gear kereta

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

Note: StarMotoring is not responsible for any errors and omissions in this guide. Please check with the respective dealers for any updates as prices may change after publication.

TOKYO, March 15 — Toyota Motor Corp has slashed production of the Prius hybrid model by 10 per cent from March due to a slowdown in sales from a peak last year, a source at a group company told Reuters today.

Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, had been building a combined 50,000 Priuses a month on average at two Japanese factories since the third-generation model debuted last May.

That will drop to about 45,000 units from March, the source said, declining to be identified because Toyota does not make those production plans public.

Global sales of the Prius continue to grow from the year before, but in February dropped about 40 per cent in the United States compared with a peak in October.

The third-generation Prius has topped Japan’s best-selling chart for the past nine months thanks to generous subsidies and tax incentives on fuel-efficient models. Customers placing an order today still wait more than three months for delivery, but that is down from eight months at the time of launch — Reuters

WASHINGTON, March 16 — Toyota Motor Corp said yesterday it had found no evidence to support the driver’s account of a widely publicised “runaway” Prius incident in California.

The report had threatened to overshadow Toyota’s attempts to restart sales after a punishing series of recalls.

US safety investigators said separately that they had yet to pinpoint any evidence to support or disprove the claim that a 2008 Prius sped out of control near San Diego a week ago.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration engineers drove the hybrid in an effort to recreate the episode reported by the driver, James Sikes, but were unable to do so, the agency said in its first statement on a hurried and high-profile analysis.

“We would caution people that our work continues and that we may never know exactly what happened with this car,” NHTSA said.

Sikes, 61, had reported in a call to emergency telephone operators that his Prius was racing out of control for some 20 minutes before he could slow down the vehicle and bring it to a safe stop with coaching from a California Highway Patrol officer who pulled alongside him.

But Toyota said it had found no evidence that Sikes had been applying the brake forcefully as he had claimed and said he should have been able to stop the Prius by doing so, or by shifting into neutral or turning off the electronic power switch.

The March 8 incident came at a crucial time for Toyota.

The automaker has been struggling for almost two months to reassure a jittery public it has turned a corner in dealing with safety issues that sparked a recall of 8.5 million vehicles worldwide.

Although Toyota’s March US sales have been up sharply because of cash rebates and zero-per cent financing offers, some analysts have said the long-term commercial damage from the automaker’s safety crisis remains harder to assess.

Scrutiny of the Prius, a vehicle the automaker considers its most important, has also raised the stakes for the automaker in ongoing US regulatory and congressional investigations of unintended acceleration.

Toyota plans to cut output of the Prius by 10 per cent starting this month due to a sales slowdown, a source with knowledge of the plans told Reuters.

The 2010 Prius was the subject of a February recall for braking problems, and the 2004 to 2009 model-year Prius hybrids were included in an October recall for loose floor mats.

But the San Diego case was the first to trigger a federal examination of the Prius for unintended acceleration, something US consumers have complained about in a range of other Toyota models, including its top-selling Camry.

‘THE HUNT FOR THE GHOST’

California police have said they had no reason to doubt Sikes based on the burning brakes in his car and observations of the officer who helped him.

Toyota, which convened a news conference in San Diego to question Sikes’ account of events, declined to comment directly on whether Sikes might have misled investigators.

But Toyota said an examination of his Prius showed that the car was being driven with the brakes lightly and repeatedly applied — some 250 times over the period of the incident.

The brake override in the Prius would have cut engine power to the vehicle had the driver applied “moderate to heavy” pressure on the brake pedal as Sikes had claimed, it said.

Sikes could not be reached for comment. The San Diego-based law firm representing him said it would not comment until NHTSA had completed its investigation.

Toyota has said it has not been able to identify a cause for cases of unintended acceleration consumers have reported beyond ill-fitting floor mats and sticky accelerator pedals. The automaker has recalled more than 6 million vehicles in the United States for that pair of problems since October.

Commentators have focused on the prospect that drivers could be making mistakes — hitting the accelerator instead of the brake — or that Toyota vehicles could be subject to a software glitch or other problem that is hard to replicate.

