Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest carmaker, said it will add new product quality field offices in the U.S. and Canada to speed investigations of vehicle defects after its worst recall crisis.
The automaker will add seven North American field service offices, bringing the total to 21, including one being set up in San Francisco this month to specialize in hybrid vehicles, Dino Triantafyllos, vice president of Toyota's U.S. quality division, told reporters today in Toyota City, Japan, where the company is based.
"These steps are more than fixing past mistakes," Triantafyllos said.
Toyota is working to regain its reputation for quality after recalling about 8 million vehicles worldwide for defects linked to unintended acceleration. The company is preparing to recall 270,000 Lexus and Toyota cars for a flaw that may cause engines to stall and it faces further questions from a U.S. congressional committee about vehicle safety.
The automaker's field service offices will each focus on specific problems, Triantafyllos said, without saying what the budget is for the operations. Hybrid issues will be addressed in the San Francisco office; heating, cooling, ventilation in Jacksonville, Florida; trucks and chassis components in Houston; and high altitude issues and sport- utility vehicles in Denver, Colorado, he said.
The company "will spend whatever we think is necessary" for quality-related operations, said Hiroaki Sunakawa, general manager of Toyota's customer quality engineering division.
Toyota's engineers have reviewed cases of unintended acceleration and found no links to its electronics, Triantafyllos said. The company has completed over 90 percent of hybrid brake adjustments and more than 4 million fixes for acceleration recalls, he said.
