Toyota Prius Recall Affects 2.4 Million Vehicles Worldwide

Cars and Drivers

Published: October 5, 2018 8:50 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 4:51 pm

Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) announced Friday that the company is recalling more than 800,000 of its Prius hybrid electric vehicles. Worldwide the recall will affect 2.4 million Prius vehicles.

The company’s Prius from model years 2010 through 2014 and the Prius v from model years 2012 through 2014 are affected by the recall. In addition to the U.S. vehicles affected, 1.25 million of the cars have been recalled in Japan, with 290,000 recalled in Europe.

According to Toyota’s announcement, the cars involved in the recall were designed to enter a “failsafe” driving mode in the event of certain hybrid system faults. In rare cases, the company said, the vehicle does not enter the failsafe mode as it is supposed to do. The company goes on:

If this occurs, the vehicle could lose power and stall. While power steering and braking would remain operational, a vehicle stall while driving at higher speeds could increase the risk of a crash.

This recall is a follow-up to previous recalls in February 2014 and July 2015 that “did not anticipate” this condition. As with the previous recalls, Toyota will update the vehicle’s software at no charge to the car’s owner.

Toyota said it will notify owners once the software is available at local dealers, but the company did not give a timeline for when that may occur.

A month ago, Toyota initiated a worldwide recall for more than 1 million of its hybrid Prius cars to fix an electrical system problem that could cause a fire. The recall affected model years 2016 to 2018 Prius, Prius plug-in hybrids and C-HR SUVs (this vehicle is not sold in the United States).