Gas pedal parts en route to Toyota dealers
Repair or replacement not clear; factories received shipments first
DETROIT – Toyota said it began shipping gas pedal parts to its dealers Friday for use in fixing the millions of cars and trucks recalled because of accelerators that could become stuck.
Company spokesman Brian Lyons said he did not know when the parts would arrive or how long it would take the automaker to complete repairs on the 4.2 million vehicles worldwide – 2.3 million of them in the U.S. – covered by the recall. He said Toyota has not yet decided whether to repair the accelerators or replace them altogether.
Toyota will release details sometime next week about how it intends to solve the problem, Lyons said.
The parts “are on their way to the dealers in preparation for the recall launch,” he said.
Until Friday, Toyota had been sending the components to its factories, angering some dealers who have not had parts to repair their customers’ cars since the recall was announced on Jan. 21.
On Friday, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda made his first public comments about the recall. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he told Japanese broadcaster NHK: “I am very sorry that we are making our customers feel concerned.”
“People can feel safe driving in the current situation,” he added. “Please trust that we are responding so it will be even safer.”
Meanwhile, Consumer Reports, an influential publication for car buyers, has suspended its “recommended” status for the eight recalled models, dealing another blow to the Japanese automaker’s reputation in the U.S.
“Although incidents of sudden acceleration are rare, we are taking this action because the vehicles have been identified as potentially unsafe without a fix yet being available to consumers,” said Jim Guest, president of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.
The recall in the U.S. covers 2.3 million vehicles and involves the 2009-10 RAV4 crossover, the 2009-10 Corolla, the 2009-10 Matrix hatchback, the 2005-10 Avalon, the 2007-10 Camry, the 2010 Highlander crossover, the 2007-10 Tundra pickup and the 2008-10 Sequoia SUV. The recall has been expanded to models in Europe and China.