Toyota said again on Monday that there is no evidence for that latter possibility — a hypothesis that some critics have dubbed “the ghost in the machine.”

“The hunt for the ghost seems to ignore or fly in the face of known facts,” Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said outside a San Diego sports stadium where the automaker demonstrated the safety systems on the Prius for reporters.

“There’s no evidence that the system heals itself mysteriously,” Michels said.

Kelley Blue Book analyst James Bell said Toyota needed to do more than discredit one report of unintended acceleration to reassure consumers. “Until they have a more definitive answer, the elephant stays in the room,” Bell said in an email.

RECALLS HURTING IMAGE

ALG, a Santa Barbara, Calif-based firm that tracks vehicle resale values, said Toyota’s recalls had damaged the brand. It said its survey of consumer attitudes showed Toyota had dropped to No. 6 from No. 1 in perceived quality.

In response to weaker demand, Toyota will probably need to extend aggressive discounts through June, ALG said.

Sikes had told police and reporters he was driving the car on a freeway when it unexpectedly surged forward and reached speeds exceeding 90 miles per hour.

Two NHTSA investigators joined Toyota experts to examine his Prius, including an on-board diagnostic system designed to record information about the car’s various systems.

NHTSA has been criticised by Congress for not aggressively investigating complaints against Toyota.

Authorities believe floor mat problems in Toyota and Lexus vehicles are linked to five US crash deaths since 2007. Another 47 crash fatalities reports over the past decade have been reported due to unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles, according to NHTSA.

There are 59 reports of fatalities linked to episodes of unintended acceleration for other automakers over the same period, NHTSA says. — Reuters

TORONTO, March 17 — Canadian lawmakers accused Toyota Motor Corp executives yesterday of waiting too long to inform the government of problems with faulty accelerators in some of the company’s vehicles.

Separately, Canada’s transport minister said his department would conduct an investigation into Toyota’s actions, and would consider making disclosure laws tougher if necessary.

Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, recalled more than 8 million vehicles in late January, 270,000 of them in Canada, over problems with sticky gas pedals and with floor mats that interfere with gas pedals and could cause unintended acceleration.

“Many Canadians have wondered whether their vehicles are safe, and we regret this has caused our customers both anxiety and inconvenience,” said Yoichi Tomihara, chief executive of Toyota Canada Inc.

The company told Transport Canada of the problems with the sticky pedals on January 21, the same day it announced the recall. On January 26, it temporary halted the production of eight of its most popular models in North America as it worked on a fix.

The lawmakers wanted to know why Toyota, which said it knew of the problems in October and began working with pedal supplier CTS Corp on a redesign later in the year, waited so long to inform the government.

“OK, you’ve got a serious safety problem, you’re already talking with your supplier about redesigning the faulty gas pedal, and nobody told Transport Canada or NHTSA (US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) for that matter, until after a recall was issued on January 21. That’s what you are telling us,” said Jeff Watson, a member of Parliament from the governing Conservative Party.

INVESTIGATION FORTHCOMING

Stephen Beatty, managing director of Toyota Canada, said that the problem was first identified in Europe, and that Toyota’s engineering department in Japan was in charge of dealing with CTS. He added that the company had to make sure it properly identified the problem before classifying it as a defect and informing the government.

He said the company is not obligated to tell the government of any complaints, only of defects, and it takes time to figure out whether a defect exists.

“Once we have identified a problem, we send it to Japan for review by engineering, and they come back to us with a report. As soon as we have that, we trigger (a recall).”

Transport Minister John Baird told reporters after the hearing that his department would look into whether or not Toyota sat on critical information too long and would also look at making the laws for disclosure tougher.

“If we have to raise the bar, make the law tougher with respect to disclosure, that’s something we’re prepared to do,” he said.

“What my department will do, based on the testimony they heard today and based on the work that they’ve done in the last six months, is investigate Toyota.”

