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Toyota announces big Prius recall Toyota announces big Prius recall
(about 2 hours later)
Toyota Motor Corp is recalling all 1.9 million of its Toyota is recalling nearly 31,000 UK-registered cars because of a computer problem that could cause the vehicle to stop.
third-generation Prius cars sold worldwide due to a software The recall affects the hybrid Prius model and involves 30,970 of the UK-registered ones manufactured between March 2009 and February 2014.
glitch in the hybrid system. The company, which has had a number of recalls in recent years including some involving the Prius, said there had been 11 incidents in Europe of the computer problem but there had been no accidents or injuries.
About half of the cars affected were in Japan and 713,000 in North It said the latest incident involved a possible issue with the software “used to control the boost converter in the intelligent power module”.
America, a Toyota spokeswoman said. No accidents had been The boost converter is required when driving with a high system load, for example when accelerating hard from standstill.
reported related to the defect. The company said: “Toyota has identified that the software setting could lead to higher thermal stress occurring in certain insulated-gate bipolar transistors in the boost converter which may lead to them deforming or being damaged.
Toyota said the problem was in the software used to control “Should this happen, warning lights may be illuminated and the car is likely to switch to ‘failsafe’ operation. It can still be driven, but with reduced power. In limited cases the hybrid system may shut down, causing the vehicle to stop. The driver will not experience any change in the vehicle’s behaviour or performance prior to the problem occurring.”
the boost converter in a module that is part of the hybrid Toyota added that the issue would not occur in other of the company’s hybrid vehicles as these used different systems.
system. “The setting of the software could cause higher thermal The UK recall will involve an update of the control software. The UK recall is part of a 1.9m recall of Prius models worldwide.
stress in certain transistors within the booster converter and
these transistors could deform or become damaged as a result,”
Toyota said.
“This will result in various warning lights being
illuminated and will probably cause the vehicle to enter a
failsafe mode,” it said, noting that the car could still be driven but
with reduced power.
In limited cases the hybrid system could shut down, causing
the vehicle to stop, possibly on the road, Toyota
said.
The latest action would be the third recall for the current
five-year-old Prius. The most recently was in June last year due to problems with the brake accumulator. The Prius is one of
Toyota’s best-selling models and has become synonymous with the
fuel-saving hybrid technology.
Since a damaging quality crisis in 2010 that led to the
recall of more than 10m vehicles and marked a turning
point in Toyota’s 70-year history, automakers in general have
become more proactive in addressing safety concerns.
In late 2012 Toyota issued two multi-million-vehicle
recalls including one of more than 7.4m vehicles to fix
power window switches that were a potential fire hazard. It
was the industry’s biggest single recall since Ford took 8m vehicles off the road in 1996.