Braking Issues for 2010 Prius Hybrid?

Today, news stories broke about yet another issue with Toyota’s model lineup, this time focused exclusively to the 2010 Prius. The issue? The brakes, which in itself is very troubling. Approximately 124+ reports from consumers have come in, acknowledging a “momentary loss of braking capability while traveling over uneven road surfaces, potholes or bumps”. The fix for the issue isn’t a complete part replacement, but rather a software adjustment. Toyota have not decided to issue a recall as of yet, but are being urged to do so by the Japanese and US Government.

For a company that prides themselves as a high quality auto maker, these sort of recalls/issues are not going to keep them on their podium. My feeling is with the ambitious goals of expansion, Toyota is seeing the consequences of such rapid growth. My hope would be that Toyota would scale back and reinforce their quality standards and make sure issues of this severity are not allowed to entire the market.

Also one last note to the PR folks at Toyota: Make sure Akio Toyoda (CEO) doesn’t get into another competitors car (Audi) when there is a ton of press coverage questioning the quality of your product.

On that note, I hope Toyota gets all the issues sorted out so they can concentrate more on affordable sports cars that gets awesome MPG… one can only dream…