In his testimony, Beatty said about 60 per cent of the 270,000 affected vehicles in Canada have been fixed and that the company is encouraging individuals to bring their cars to their dealers to have the work done if they haven’t already.

He said that there have been no instances in Canada of vehicles that have had the accelerator pedal fix being brought back with same problem.

When asked if there was something he would do differently in handling the problem, Beatty said he should have started the public information campaign around the pedal problem several days earlier, when the first recall message was sent to Transport Canada.

PASSING THE BUCK

The two-hour hearing was more staid than the US Senate hearing with Toyota in February, where voices were raised and tears were shed, but some MPs were clearly rankled.

“We’ve just been given a little bit of a demonstration of somebody passing the buck,” said opposition Liberal MP Joe Volpe at the end of the hearing.

“I’m absolutely flabbergasted ... Mr. Beatty says the government never asked us for any information, so we’re not obliged to give it, and the government says, well you guys are at fault, you should have given us the information because we needed it in order to provide safety and security.”

During the hearing, Yoshi Inaba, president and chief operating officer, Toyota Motor North America, said that the company was doing all it could to comply with government requests for information in Canada and the United States.

Toyota Canada employs about 7,000 people and has the capability to produce more than 420,000 vehicles a year. About 75 per cent of the vehicles it makes in Canada are exported to the United States. — Reuters

Legal action could cost Toyota over US$10 billion. — Reuters pic

Using federal racketeering laws to amend the consumer class-action complaints, which have grown in number to more than 80 suits in at least 40 states, exposes Toyota to much greater potential liability.

Under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisation Act, a commercial enterprise can be found liable for triple the damages for any harm caused by its fraudulent activities.

As a result, litigation that originally stood to reap more than US$2 billion (RM6.8 billion) in damages for Toyota owners could end up costing the cash-rich Japanese automaker in excess of US$10 billion, said Tim Howard, lead counsel for a team of law firms handling about half the cases.

Each of the revised lawsuits is “a much more robust and thorough complaint than the first rounds because of how the evidence has evolved since then,” Howard said.

A Toyota spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment yesterday. The automaker has declined to comment on pending litigation to date.

The updated complaints draw on numerous documents and congressional testimony by Toyota executives to make the case that the company was aware of unintended acceleration problems in its vehicles for several years, even as it continued to promote defective cars as safe and reliable.

One suit in Florida cites a technical service bulletin it says the automaker issued in August 2002 “concerning an engine surge or acceleration problem with the new 2002 Camry, with the solution to recalibrate the Engine Control Module.”

Toyota has insisted that electronics have nothing to do with sudden, unintended acceleration in its vehicles, pointing instead to entrapment of the gas pedal by ill-fitting floor mats or sticky gas pedals themselves.

Those two problems were singled out for correction in recalls of more than 8 million Toyota vehicles to date, the largest such action ever taken by the automaker.

The consumer lawsuits assert that Toyota’s alleged concealment of defects in its vehicles while advertising them as safe constitutes criminal fraud and thus falls under the definition of “racketeering activity.”

Howard said his consortium of law firms had updated existing consumer cases in eight states as of Tuesday, and filings were planned in at last 12 more by week’s end.

All those and others around the country are to be consolidated into a single class action in the next couple of months, following a hearing before a panel of judges set for next Thursday in US District Court in San Diego.

Litigation against Toyota has mounted quickly in the weeks since the recalls began for a problem linked to more than 50 crash deaths in Toyota and Lexus vehicles under investigation over the past decade.

Lawsuits related to injuries and deaths are the most obvious cases being brought against Toyota, and a class-action suit was filed in Los Angeles last month on behalf of US shareholders accusing Toyota of misleading investors.

The consumer class actions are based on the premise that the resale value of Toyotas has dropped substantially as a result of the company’s safety crisis.

Major automobile valuation services have downgraded the resale value of Toyotas, Howard said.

Toyota has long boasted one of the industry’s highest resale values for its vehicles, one of the major factors in its success in the US market. — Reuters

Honda had recalled 646,000 vehicles in January. — AFP pic

Honda said the problem can result from air accumulating in a “vehicle stability assist modulator,” which causes the pedal to get closer to the floor than normal before the vehicle stops.

