The local launch of Toyota's Camry Hybrid is less than a week away. It's an important new model the company expects to attract a lot of new, private buyers to the brand and it should cement the company's environmental credentials -- but there's a problem.
Coinciding with the pre-launch promotional activities for the new car comes controversial news from overseas. In the US, Toyota is preparing to mount a massive media campaign to take some of the sting out of its multiple recall programs, programs that affect literally millions of cars allegedly fitted with faulty accelerator pedals.
Toyota Australia has already smoothed ruffled feathers locally by issuing a statement that cars sold in Australia are not affected. The Carsales Network spoke to Mike Breen, the Manager of Public Relations for Toyota Australia, earlier today and asked him to clarify some of the issues. Responding to the Camry as one example, since it's built both here and in America, Breen confirmed that the products of the two countries source accelerator pedals from different suppliers. Furthermore, the design itself varies -- and that's why vehicles built in Australia and Japan are unaffected by this recall.
"The [accelerator pedal] that's provided in America is supplied by a manufacturer in Canada and the supplier of the pedal for the Australian market is the Japanese supplier -- so the design of the pedal is totally different from the one that they use in the United States," Breen reaffirmed.
"I've seen photographs, just workshop photographs of the two pedals and they are entirely different. They look like [the same] when you look at them, but when you look at the top part of the pedal and how the mechanism works, they're totally different."
But what about the Camry Hybrid then? Isn't that powered by a drivetrain sourced from the US?
"Correct," Breen responded succinctly, but then he continues to say that the locally-built hybrid car will not be dragged into the international recall program.
"The pedal mechanism itself comes from Japan, whereas the one in America is supplied by the North American supplier, the Canadian supplier."
In other words, the hybrid-drive powerplant comes from the US for installation in the locally-built Camry, but the car rolling out the doors of the Altona factory (pictured) is a hybrid in more than one sense, with Toyota grafting the American hybrid-drive unit to an Aussie shell, complete with a Japanese-supplied accelerator pedal.
Asked for his response to the news emanating from the US that some of the crashes reportedly involving sudden and unforeseen acceleration were the result of software in the engine management system rather than necessarily faulty accelerator pedals, Breen explained that the jury was still out on that.
"All the tests that they've done in Japan and the US don't indicate that there's any link between the two -- and I think they're still looking into the ECU issue," he said.
"[The ECU investigation] was never resolved. They're still working on the incidents that occurred and what really did happen in those incidents."
There have been no such incidents in Australia, as far as Breen knows -- "Nothing related to the throttle pedal, no."
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