Toyota Debates Fix for Acceleration Issue

Kyodo News International (Tokyo)

October 22, 2009

Toyota Motor Corp. is considering fixing the accelerator pedals of vehicles that come under a safety recall it issued in the United States over the risk that a loose driver-side floor mat could slip forward and jam the pedal, sources close to the matter said Wednesday.

Toyota is considering altering the pedal’s shape and modifying a computerized control system of the vehicles—some 3.8 million units—to enable drivers to stop if they get out of control and accelerate to high speeds because the pedal is jammed by the floor mat, they said. If Toyota went ahead with the equipment fixes, it would cost the automaker hundreds of million of dollars, they said.

On Oct. 6, Toyota told the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of its decision to issue the recall on the vehicles in seven models. It is one of the largest safety recalls Toyota has implemented in the United States. It concerns, among others, the Camry sedan, the top-selling passenger car in the United States, as well as the Lexus ES350, IS250 and IS350 sedans.

Toyota has been urging owners to remove the floor mats, including the rubber mats customers might have bought at automobile accessory shops. The NHTSA earlier said it had received reports of some 100 related incidents, including 17 crashes and five fatalities involving Toyota vehicles.

Toyota has argued this recall is essentially different from the usual recall automakers implement for their vehicles with a safety-related defect. It also said no similar floor-mat problem has been found in the same models sold in Japan, adding that detailed causes of the accidents have yet to be identified.

Therefore, Toyota is considering fixing the vehicles as a voluntary maintenance measure, rather than mandatory, without acknowledging that the vehicles carry the alleged safety-related defect, the sources said.

President Akio Toyoda earlier said the company “is considering what countermeasure it will take with the principle of placing greatest emphasis on the interests of customers.” Toyota said in an earlier release it is looking at “the potential for an accelerator pedal to get stuck in the full open position due to an unsecured or incompatible driver’s floor mat.”