Alistair Davis: Clear road ahead for Toyota after recall jam

Car recalls don't usually make headlines. In fact, it's rare to see coverage extend beyond a few column centimetres or a brief soundbite on the news.

That's because recalls are actually fairly common and will continue to be part of the motoring experience, particularly as cars become more and more high-tech.

Consider that a car is made from about 10,000 individual parts, sourced from many different parts makers and many different regions of the world, and they're driven in all sorts of ways in all sorts of weather and road conditions.

While modern technology has made our cars more comfortable and safer the flipside is, with more electronic features, there's more that can go wrong.

It's Toyota's standard course of action, that once a safety fault is identified, we contact customers, ask them to bring the car in and fix the problem at our expense. We inform the authorities and issue a press release to make sure the public are kept informed of developments.

We do this irrespective of whether Toyota New Zealand imported the vehicle as new or whether it entered the country as a used import from Japan. If it has a Toyota (or Lexus or Daihatsu) badge on it, we stand behind it.

Of course, Toyota's recent actions involving several million vehicles worldwide have lifted "recalls" to a new level of public awareness. We've seen media coverage snowball around what is the worst series of recalls Toyota has experienced.

The simultaneous issues of floormats fouling accelerator pedals, potentially sticking accelerator pedals and brake pedal "feel" on the Toyota Prius, have resulted in media coverage that has questioned the credibility of the Toyota brand.

At Toyota New Zealand we've been caught in the headlights of this global media coverage. But in fact, here the problem is very small - with the recall limited to fewer than 350 of the approximately 700,000 Toyota vehicles on our roads.

We've identified only 28 Avensis vehicles fitted with the potentially sticking accelerator pedal. The owners of these cars have been contacted and will have their vehicles corrected by the end of the month.

Last weekend we wrote to 260 Prius owners asking them to call their dealer to allow updated software to be installed in their cars at no extra charge. This reprogramming will provide a quicker feel for pedal response to improve the driving experience.

To date, we have received no complaints around either recall in New Zealand and fortunately, there's no immediate danger because the accelerator pedal sticking problem comes on gradually and is extraordinarily rare and the Prius brake issue is one of pedal "feel" rather than safety.

Still, it's fair enough these events could see customers question their trust in a company founded on the principle of producing quality vehicles that stand the test of time.

Toyota's global president, Akio Toyoda, this week apologised for failing to live up to the high standards motorists have come to expect from Toyota, recognising the company has been impacted by the rapid growth of the business, globalisation, standardisation of parts and increasingly complex technology.

Here in New Zealand, we're also bitterly disappointed that our product hasn't been as good as it should have been.

Great companies learn from mistakes and we know we need to learn from this.

As the renowned Kiwi retailer L.V. Martin once said: "It's the putting right that counts."

So how are we going to go about this?

At an international level, the recall has triggered new initiatives in Toyota's global operations to ensure problems of this magnitude don't reoccur.

This includes setting up an Automotive Centre of Quality Excellence in the US where a team of our top engineers will focus on strengthening our quality management and quality control across North America.

Toyota has also invited an independent review of its operations by a team of quality management experts, to ensure we eliminate any shortcomings in our processes. We will make their findings public, alongside the company's plans to improve.

Toyota also acknowledges we need to be more aggressive in investigating complaints we hear direct from customers and move more quickly to address any safety issues we identify.

Steps are being taken to improve the way information on quality and safety is shared across our global operations.

We've got a role to play in New Zealand too. We'll be encouraging service technicians and staff across our 85 dealerships and service branches to be even more diligent in identifying customer concerns and communicating them to Toyota New Zealand.

It's then up to us to ensure we inform the wider Toyota global network to help increase the speed with which we address these faults.

But we recognise we were slow off the mark to communicate the local impact of these recalls to our customers here in New Zealand as we waited for clarification from Toyota in Japan.

We will review every action taken over the past few weeks to see where we can improve the flow of information to our customers.

Like any manufacturer, we'll be judged by the experience of our 700,000 Toyota owners every time they drive our products and every time they visit our dealers.

These recent events may have shaken their confidence in our brand. It is our job to win that confidence back by building better quality cars and providing exceptional customer service.

While problems with Toyota cars have been rare over the years, the issues Toyota is addressing today are by far the most serious we have faced.

Yet we're confident of revitalising the simple but powerful principle that has guided us for over 50 years: To build the highest-quality, safest and most reliable cars in the world.

You can be the judge of how we do.

* Alistair Davis is the chief executive of Toyota New Zealand. He has worked at Toyota New Zealand since 1979, becoming chief executive in 2008.