Toyota begins throttle pedal and Prius brake repairs

10/02/10

World's biggest carmaker sets itself target of fixing 6000 recalled cars a day across UK

Toyota has today begun recall repairs to cars with faulty accelerator pedals. Its 206 UK service centres will where possible stay open longer and at weekends to cope with the 180,000 vehicles affected. If it keeps to that repair rate, it could still take six weeks to see every one that it needs to.

Toyota says it hopes to check and where needed repair 6000 cars a day (see pics above). The work should take around 30 minutes per car, and Toyota says it will have 100,000 repair parts in the UK by Friday.

In a separate and newer action, dealers will also fix latest model Priuses in which a brake fault has been identified. The remedy here involves downloading a new version of the car’s software.

Toyota is enlisting the help of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority to contact registered keepers of the affected cars. These are the models likely to need work: Aygo (with auto gearboxes: Toyota says manually geared cars are not affected), Yaris, Auris, Corolla, Avensis and Verso.

Toyota says it will give priority to customers who have contacted the Toyota helpline (0800 1388 744) or a dealer and whose cars have the problem.

The company says the fault – where the accelerator becomes ‘sticky’ and, in extreme cases, can jam open – should not develop suddenly but any owner who is concerned should leave off driving their car until they have spoken to the helpline or their dealer.

Now read this: Toyota to begin throttle pedal fixes from next week;
why I won't fault Toyota