英伦广角 2010-02-07 丰田前路漫漫

Fault recalls are quite common in the car industry. I think part of the problem is the scale of the problem we’ve been seeing , over 4million cars recall because of accelerator problems. Go back to September last year, another 4 million recall in the summer and January last year. So, we’re seeing both big scale and a number of recalls, and also let’s remember Toyota’s image, and its brand is built on ultra-reliabilty and quality, so of course consumers are going to, don’t you be saying, what on earth is going on?

Well,yes, it’s not just the problem of its image, but it actually has the problem of potential legal action where we’re talking about the US law firm tonight filing a mass class action acclaimed 1 against Toyota. How much would it probably mess up for the company?

Well, it's gonna be huge problems just in terms of managing it from the PR point of view. Toyota, So far, have put a figure on the recall of these cars about 2 billion dollars, if you start adding in legal costs, having to deal with the reputational damage, possible damage to their brand, then costs soon escalate 2. It’s no wonder that their share price is falling by over 20% since January 21st, knocking some 30 billion dollars of the value of the firm.

Toyota've argued they’ve acted quickly and decisively. What do you make of their response?

Well, they are certainly acting 3 quickly in the United States, it took them some time to get to the UK to sort of rectify 4 the accelerator issue. In terms of the most recent problems over the Prius, they had actually identified the problem I think with their software which they fix the new models. They haven’t said anything to the consumers, and that hadn't come out until the Japanese government actually launched a requested investigation 5, I think there are some pretty mixed messages coming out of Toyota. I think in a sense there's a feeling that maybe they've taken their eye off the pool; they have expanded very quickly in recent years. They have huge capacity globally, over 10 billion cars, 10 billion cars a year, but aren’t producing anyway near that, they've been looking to cut costs through standardizing 6 parts across their range. If something goes wrong, it exposes them to big risks.

Obviously drivers of Toyota's concerned workers of Toyota they have a factory in this country, of course in Darby; they must be worried as well.

Absolutely, oh let's recognize that this is nothing to do with Darby, that’s a very efficient, productive plant and very high quality. This was a design fault in the accelerator pedals of Toyota cars; it goes right back to Japan. And they've already fixed 7 the problem in new cars at Darby, but they are obviously worried in the sense if it affects sales, and therefore their ability to produce cars. I do think in longer term they will be okay, but they've gotta get through this, they've gotta manage it in a very careful way, they have to reassure 8 customers and I think somebody at top ultimately has to take responsibility for this.