Toyota recalls Priuses worldwide

'We regard safety for our customers as our foremost priority,' automaker's president said announcing move over braking problems

David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Washington -- Toyota said it is recalling about 437,000 Prius and other hybrid cars worldwide over braking problems as the company moves aggressively to repair damage to its reputation.

Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, made the announcement today at a news conference at the automaker's Tokyo office to outline details of the braking problem, the Associated Press reported.

"We have decided to recall as we regard safety for our customers as our foremost priority," Toyoda said.

The company also announced it was recalling its Lexus HS 250h and Sai, a hybrid sold only in Japan. Toyota didn't announce its global fix, which is expected to include the recall of 103,000 third-generation Prius vehicles sold in the United States since May.

Toyota last month fixed the braking problem with a software patch, but didn't disclose it to regulators or the public.

U.S. auto safety regulators received 124 complaints that brakes sometimes failed to work over uneven surfaces, resulting in four accidents.

Toyoda said the automaker was ramping up its response to concerns about quality after its recalls of 9 million vehicles worldwide.

In an op-ed piece to be published today in the Washington Post, Toyoda said the Japanese automaker had "failed to connect the dots" in reviewing safety issues around the world. He said he will name a blue-ribbon safety advisory panel to advise the company and will create a center for quality in North America.

Toyoda's essay was the company's strongest statement on how it planned to aggressively address the mounting fallout from two massive recalls that have deeply damaged Toyota's reputation for building high-quality vehicles.

Auto safety regulators have reported about 2,000 complaints and 19 deaths linked to allegations of runaway Toyota vehicles over the past decade.

Toyoda's message was aimed at restoring the company's image with its customers, vowing "to regain the trust of American drivers and their families."

The message is being shaped by a number of crisis management consultants hired in recent weeks, including Glover Park Group, which came on last week.

"We are taking responsibility for our mistakes, learning from them and acting immediately," he said in the op-ed piece, adding he has "launched a top-to-bottom review of our global operations."

Toyota has grown rapidly in recent years, adding new factories as it sold 1.7 million vehicles here last year. Toyota's U.S. market share has soared from 10 percent in 2002 to 17 percent last year, and the company said it sold more retail vehicles than any other automaker last year.

Toyota also will "ask a blue-ribbon safety advisory group composed of respected outside experts in quality management to independently review our operations." Toyota said it will make the findings public.

Toyoda offered a new explanation for why it took Toyota so long to discover problems of sticky pedals that led to the recall on Jan. 21 of 2.3 million vehicles, forced them to stop production at six North American plants for a week and stop sale of eight popular models. Its dealers began fixing them last week. Toyota expanded an earlier recall over pedal entrapment issues to 5.4 million vehicles last month. It is replacing floor mats and shrinking pedals, among other fixes.

"We failed to connect the dots between problems in Europe and problems in the United States because the European situation related primarily to right-hand-drive vehicles," he said.

The effort comes one day before Wednesday's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is looking into Toyota's safety issues. Toyota is also expected to turn over on Tuesday a large number of documents sought by the committee.

Toyota said it found a fix for the sticky pedals by replacing or repairing them. It has a multi-prong approach for pedal entrapment issues by replacing floor mats, shrinking the pedals and adding a brake override software fix in most vehicles.

Congressional investigators said in a Feb. 5 memo that it still isn't clear what is causing all of the runaway car crashes.

"There appears to be a growing body of evidence that neither Toyota nor NHTSA have identified all the causes of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles," the memo said. "There is substantial evidence that remedies such as redesigned floor mats have failed to solve the problem."

Christine Tierney contributed.