Prius Problems

April 27. 2009

There is an interesting article in the Miami New Times, regarding the Toyota Prius, experiencing engineering failures that have caused road mishaps and accidents, due to the brakes jamming or the car suddenly speeding forward, without the owner's prompting, even when it is parked. 

The article explores the billions of dollars the Clinton Administration gave the U.S. auto industry to create fuel efficient cars and how they wasted the money and had nothing to show for it. Former president George W. Bush, being the greasy, oil loving weasel he is, later pulled the plug on the program. Nice work, Mr. $5 a gallon in 2008 (not).

However, Toyota, left out of the hand out Clinton issued, of its own initiative, created the Prius, which has been a very good seller. I like the concept of the Prius, but they really need to repair the above mentioned issues, as that can be dangerous.

The Toyota Prius: Hybrid Hell

Published on April 21, 2009 at 11:01am - Bobette Riner had her Prius for a couple of months before it took off and died, leaving her stranded on the side of the road. Now she's stuck with a car she's afraid to drive.

..."I felt so smug for a while," she says...She was lucky to score the car, because for nearly a year there had been a three-month wait to get a Prius. The dealership couldn't even keep a model for the showroom.

The car had a "cute little body" that Riner loved, and she reveled in watching the energy usage display on the car's center console, trying to drain every possible mile from a gallon of gasoline. When she hit 2,000 miles, she could count her trips to the gas station on one hand.

On a rainy night last fall, a couple of months after Riner bought her Prius, she was driving to a sales meeting. She hated driving in the rain because a car wreck in college catapulted her through the windshield and doctors almost had to amputate her leg.

...Suddenly, she felt the car hydroplaning out of control, and when she glanced at the speedometer, she realized the car had shot up to 84 mph. Riner wasn't hydroplaning; quite simply, her Prius had accelerated on its own.

She stepped on the brakes, but they were dead. Then, just as suddenly as the car had taken off, it shut down. The console lit up with warning lights, leaving Riner fighting a stiff steering wheel as she coasted across four lanes of traffic and down an exit ramp.

The car stopped near a PetSmart parking lot, and Riner sat in disbelief, wondering if her new car had gone crazy...

...Or Stacey Josefowicz in Anthem, Arizona, who bought her new Prius in May 2007. A couple of months later, driving down a four-lane highway toward a stoplight, she stepped on the brakes but nothing happened. She freaked and then weaved into a turning lane, coasting to a Target parking lot with the brake pedal jammed to the floor. A Toyota technician told her she had run out of gas, but she objected that that wasn't true; there was fuel in the car. Still, he returned the Prius to her with no repairs.

A month later, she sped through a stop sign when the brakes went out again. "I think they thought, She's a woman driver; she obviously let the car run out of gas," Josefowicz says. "Thank God I didn't get killed or cause an accident. It would have been on their head."

Or Herbert Kuehn from Battle Creek, Michigan. In October 2005, his Prius sped out of control on a highway before he "labored" the car to a stop on the gravel shoulder of the road. He was so afraid of his Prius that he stopped driving it, but "under good conscience did not feel that I could sell it."

Jaded Prius owners say there's no resolution with Toyota — through their hometown dealer or corporate arbitration — and the company hasn't lost or settled a single lawsuit concerning "unintended acceleration." ...

http://www.miaminewtimes.com