 three Toyota Motor Corp. executives who were quality-control managers were the focus of a criminal investigation in Japan into whether they downplayed reports of steering problems at the automaker in the mid-1990s. The steering flaw was cited as the possible cause of a serious accident in Japan that eventually led to a recall by Toyota of more than one million vehicles last year.

Five people were injured, one of them seriously, in Kumamoto in August 2004 when the steering of a Toyota Hilux Surf SUV failed and it hit another vehicle. The SUV was built in 1993.

Most recent recall

At the end of May, Toyota was still dealing with the problem, recalling Prius models from the same era to fix a similar power steering defect. The recall applied to the second-generation model of the hybrid car and covered vehicles made between July 2003 and December 2005.

Toyota said the fault was in a steering shaft, which Toyota said could crack if the steering wheel is turned forcefully or if the car is driven onto the curbing while parking.

Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., is recalling approximately 120 model year 2014 FJ Cruiser.

The steering system contains an intermediate shaft connecting the steering wheel to the steering gear box, which could have received an inadequate weld. Under some circumstances, the weld could separate, resulting in the loss of steering control and increasing the risk of a crash.

Toyota says it is not aware of any crashes, injuries, or fatalities caused by this condition.

Owners of the involved vehicles will receive a notification by first class mail. Toyota dealers will replace the intermediate shaft.

Consumers may call Toyota customer service at 1-800-331-4331.

Toyota is unable to modify the troublesome Prius traction control system without placing the vehicle's sophisticated hybrid drive system in jeopardy, according to a Toyota service technician familiar with the Prius problem.

In a mountainous or snowy areas, the little car can be more than just difficult, Prius owners complain.

"I live in the mountains, up steep hills and dirt roads. I consider the slippage problem with the shutting down of power to the wheels just when you need more not less traction to be a very serious problem and a potentially life-threatening design flaw," a New England Prius owner told ConsumerAffairs.com.

A Toyota representative told the Vermont hybrid driver that the system was "operating the way it's supposed to."

"It became clear that they were resistant to accepting that operating the way it was supposed to was the problem," the owner told ConsumerAffairs.com.

The hybrid's traction control system is managed by a computer program and several Toyota technicians have reportedly asked the automaker to modify the software to allow for more wheel spin before shutting the drive line down.

So far Toyota has apparently refused to provide for the modification.

Toyota spokesman Bill Kwon told ConsumerAffairs.com previously that the traction control system in the Prius could impact performance in snowy conditions but he has insisted the slippage was not a safety problem.

"Prius has TRAC (traction control) as standard equipment," Kwon said. "The purpose of traction control is to help prevent wheel spin and minimize slippage of the drive wheels by applying brakes and/or reducing engine power."

Others familiar with the traction issue in the Prius suggest the Toyota concern is for the safety and reliability of the hybrid system, especially the front axle in particular.

They suggest that Toyota engineers are concerned that if the traction control is turned off or modified, the hybrid system will produce so much torque in the Prius that wheel spin would lead quickly to broken axles and even wheels coming off.

One Prius owner was recently told that this is the reason "Toyota is reluctant at this point to allow for even a moderate amount of more spin by changing the Prius traction control computer program."

Currently the Prius system allows for no wheel spin at all and Toyota continues to brush off consumer complaints about the traction control system.

Several Prius owners have reported to ConsumerAffairs.com that they have warned Toyota of the tentative traction control system in the hybrid.

"Fundamentally Flawed"

"This system is fundamentally flawed in a way that could put people's lives at risk and poses dangers in environments like mine where navigating fresh slippery snow and steep inclines are a necessity," our New England reader said.

The Toyota statement that the Prius traction control system is "working as it was designed" has left more than one Prius owner feeling that the system is operating as designed to "protect the safety of the car not the safety of the driver or passengers."

Recently a Prius owner told ConsumerAffairs.com that he thinks Toyota has created "a potentially life-threatening danger for driver and passengers by preventing the driver from being able to exercise control over the vehicle under hazardous conditions."

Our Plainfield, Vermont, Prius owner is continuing to press Toyota for answers.

"I questioned them regarding whether an override switch was available and learned it wasn't and later saw that this is the solution that others had suggested."

Driving a Prius in snowy conditions takes a lot of getting used to. "I did find in a recent snowstorm that I was able to make it up a friends very steep road (just barely) crawling at about 3 or 4 miles per hour at best," he wrote.

"I do see that it's possible to drive this car differently, flooring the gas peddle to barely crawl and have it work but it was so touch-and-go and had another car been coming (up or down) I wouldn't have been able to move out of the way and probably couldn't have restarted with no momentum from a standstill," he wrote.

Our New England Prius owner has reluctantly concluded that, "it is completely clear that I am unable to trust my Prius in serious snow conditions and I now choose not to drive it whenever possible in fresh snow."

"Yesterday, I was not even able to get the car to move more than a few inches in reverse on my almost entirely flat driveway over just a few inches of fresh, wet snow, even when there was no snow under the car itself," he wrote.

On the other side of the country in Redwood City, California, yet another Prius owner has experienced the same traction control problems with a 2007 Prius.

"The traction control has proven to be very troublesome. If a bump in the road on a hill causes a wheel to bounce the traction control cuts all power and brings the car to a standstill," Ralph wrote ConsumerAffairs.com.

"This makes some roads and driveways passable to all other cars impassable to the Prius. This is a defect and can cause the car to become stuck very easily," he told us.