Comments on: Toyota Announces Safety Recall on 82,000 Hybrid SUVs

By: sjo

sjo — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 12:44:05 +0000

2008 Highlander Hybrid bought as a leftover in 2009. 38,900 miles now. Totally died on me while locally driving. Extremely scary but was able to coast to the side of the road. I loved this SUV!! Don’t know what the problem is yet—from what I am reading, does sound like the inverter. Won’t know until Tuesday—this happened on Friday. I will begin to look for a new car after this—I don’t want this to happen to me on a major highway. Loyal Toyota customer—6 in the family over the years—very disappointing and SCARY!!!

By: tapra1

tapra1 — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:00:06 +0000

which will cover more than 110,000 vehicles worldwide. Transistors are one of the key auto components affected by the Japanese earthquake in March, though it's unknown how that might factor into the recall.Best Cloud Hosting

By: Mark Werwath

Mark Werwath — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:20:40 +0000

My 2006 Hybrid Highlander experienced a sudden failure of the inverter. Luckily the car was stationary and had only 99.7K miles on it. Toyota covered the entire replacement to the new design. A cost of over $8K absorbed by Toyota

Yes, Toyota makes mistakes and yes Toyota makes it right in the end. Was I lucky??? Absolutely. Is this a rare occurrence? My dealer is still talking about it, a high volume dealer on the North side of Chicago and the service department still doesnt believe it. It is THAT rare

By: Ashley

Ashley — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:45:31 +0000

2008 is the new body style, and this picture is definitely the older body style that was 2001-2007. This is not a picture of the 2008. Just google it and you’ll see.

By: Eftyking

Eftyking — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:01:05 +0000

I want to know why Ford has not announced a recall on the Ford Escape Hybrid. There have been many documented cases of water pumps failing in the hybrids and Fail Safe mode kicking in at high speeds. The engine just shuts off and it tells the driver to STOP SAFELY NOW. It is very frightening. At one point last year Ford was back ordered with nearly 900 water pumps for this issue. Imagine driving 65mph in the left lane and your power fails and you need to cut over at rush hour. Someone will die if this is not addresses. Very scary. My Escape is a 2008.

By: Yegor

Yegor — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:05:26 +0000

This recall is not because of Hybrid components.

All gas cars in our days have electronics too - it also can brake and a car can lose power and roll to a stop. Actually it happens all the time.

It is just this recall affects Hybrid models - this is all. It could happen to any model.

By: jim1961

jim1961 — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:57:41 +0000

As a person who worked as a quality engineer both inside and outside of the automotive industry I respectfully disagree with you. I can understand why you have this opinion and I’ve read other people who have this opinion also. I’ve worked for small companies and I’ve worked for large corporations. In fact, it’s been my experience that smaller companies are the ones that struggle the most with quality control. A larger company has the capital to invest in hiring well trained and experienced quality assurance professionals. Money also needs to be spent on training, equipment, documentation, information technology and communications for proper quality assurance. Also, the quality problems of Toyota are exaggerated by the news media. The quality gap between different automotive companies is also exaggerated by the news media. The quality and reliability of cars, overall has risen steadily for every car manufacturer in every country especially since the 1980s. People easily forget the kind of crap cars we accepted as normal 30 years ago. Certainly, if you are old enough, you remember when automobiles were considered at the end of the life when they approached 100,000 miles.

By: Dan Fisher

Dan Fisher — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:15:19 +0000

Your photo for this article is a 2008 model Highlander, one not included in the recall. Please update the photo.

By: JJJSpawn

JJJSpawn — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:15:17 +0000

it is getting harder to convince myself to buy one.

By: MrEnergyCzar

MrEnergyCzar — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:28:01 +0000

It's tough to become a larger company and still maintain the same quality level.... still very reliable cars....

MrEnergyCzar