Toyota Pays Compensation

2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 05:39

Toyota compensates US car owners after the mass recall campaigns in 2009 and 2010. Although the company was mostly innocent, a class action lawsuit is to be settled with the settlement.

The automaker Toyota is paying more than a billion dollars in compensation for its mass recall actions due to jammed gas pedals and slipped floor mats in the United States. With the sum of 1.1 billion dollars (832 million euros), US car owners are to be compensated who have suffered losses because of the problems in selling their vehicles, as the group announced. In addition, the Japanese world market leader wants to retrofit millions of models. The unprecedented series of recalls in the company's history in 2009 and 2010 caused Toyota considerable financial damage and an enormous loss of image.

Toyota wants to put an end to it

The announced payment is intended to resolve a pending class action lawsuit in California. A court still has to approve the settlement concluded with representatives of the plaintiffs, as Toyota North America announced on Wednesday. The Japanese automaker is trying to draw a line under the debacle that plunged the group into a deep crisis by paying. In the meantime, the auto giant is doing better than ever.

US mediaemphasized that the comparison did not include Toyota's admission of guilt. With the move, the company is spared a potentially lengthy process with all the associated risks, wrote the Wall Street Journal, for example. A government study in 2010 certified Toyota that the manufacturer was not to blame for most of the accidents.

Toyota creates funds for retrofitting

Toyota recalled about eight million vehicles worldwide in 2009 and 2010 due to problems with floor mats and sticking gas pedals, most of them in the United States. In Germany there were almost 216,000 cars, as Toyota announced in Cologne in early February 2010. The market share in this country shrank dramatically in the year to 2.7 percent after 3.6 percent in 2009.

As the newspaper "USA Today" wrote, Toyota now wants to create a fund for the retrofitting of 3.2 million Toyota and Lexus models with a safety system that makes it easier to stop in panic situations. For models where this is not possible, there is cash. Anyone who received less money between September 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010 because of the problems they had with their car when selling, received financial compensation.

Toyota mostly innocent according to NASA investigation

For several months, the experts of the US space agency NASA investigated the serious allegations against Toyota in 2010 on behalf of the US government and found that Toyota was not to blame for most of the accidents. It found, according to the study, that it was the drivers who were out of control of their cars.

CEO Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company's founder, had been attacked sharply at a hearing in front of the US Congress: The Japanese were said to be responsible for the deaths of many people because they had concealed technical errors. The NASA engineers found out that many drivers in stressful situations often confused the accelerator with the brake pedal or only braked half-heartedly or too late. Nasa chief engineer Michael Kirsch had stated that his experts had come to the conclusion after extensive tests that, apart from a few special cases, the electrical systems had worked perfectly.

The recall had seriously damaged Toyota's image. In 2011, the car manufacturer suffered another blow: the devastating tsunami in Japan temporarily brought car production to a complete standstill. In the meantime, however, Toyota has celebrated a comeback and fought its way back to the top. (dpa)