I definitely noticed weirdness in the brakes within the first few days of driving. At that time, there wasn’t any snow on the ground, so the problem only cropped up on loose pavement, gravel and such. Whenever it happened, I thought, “That was really weird” — like the tires were not even in contact with the group. There was absolutely NOT BRAKING at all for an instant — and it is more than a few milliseconds — nearly a second.

Now that we have a lot of sno, this is happening a lot. It is a big problem. We won’t rent these things to our customers until we get tem fixed. You can’t have vehicles that routinely shut down the brakes for nearly a second/

It is definitely not a hysterical reaction. If anything, I’d say the media has been far too willing to give Toyota a pass on this because the media buys into that narrative that the Japanese cars are better quality.

It is truly outrageous that Toyota knew about the problem, developed a fix, deployed that fix on their new production vehicles delivered in January, and was still trying to bluff their way out of fixing the vehicles they had already shipped. That is terrible.

I didn’t trust the car after that, and bought a Honda Prelude. It’s been 5 Hondas since then. Everything works….no brake problems.

Most anything else on a car that fails is just annoying, but when brakes fail, or are in question…it’s scary.

There is no reason to delay braking like that on a car with ABS. A properly operating ABS system will back off on the brakes if and when necessary, to keep the braking steady.

Further, if any tires locked up on your Prius during “engine-braking” or re-gen, it would be the front ones (since it’s front drive). This would not make your car spin out; locking up the rear tires (the driven tires on a real race car) does. Locking up the fronts makes the car slide nearly in a straight line; not as desirable as keeping the tires turning and braking more effectively, but not nearly so bad as a spin-out.

I just wanted to make sure no one got the wrong impression, and thought that an unnecessary braking delay like that was normal.

Finally, someone manages to call 911 while they’re in motion in a vehicle that won’t stop. They crash and burn in a fiery blaze, killing everyone in the vehicle.

Toyota says “Oh, it was just a stuck floor mat. We’ll replace them, or take out your floor mats – it’s not a big deal, don’t worry about it.”

Months later, and only because of a lot of prodding from the US government, Toyota comes out and admit there’s a serious defect with the accelerator pedal.

Now there’s a problem with the Prius braking. A problem which Toyota found out about and fixed (I guess that’s a step up because they actually looked into it, right?). But hey, guess what Toyota says – “It’s not a big deal, don’t worry about it”.

At this point, I think only an idiot would take what Toyota says at face value, not that I completely trust anything a corporation claims at any point.

Heck, the problem isn’t even that this happened. The problem is the “oh, gee, I’m sure it’s not our fault” philosophy. We’re talking about the goddamn *braking system* here. This isn’t a question of whether the window can roll down or the stereo controls work. This system should just work – period.

That’s BS.

If I lose a bit on efficiency, I don’t much care. Besides, there’s nothing to stop regen from engaging *after* the real brakes kick in.