The move came a month after Japan’s second-biggest carmaker recalled more than 437,000 vehicles worldwide to fix airbags that it said can explode and spray out potentially deadly metal shards.

In January, some 646,000 Honda Fit and Jazz vehicles were recalled worldwide because the power window switch could short out and cause a fire if too much water got into the door handle.

The Japanese automaker’s latest recall affects 2007-2008 model years of the Odyssey minivan and boxy Element sport utility vehicle.

Honda said some accidents involving soft brakes were reported to safety regulators in the vehicles covered under the recall but that it was unlikely the soft pedal problem was a significant factor.

“There are three injuries reported to NHTSA for vehicles in this range but it’s tough to link those injuries to this cause,” Honda spokesman Chris Martin told AFP.

That’s because the brakes continue to function long after they begin to soften and the softening process takes a long time to develop.

“It’s a very slow progression because it’s a tiny, tiny amount of air that gets in — it’s smaller than a drop of water,” Martin said.

“Customers get a lot of warning.”

If the problem goes untreated, however, the brakes could eventually stop working, he added.

Honda’s woes come as rival Toyota is struggling to rebuild its once stellar reputation for quality and safety after a series of mass recalls due to faulty accelerator and brake systems.

Toyota has insisted it has found a solution to defects that triggered the recall of more than eight million vehicles worldwide, including six million in the United States, and have been blamed for about 50 US deaths.

But critics have accused Toyota of intentionally hiding deadly defects from consumers and ignoring potential electronic problems.

The top Japanese automaker has been called to Washington to answer a congressional investigation. It faces scrutiny by securities regulators and a US federal grand jury investigating whether there is sufficient evidence for criminal charges related to problems with Toyota’s brakes and accelerators.

It has also been slapped with scores of civil lawsuits, including one last week from a California prosecutor alleging that Toyota ignored reports of problems with its vehicles and deliberately misled the public.

“As other car companies watch from the sidelines, they are likely to shorten the decision cycle between learning of a problem and taking action,” said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive officer of the automotive website Edmunds.com.

“Industry norms for ‘due diligence’ research and testing may take too long in the court of public opinion, given today’s heightened consumer sensitivity to car safety issues and defects.”

Honda will be sending letters out to owners next month asking them to schedule an appointment to have the modulator sealed to prevent air intrusion.

“Although not all vehicles being recalled are affected by this issue, we are recalling all possible units to assure all customers that their vehicles will perform correctly,” Honda said in a statement. — AFP/Relaxnews

Nearly 1.2 million Corolla and Matrix models are affected by a stalling problem. — Reuters pic

In a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Toyota said it wanted to meet US officials to discuss an early-stage investigation of the stalling problem.

“Toyota does not believe that the alleged defect creates an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety,” Toyota’s regulatory affairs manager Chris Santucci said in the letter.

The letter was dated March 2 and available on the NHTSA Web site yesterday.

The discussion of the engine stalling problem comes at a time when Toyota’s safety record is under intense scrutiny. The automaker has recalled some 8.5 million vehicles this year, mostly for accelerator-related problems.

US safety regulators and members of three congressional panels have criticised the Japanese automaker for moving too slowly to address consumer complaints of unintended acceleration and other safety concerns.

NHTSA opened a preliminary evaluation of Corolla stalling complaints in November 2009.

The agency said then that it had received 26 complaints of engines stalling in Toyota Corolla and Matrix models because of failures in the engine control modules.

US safety regulators said drivers reported the stalls happened “randomly” and some had occurred in highway driving or when drivers were passing through intersections.

Toyota said it did not believe that drivers would have any “prior warning” that the engine was about to stall because of a glitch with the engine’s electronic control unit, or ECU.

But Santucci said Toyota had concluded it would be better for the engine to stall out then “become damaged or dangerous,” putting it at risk of “catastrophic failures” or “fire.”

“Toyota would like to meet with the agency to discuss this issue,” Santucci said in the letter.

