Toyota is in question

Maswood Alam Khan

The massive recall of millions of Toyota Prius hybrid cars over their sticking gas pedals has sullied the world's biggest automaker. Toyota's failure to stem its widening safety crisis has stunned consumers and experts who had come to expect only streamlined efficiency from a company at the pinnacle of the global auto industry.

Toyota Motor Corporation has reportedly reworked its anti-lock brake system to fix the sticking brake issue on its Prius gas-electric hybrid cars.

The leading cause of the stuck pedals was excess friction between two moving parts that would lock together. The unit in question was a device used to steady the pedal and give it a stiff feeling to the driver. Over time wear and tear on the unit, combined with environmental situations, could on occasions cause the pedal to stick. To fix the problem, a steel shim will now be placed between the pedal arm and the rear assembly. The steel bar will reduce the surface contacts in the unit that used to cause the pedal to stick.

Toyota's recall of cars this time is a rarity in auto industry history and deals a fatal blow to the very core value Toyota represented---that is the quality of its cars. Toyota Motor Corporation expects costs and lost sales from its massive safety recall to total $2 billion by the end of March, keeping it in the red for the rest of the year.

At a time when we, even in Bangladesh, are enthusiastic to buy the Toyota Prius, the most fuel efficient and the cleanest vehicle based on smog forming and toxic emissions, such a bad news is a shock not only to Japan but also to the rest of the world.

One should notice that Toyota got the brake failure alert from USA, not from a developing country. It is known to all and sundry that not all cars that are churned out from Toyota factories are of the same standard and precision. A Toyota of Corolla Model sold in USA is much superior to the same model sold in Bangladesh and the price of the model is also different in different markets.

"Up to 19 US crash deaths over the past decade may be linked to accelerator-related problems of Toyota cars", said US officials. If such was the situation with the superior models of Toyota sold in USA, I wonder, how many crash deaths over the several decades in the past could be with Toyota cars used by consumers of Bangladesh and other developing countries where inferior models had been sold at lower prices!

According to Toyota, 80% of their vehicles sold in the last 20 years are still on the road and driving. Only a few companies can claim something higher, and most of those are luxury car companies: Ferrari, Lexus, Cadillac and Lamborghini etc. Now it is a million dollar question how many of Toyota cars were involved in road accidents due to inherent defects that have not yet been disclosed in both developed and developing countries.

maswood@hotmail.com