Skip to main content

Toyota offering to buy back an electric SUV because its wheels could fall off

 

Toyota has issued a warning to owners of its BZ4X electric SUV that they should stop driving the vehicle and have it transported to a dealership because of a severe problem: the wheels could fall off while driving even after just a short time on the road.

Toyota did not know why this was happening, but the automaker said it would investigate and have the problem corrected once engineers understood why the wheels were coming loose. Now, over a month later, Toyota has not yet identified the issue and is offering to simply buy back the SUVs from customers who no longer want to wait for the problem to be resolved.

Because the issue became evident soon after the SUVs went on sale, there are only about 260 BZ4X owners in the United States facing this situation. There are more who had ordered the SUV but not yet had it delivered when the "Do not drive" warning was announced. Those customers have never been able to accept delivery of their SUVs.


The automaker has offered a number of options beyond the buyback while it asks the owners for their patience. Toyota is also offering customers the free use of another Toyota vehicle until the issue is found and corrected. Toyota is also offering owners $5,000 toward their car payments or as a partial refund of the purchase price. Toyota will also extend the vehicles' factory warranty by the amount of time — whatever it ends up being — that the SUVs have been taken out of service.


For the customers who simply want to sell their vehicles back, the exact terms of the repurchase may vary depending on various state regulations and specifics of the owner's situation.


The BZ4X is nearly identical to the Subaru Solterra electric SUV. The two Japanese automakers developed the vehicles jointly. Subaru did not have to recall any SUVs in the United States, though, because none had been delivered before the problem was discovered.

Toyota is not the first automaker to recall electric vehicles in recent years. General Motors offered to buy back Chevrolet Bolt EVs following reports of battery fires. That case involved potentially many more vehicles than the relative of handful of BZ4Xes, but Bolt owners were able to, at least, continue using their vehicles with certain restrictions. GM eventually discovered the source problem and is now able to replace batteries in vehicles that needed them. GM has not said how many customers took advantage of the buy-back offer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hurricane Hits Texas, One Person Reported Dead

Hurricane Harvey hit Texas as a Category 4 storm on Friday, battering the coast with 130-mph winds and torrential rain. It was the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in more than a decade leaving a massive destruction, loss of electricity, wrecked buildings and has so far killed at least one person. Scroll down to see more pictures of the incident:
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenyan Law Court dismisses case of man seeking compensation after his wife eloped with another man from hospital

  A lawsuit filed by a man seeking to be compensated by St Mary's Mission Hospital in Kenya for allowing his wife to leave the hospital with another man after giving birth, has been struck out by a law court.    The appellant had sued the St. Mary's Mission hospital at Kakamega law courts in 2020 seeking general damages from the facility on grounds that the hospital had discharged his wife and allowed her to leave with another man. After delivering and at the time of discharge, the wife of the appellant claimed he was the baby's father.   The court of appeal judges Patrick Kiage, Mumbi Ngugi and Francis Tuiyott sitting at the Kisumu Court of Appeal, empathized with the man, but disagreed that he (the appellant) be compensated by the hospital for not detaining his wife.  They upheld the lower court's judgement which added that there's no remedy that lies in the law for such grievances.   Kiage said;   "I agree that if a man takes the woman he loves to t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nigerian Military hands over 23 rescued children to UNICEF through Borno State

The Nigerian military has handed over 23 children who were formerly associated with Boko Haram insurgents, to UNICEF through the Borno State government.  The children were picked up during various military operations around the north-east region. Aged between 17 and 10 years, the boys and girls confessed to the military that they have been assisting the Boko Haram insurgents either as fighters or domestic helps in the camps. The Theatre Commander of a military counterinsurgency force, Abba Dikko, said the 23 children were released in line with Nigeria military’s commitment to the observance of human rights. He observed that the children and other vulnerable persons were victims who faced with the highly unstable circumstances induced by the conflict would have had little option but to fall under the thrall of the insurgents.  “We were able to identify this category of people, especially the women, the aged and children to whom it behooves our sense of duty and res...
Post a Comment
Read more