Toyota announced that it is recalling 1.9 million units of the Prius hybrid car manufactured between March 2009 and February 2014. The company said that the car has been recalled in order to fix a software glitch in the hybrid system's boost converter.
997,000 of the affected cars were sold in Japan, 713,000 are registered in the United States and Canada and 130,000 are located in Europe, 167 in India and the rest are scattered in countries all around the world.
Toyota Motors said that the transistors in the boost converter can overheat under heavy load and fail without prior warning. If that occurs, the car automatically enters a mode called failsafe and loses a noticeable amount of power. In rare cases, the hybrid system can shut down entirely and immobilize the car regardless of what speed it is traveling at.
Toyota stresses on the fact that there were no accidents or injuries associated with this defect in the car. Toyota dealerships across the world will call the customers of the affected cars in coming weeks and request them to come to the dealership to update the software.
Toyota says that the process will take 40 minutes. The Japanese company finally said that its other gasoline-electric hybrids are not affected by the problem because their drivetrain uses a different software.
