Toyota has announced a global recall of 625,000 Prius hybrids due to software glitch which causes the hybrid system of the driven vehicle to shut down. As a result, the car stops because of loss of power.
One of the affected models is the Prius minivan known as Prius Plus in the Europe region, Prius V and in other markets called Prius Alpha.
The vehicles which were produced in May 2010 until November 2014 are preferred by Hollywood stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz and other eco-conscious people. Around 160,000 of the affected cars are distributed all over Europe, 120,000 in North America and 340,000 vehicles in Japan.
The Japanese car maker has confirmed that there are no reported cases of crashes and injuries. But the company demands the recall to fix the Prius models which encountered issues in its power converter.
"Owners of the involved vehicles will be notified by first class mail. Toyota dealers will update the software for both the motor/generator control ECU and hybrid control ECU in the involved vehicles," the car maker wrote.
Toyota was able to market more than 7 million hybrid vehicles around the world since the launch of the company's Prius hybrid in 1997 during the first bulk production of the 'green' cars.
A similar issue was reported last year which resulted to the recall of 1.9 million Prius vehicles.
Besides recall issues, the car company is also working on reforming the 'family allowance'. Union argues that the current structure is outdated which was based on the 1940s, 50s, and 60s concept that the company workers are the only breadwinners in their family.
The Union suggests that child care should be prioritized since education is expensive in the country of Japan. Even if both parents with lower wages are working, the income would not be enough. To address this, they proposed for the 'spouse allowance' to be eliminated to increase the child allowance four times.