Toyota said it believed that the engine control unit could malfunction because of a crack in soldered joints in the unit or because of an electrical short. Both conditions could cause the engine to shut down without warning or fail to start, the automaker said.

The stalling problem affects 1.19 million Corolla and Matrix models from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 model years, Toyota said. — Reuters

Members of the media gather around a 2008 Toyota Prius in a stadium parking lot in San Diego, California. - Reuters pic

The Toyota brand slipped two notches from 2009 to the sixth spot in the JD Power and Associates Vehicle Dependability Study, which tallies vehicle dependability based on problems reported in the first three years of ownership.

Toyota still was the highest-ranking mainstream brand, with four models placed among the most dependable in their segments, including the top-selling Prius hybrid.

Toyota’s Lexus luxury brand tied with General Motors Co’s Buick for the third place. Lexus had been No 3 in the 2009 key quality ratings, losing the top spot for the first time since the once-dominant luxury line became part of the closely watched study.

The results come at a critical time for the world’s top automaker, which is struggling to regain consumer trust after a damaging series of recalls that has tarnished its once-sterling reputation for quality and reliability.

Porsche and Ford Motor Co’s Lincoln won the top two rankings in the study. Ford’s Mercury nameplate ranked fifth, behind Buick and Lexus.

Honda Motor Co’s mainstream Honda line and the blue oval Ford nameplate followed Toyota in the list.

The JD Power rankings are closely watched by automakers since they are seen as a key indicator of the resale value of vehicles and customer loyalty.

The study is based on responses from more than 52,000 owners of 2007 model-year vehicles and was fielded between October and December. Toyota launched the first of its recalls over unintended acceleration in late November.

Ford, the only major US automaker not to restructure under bankruptcy in 2009, outperformed rivals with all of its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands placed in the top 10 of the list.

Lincoln showed the most significant improvement in quality, climbing six positions from 2009.

The study also showed that seven of the 10 models with the lowest incidence of problems in the industry are from GM and Ford.

GM’s Cadillac DTS luxury sedan had the fewest problems, with 76 issues per 100 vehicles, compared with the industry average of 155 problems. That marked the first time in more than a decade that a domestic model has scored the least number of problems in the study.

JD Power said that for several brands including Cadillac, Ford, Hyundai, Lincoln and Mercury, consumer perceptions have not kept pace with their actual performance.

“It takes considerable time to positively change consumer perceptions of quality and dependability — sometimes a decade or more — so it is vital for manufacturers to continually improve quality and also to convince consumers of these gains,” said David Sargeant, vice president of research at JD Power.

Chrysler LLC, which emerged from bankruptcy in June under the management of Fiat, saw all of its Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep brands ranked below average in the study.

Chrysler was placed 20th, Dodge 28th and Jeep 34th in the study, which ranks 37 major nameplates. — Reuters

TOKYO, March 23 — Toyota Motor Corp has lifted its global production plans by 1 pe rcent to 7.57 million vehicles for 2010, anticipating better demand in Japan and other Asian markets, a source at a group company said today.

The world’s biggest automaker had told its suppliers in December that it planned to produce 7.49 million vehicles in the 2010 calendar year, but will notify them of the latest revision later today, the source told Reuters, declining to be identified because Toyota does not make those plans public.

Fuelled by subsidy-led demand for fuel-efficient cars in Japan, Toyota lifted its domestic production plan by 40,000 units, the source said.

In North America, its biggest market, a recall-driven production and sales suspension prompted Toyota to lower plans by 60,000 units, but that would be more than offset by an upward revision of 100,000 units in non-Japan markets, the person said.

The new output figure, which excludes minivehicle unit Daihatsu Motor Co and truck maker Hino Motors Ltd, would represent a 19 per cent jump from 2009.

Toyota, like the rest of the industry, is counting on double-digit sales rises in China and India to make up for an expected fall in European car demand after government subsidies run out. — Reuters

Friday, March 19, 2010

Posted by: Anthony Lim

Posted by: Anthony Lim