2014 Toyota Prius Four on 2040-cars

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Toyota restructuring US operations, possibly moving to Texas

According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, Toyota is poised to announce Monday that it is restructuring its US operations, which may include plans to relocate some of its operations to Texas. Toyota Motor Sales has been located in California since 1957, and is responsible for North American sales, marketing, and distribution for Toyota, Lexus and Scion. According to Toyota literature, its Torrance operations presently employs 6,156 workers and represents a $2.3-billion investment.
Workers in Toyota's Torrance offices were abuzz about the possible relocation to Texas. One young offspring of a Toyota employee even posted to Twitter that her parents warned about the upcoming move, and she said she's refusing to go.
Rumors at one point had Toyota settling in Richardson, TX, just outside Plano. But Autoblog talked to Richardson Mayor Laura Maczka, who said she would be thrilled if that were true, but has not heard anything on the subject. Autoblog also emailed with Bill Sutherland, a city councilman in Torrance, CA, who said, "To date the only info I have is what I have read in the paper expecting a press release Monday."

Five automakers now being investigated by NHTSA for airbag woes

It appears that Toyota's renotification to owners of recalled vehicles from last year is just the tip of the iceberg for what could potentially be a much larger industry-wide recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a preliminary evaluation investigation into roughly 1.1 million vehicles from Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and parts supplier Takata regarding faulty airbag inflators in several models.
NHTSA has received six reports - three directly, two from Takata and one from Toyota - of vehicles with ruptured airbag inflators from 2002-2006, which resulted in three injuries. So far, all six incidents have occurred in high humidity areas like Florida and Puerto Rico. According to Toyota's latest recall announcement, the inflators may have an improper propellant that could cause it to rupture in a crash and the bag to deploy abnormally.
This new investigation follows a previous recall from April 2013 of about 3.4 million vehicles worldwide for the airbag inflators from Takata. As Autoblog reported, Toyota jumpstarted the new situation when it found that the original list of serial numbers for the faulty part was incomplete and discovered more cars in need of replacement. Honda and Nissan told us that they were investigating whether further models would need called in again as well. Mazda told Autoblog: "Regarding the current Takata situation, we're working closely with NHTSA and investigating the situation, but nothing else to report at this time." Chrysler Group responded to us with the statement: "Chrysler Group engineers are conducting the appropriate analysis. The Company will cooperate fully with the National Highway Traffic Administration."

2014 Toyota Prius crash test rating drops to four stars

If nothing has changed, then how come something changed? That's the question behind the recent drop from five to four stars in the crash test rating for the Toyota Prius. As you can see on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website, the 2014 Prius gets four stars overall while the 2013 got five. The two cars are basically identical, so what gives? Toyota says it is not sure why NHTSA rated the Prius a four this time. Starting with the 2011 model year, NHTSA updated its rating system and says in a FAQ that vehicles that had four- or five-star ratings could get lower ratings "even if no changes have been made to the vehicle." Green Car Reports says that the issue is a new set of frontal barrier tests that were conducted on the 2014 Prius last month and that resulted in the first new bits of crash test data for the car in years. The 2012 and 2013 Prius models were rated based on tests done in February 2011 on a 2011 Prius. All of these are variants of the third-generation model. The next-gen Prius is expected in 2015. Jana Hartline, environmental communication manager at Toyota Motor Sales, USA, told AutoblogGreen that the company doesn't quite know what's going on with the drop in crash test scores: There have been no changes in the test standards and no changes in the car, other than minor reinforcement for small overlap crash test which we believe did not compromise integrity. We are not sure why it rated a 4 this time. We are looking at the test results and we are confident the new generation will move back to 5 stars. 2014 Prius still has a five-star rating for the side crash test and four in the rollover test. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.