Toyota’s Chief Steps Forward to Apologize for Problems

Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation, bowed at the start of a news conference in Nagoya, Japan, on Friday
NAGOYA, JAPAN — The president of Toyota apologized at a hastily arranged hers conference Friday night for the quality problems that led to the recall of more than nine million vehicles worldwide, and pledged the Japanese automaker would soon announce steps to address brake problems on the 2010 Prius.

Service technicians with a 2010 Toyota Prius in El Monte, Calif., on Thursday. Longo Toyota, the company’s largest dealership in the U.S., is keeping its service department open 24 hours a day to meet demand from customers after recent safety concerns.

Akio Toyoda, grandson of Toyota’s founder, spoke in his first formal remarks since the uproar enveloping his company, the world’s largest automaker, and took personal responsibility for the problems
“I deeply regret that I caused concern among so many people,” Mr. Toyoda said. “We will do our utmost to regain the trust of our customers.”
Asked whether Toyota had underestimated the situation, Mr. Toyoda said, “I believe what is happening now is a very big problem. We are in a crisis.”
Mr. Toyoda said the company would set up a committee to look at quality issues. With his comments, he became the second successive Toyota president to apologize for defects on the company’s cars — and the second to assemble a committee to address them.
In 2006, his predecessor, Katsuake Watanabe, shocked onlookers by bowing low at a news conference and vowing Toyota would improve its quality. But many of the cars involved in two recalls, one for sticking accelerator pedals, the other for floor mats that could become entangled in the pedals, went on sale after that effort.
One car now in question is the 2010 Prius, the newest version of Toyota’s most important car. The automaker said it is working on a solution to fix issues with the cars’ anti-lock brakes, which were redesigned along with the car. Toyota has sold just over 300,000 of the new Prius in Japan, the United States and Europe since it was introduced.
Company officials also are looking at two other hybrids with the same brake system, the Lexus HS250h and the Sai, a small hybrid sold only in Japan.
Mr. Toyoda is among the best-known executives in the industry, but he has been conspicuously absent from the limelight in recent weeks, even as his company struggled on three continents to contain the fallout of problems that have shaken its long held reputation for quality.
Until Friday, Mr. Toyoda’s only public comments on the company’s mounting woes came in a brief interview with a Japanese broadcaster on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Toyota’s slowness in addressing its problems has been criticized by regulators in the United States and Japan. Earlier this week, the Transportation secretary Raymond LaHood spoke with Mr. Toyoda, after sending officials from Washington to Japan in December.
“Users are noticing defects and there have been accidents,” Japan’s transport minister, Seiji Maehara, told reporters Friday ahead of Mr. Toyoda’s briefing. “This leads me to believe Toyota has not put consumers first.”
Mr. Toyoda, who spoke in Japanese and English during the news conference, said that was not the case. “I came out here today because I would not want our customers to spend the weekend wondering whether their cars are safe,” he said.
He refused to answer a question about whether the company has ever withheld information related to safety concerns. “Toyota is committed to safety,” he said.
He added in broken English: “The people who drive Toyota, who cares about Toyota, I’m a little bit worried while they are driving, they feel little bit cautious. But believe me, Toyota’s car is safety but we will try to increase our product better.”
The Japanese government has ordered the company to investigate the brakes on the Prius, as has the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Safety regulators in Washington said Thursday that they would open an investigation into the car’s brakes. Toyota said it would “fully cooperate” with the regulators’ investigation.
Under ordinary circumstances, the Prius braking problem would probably not be serious enough to prompt a recall, said David Champion, director of automotive testing for Consumer Reports, a nonprofit publication in the United States.
But given the amount of negative attention surrounding Toyota, and with two committees of the House of Representatives scheduling hearings this month about the recalls, the carmaker needs to show that it is doing everything it can to alleviate fears about its vehicles, Mr. Champion said. 
“Toyota’s taking a huge hit at the moment in terms of their brand image,” Mr. Champion said before Toyota’s news conference Friday. “Their brand image has been built on the safety and reliability of their cars.”
In opening the investigation into the Prius, the U.S. safety agency said it had received 124 complaints about the brakes on the 2010 Prius.
By Thursday afternoon, its database listed about 300 complaints on that issue. Eight of them involved crashes — mostly into the rear of another car at a low speed — and two of the drivers said they had injured their necks.
“It corrects itself almost immediately, but there is that second when it feels like it isn’t going to stop,” one complainant wrote.
“It is terrifying and needs to be looked into,” another wrote.
Meanwhile, Ford Motor said Thursday that there was a problem with the brakes of the hybrid version of the Ford Fusion. Ford said customers could receive a free software update, but it did not begin a formal recall.
Ford said the problem in its hybrid Fusion was caused by the car’s unnecessarily switching between its conventional brakes and the regenerative brakes, which absorb energy while braking to charge the battery. The Prius also uses regenerative braking.
“While the vehicles maintain full braking capability, customers may initially perceive the condition as loss of brakes,” Ford said in a statement. The government’s complaint database lists one report, from May 2009, of brake failure in a hybrid Fusion. Ford announced the software upgrade Thursday after a Consumer Reports test driver experienced the problem and notified the company.
Toyota said the problem it found in the Prius was unrelated to the recall in January of eight other models, totaling about 4.5 million vehicles, for accelerator pedals that could stick, and the recall in November of 5.5 million vehicles with accelerator pedals that could become trapped by the floor mat. Priuses from the 2004 through 2009 model years are included in the floor mat recall, and some Toyota models are covered by both recalls.
Repairs for the sticky accelerator pedal recall began Thursday at many dealerships in the United States after they received shipments of the necessary parts. At Page Toyota in Southfield, Michigan, workers were completing each repair in 20 to 25 minutes, the service manager, Dave Davis, said.
Toyota has said that worn pedals can become difficult to operate or become stuck partly depressed. Its remedy involves installing a small rectangular steel shim into the pedal assembly. The shim comes in seven thicknesses, ranging from 0.056 inch to 0.116 inch, or 1.4 millimeter to 2.9 millimeters, Mr. Davis said. Workers at the dealership remove the pedal assembly, take measurements to determine the proper thickness, install the shim, reattach the pedal and take the car on a two-mile, or three-kilometer, test drive, he said.
“I’ve got enough parts to take us through a couple days, fixing 40 to 50 a day, and we’re supposed to be getting the same shipment every day,” Mr. Davis said. “It’s going to be chaotic, but we’re doing the best we can. If I have customers until 9 o’clock at night, that’s how late I’ll stay open.”
The dealership hopes to gradually repair new vehicles on its lot after hours. Toyota halted sales of eight models on Jan. 25 until it could develop a solution. Production at North American factories, which was suspended during the past week, is scheduled to resume Monday, using redesigned pedals.