Faulty brakes trigger Toyota Prius recall

TOYOTA is recalling 340,000 of its Prius hybrid cars worldwide over faulty brakes.

The Japanese firm admitted receiving reports of crashes, injuries and deaths, but would not give details. It said it was still looking into the reports.

Toyota Motor Corp said that the parking brake cable on the cars can disengage unexpectedly, causing the brakes to stop working properly.

This means that if the car – a petrol-electric hybrid – is left in a gear other than park, it could roll away. The recall includes 212,000 cars in Japan and 94,000 in North America. There will be 17,000 recalled in Europe, and the problem is with cars that were manufactured between August last year and this month.

The firm said all the hatchbacks in question were made at the Tsutsumi plant, which is at the firm’s Japanese headquarters.

The Prius is very popular among minicab drivers in London because its eco credentials mean it is exempt from the congestion charge. Toyota has a history of having to recall vehicles over problems. In June it emerged that tens of thousands of the manufacturer’s cars in Britain were being recalled for safety reasons.

The company was forced to act over a series of concerns, including fears that the vehicles’ airbags could inflate without warning. Toyota – which is the world’s largest carmaker – recalled 2.9million vehicles worldwide as part of that recall, including 72,885 UK-registered Prius, Auris and Lexus CT200h models, due to possible cracks in the fuel emissions control unit.

The firm also said that just under half of the vehicles affected in the UK could also have a small crack in inflators in the airbags on both the driver and passenger sides, which may then expand – causing the airbags to partially inflate.

It followed two other large recalls for the firm in 2009 and 2010, which affected 9million vehicles in total. The scandal followed a string of fatal crashes that occurred when accelerator pedals got stuck.

The company eventually reached a settlement of $1.2billion (£983million) settlement with the US Justice Department following admissions that it had concealed information about the problem.