Toyota to restart production in US next week
- Source: Xinhua
- [08:43 February 02 2010]
- Comments
Toyota Motor Sales USA will resume production next week, Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer at Toyota Motor Sales, said in a conference call on Monday in Washington.
Toyota Monday morning said its dealers should be receiving parts starting late Tuesday to fix accelerator pedals on 2.3 million recalled vehicles in the United States.
Six North American plants are shut down this week in the recall of eight current and previous model year cars and trucks.
Dealers will get replacement parts by late Tuesday or early Wednesday, Lentz said.
In addition to the production halt, Toyota issued a "stop sell" order on the recalled models.
The order will be lifted on a "vehicle by vehicle" basis, Lentz said, as dealers repair individual vehicles. But Lentz said dealers' priority should be on repairing customers' vehicles -- rather than fixing vehicles for sale on the lot.
The repair will take about 30 minutes at a dealership, and customers should go to their dealers once they receive a notification letter from Toyota starting later this week.
In a statement this morning, the company said Toyota's engineers "have developed and rigorously tested a solution that involves reinforcing the pedal assembly in a manner that eliminates the excess friction that has caused the pedals to stick in rare instances. In addition, Toyota has developed an effective solution for vehicles in production."
Toyota said parts to fix pedals "are already being shipped for use by dealers, and dealer training is under way. Many Toyota dealers will work extended hours to complete the recall campaign as quickly and conveniently as possible, some even staying open 24 hours a day."
The sticky pedal fix is expanding to Europe and China to up to 1.9 million more vehicles.
Toyota told its dealers in an e-mail that they should determine how to prioritize their repairs. But the company said it "strongly recommends dealers prioritize consumer vehicles first, followed by dealer owned inventory (during non-peak hours)."
Affected vehicles are certain 2009-10 RAV4s, certain 2009-10 Corollas, 2009-10 Matrix, 2005-10 Avalons, certain 2007-10 Camrys, certain 2010 Highlanders, 2007-10 Tundras and 2008-10 Sequoias.
