Toyota's Recall to Last Months

After yesterday Tim Lentz, the CEO of Toyota Motor Sales gave an interview on the Today Show on NBC and pretty much managed to dodge all the questions thrown at him, he apparently was more forthcoming during another interview, this time with FOX Business Network (FBN). One of the questions he swirled around on NBC, "how long will it take to fix the pedals?," was at last answered: Toyota will need months, not weeks, to solve perhaps one of the biggest image problems in its history.

"I think it's going to be measured in months not weeks. I can't tell you exactly how much. At the end of this week, we'll have a much better idea," Lentz told the source.

This simple answer means Toyota will have to face at least half of year of uncertainty. While the sales results for January are already expected to be grim, needing months to solve the recall will most likely push the poor sales period for Toyota well into 2010. When asked whether Toyota thinks it moved quickly on the issue, Lentz said yes.

"We actually acted quite quickly on that. From October of last year to today, we investigated it, we found a solution, and we implemented a solution….that's 90 days; that's pretty quick."

To put at ease concerns that the image of the CTS Corp., the supplier of the faulty pedals, has been affected by the recall, Lentz added that Toyota does not consider CTS responsible.

Still, if CTS is not responsible, who or what is? What really lies behind the faulty pedal? Is it a bad design idea? A bad implementation of the design? Or, as some suggest, a more serious, electrical fault which may affect more Toyota models? So far, Toyota found out how it happens and came up with a solution. What Toyota apparently still doesn't know is why it happens...

"We'll figure out why it happened down the road," Lentz said in the interview.