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 Make It Three: Prius Brakes Could Spark Another Toyota RecallPosted on Feb 4, 2010
The brakes on the 2010 Toyota Prius have prompted a U.S. government investigation and a possible third recall for the troubled automaker, if a report in Japan’s biggest business newspaper is to be believed. The latest setback affects 270,000 vehicles. The Prius’ brakes are a key feature of the car’s hybrid system and something of an engineering marvel. They capture heat from the friction of braking and transform the energy into electricity that can charge the battery. The reported recall is the first that would reach the home islands, striking a deeper blow to the national pride of Japan, which has already been wounded by Toyota’s recalls. Toyota has reportedly had success correcting the problem through a software fix. The automaker has not confirmed reports of a third recall. —PZS Advertisement Previous item: 10 Americans Charged With Abduction in Haiti Next item: Yuppie Obama Edition New and Improved CommentsWe are launching a major overhaul of our comments section. In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread. Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts. Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with. Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page. |
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By drbhelthi, February 6, 2010 at 6:03 am Link to this comment
Who needs to floorboard the gas pedal on streets in the
Report thisUS? And how much does a $2, stronger, return-spring on
the gas pedal cost? $2 ? I have put one on several
cars, just to make the gas pedal harder to mash, and
thus increase gas mileage.
No gas pedal sticks with a strong return-spring.
By Lil Poot, February 5, 2010 at 9:57 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Prius brakes don’t actually use heat from friction to charge the batteries. The kinetic energy of the car is used turn the drive motor(s) which are temporarily converted to generator(s). A generator offers resistance to rotation, and this drag helps slow the car. Google “regenerative braking.”
My understanding is that the problem was in the software that controls the process. Ford has apparently rewritten some of the software in its recently released Fusion hybrid for similar reasons.
Report this