Toyota, which has recalled more than eight million vehicles around the world for problems with unintended acceleration, has decided to recall its new Prius hybrid in Japan to fix a braking software glitch, a dealer said on Sunday.
Safety regulators in both the United States and Japan, the Prius’s biggest markets, are investigating braking problems with the model, Japan’s top-selling car last year and an icon of green design that has lifted the public image of Toyota.
Toyota said last week it planned to make a final decision on whether to issue a recall or voluntary repair as soon as possible. The dealer, who declined to be identified, said the recall could come in the next few days.
Toyota’s president apologised on Friday for safety problems.
“I would like to take this opportunity to apologise from the bottom of my heart for causing many of our customers concern after the recalls across several models in several regions,” Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota’s founder, told a news conference in Nagoya.
He said the company would make an announcement on the Prius soon.
Ford last week decided to roll out a software patch for consumers to address similar problems with braking on the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan models. It said it notified its dealers of the problem in October but not the public because it did not believe the glitch represented a brake failure.
Toyota officials were not immediately available to comment.
Toyota has come under intense scrutiny, with US safety authorities and members of the Obama administration accusing it of responding too slowly on problems related to uncontrolled acceleration that have been linked to up to 19 crash deaths in the United States over the past decade.
Japan’s Transport Minister Seiji Maehara said on Friday he believed Toyota would take a unified measure on the Prius across the world.
Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper reported on Sunday that Toyota had considered voluntarily fixing the cars but chose a recall instead in the hope of restoring public trust.
Since its launch last May, Toyota has sold over 300Â 000 of the newest version of the Prius worldwide, including about 200Â 000 in Japan, 103Â 200 in the United States and 29Â 000 in Europe. – Reuters