Ford says emphatically no, but the evidence (such as it is) indicates certain similarities. Let’s take a look…

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According to MSNBC, Toyota’s US-based spokesfolks are refusing to confirm a Nikkei report that Toyota has issued a recall of 270,000 2010 model-year Priuses for brake issues the company has already acknowledged. “We have no information on any decision to recall the Prius,” said Toyota Motor Sales USA spokesman John Hanson, who said the company is working with the NHTSA on a “preliminary evaluation” of the problem. According to another report, the recall (which will be filed “shortly”) involves 100k Priuses in the US market, with the remaining 176k in Japan.

While Toyota may or may not recall the Prius, Ford is not recalling its Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrids for what appears to be a similar issue (poor transitions between regenerative and conventional brakes). Instead, Ford is instituting a “Customer Satisfaction Program” involving free software upgrades it says will fix the problem, which was first reported by Consumer Reports.

UPDATE: Ford responds with a press release after the jump.

UPDATE 2: While we sort some of these late-breaking developments out, here’s another spurious log for the fire: ABC News impugns “federal investigations were extremely limited in scope, after negotiations involving former safety investigators who had been recruited to work for Toyota’s Washington, D.C. office.”

UPDATE 3: Oy!

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Complaints about allegedly faulty Prius brakes are growing by the minute. This morning’s Nikkei reports that in addition to the 14 complaints received by  Japan’s Transport Ministry, dealers in Japan are handling 77. Today, Toyota conceded that the brakes can get confused on icy roads. (Read More…)

And the hits, they keep on coming. Now, brakes of the Prius flake out.

Japan’s transport ministry has received 14 complaints about problems with brakes on Toyota’s latest. The ministry has asked Toyota to investigate the complaints, says the Nikkei [sub.] “Those are purely reported cases, so we still need to investigate to find out where problems really exist,” said a ministry spokesman, who said that the number of complaint over such a short time-span “more than usual.” There is more in the U.S.A. (Read More…)

Toyota’s head start on hybrid technology is easily the most significant advantage any one automaker holds over any other. It’s next closest competitor in hybrid offerings is Honda which is facing serious challenges as its Prius competitor, the Insight, is off to an incredibly weak start. To capitalize on this advantage, Toyota plans to up annual production of its hybrids to one million units by 2011. Despite reports that Toyota is refocusing on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as a long-term option, Yoshihiko Tabei, chief analyst at Kazaka Securities believes:

For the foreseeable future, the focus of Toyota’s (low-emission car) strategy will be on hybrids, not electric or fuel-cell cars. Except for Honda, Toyota is facing little competition in hybrids and is set to put distance between itself and other automakers

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TTAC Commentator 1981.911.sc writes:

So, today I passed a guy putting gas in his Prius on the side of the road. I assume he ran out of gas. Irony?

My question: can a Prius run on just battery power when the gas tank is empty? And if this guy ran it out of gas AND drained the battery, was he FUBAR? I assume it has to have a good battery to run, gas in the tank or not.

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A happy marriage isn’t exactly the easiest thing to engineer. Gasoline and electricity are about as compatible as Donald Trump and Mother Theresa. I know, Ferdinand Porsche built a “hybrid” in 1899, and there have been others since. But its time to bust the very myth that I’ve been guilty of perpetuating myself: Porsche’s “Mixte” wasn’t a real hybrid. It was an EV with a gas generator to extend its range when the battery gave out, just like the Volt. That’s like calling a single guy with a house cleaner and a hooker “married”.  But the Toyota engineers pulled it off, teaching the two oldest propulsion systems how to dance, simultaneously. And in doing so, the Prius has become the most revolutionary car since the Model T. (Read More…)

Asiaone Motoring reports that Toyota are now pushing forward on their constructions of plants in the United States and China which had previously been put on hold. It should come as no surprise that part of the reasoning behind this decision is to meet growing demand in China. More importantly, Toyota needs to protect itself from the strong yen, a consideration that now apparently outweighs weakness in the US market.  The report says that Toyota is expected to invest and additional 100 billion yen (about $1.1b) to get these plants completed. Although these plants will increase capacity by 200,000 units, Toyota plan on halting production on lines in Japan and the UK, as the firm must still reduce capacity by 1 million units in order for this investment to work. Though the move is a clever one, it highlights the enormous pressure the world’s number one automaker finds itself under: overcapacity is bad enough, but when so much of its production is based in Japan, it deal with reduced production while paying for expansions in cheaper production zones. The upside? This plan could lead to US production of the Prius at the under-construction Mississippi plant sooner than expected.

As we saw in the last VBW, the Volt’s range-extender still needs some software work. But efforts to to keep the gas engine from acting like a thrashing, disembodied dervish will have to balance the desire for smooth operation and maximum efficiency.  And it’s looking like efficiency in charge sustaining (CS) mode won’t match the hybrid standard-setters. Volt chief powertrain engineer Alex Cattelan breaks the news gently to the true believers at GM-volt.com

You’ve got to understand that all of the decisions that we’ve made around this product are made because its an EV. That is the first and foremost thing that it needs to be. So because it is an EV some of the decisions that we’ve made around engine operation will be different than what Toyota makes in its parallel hybrid. For them they are always operating in hybrid mode so they need to optimize everything for engine operation.

In our case we’re optimizing everything for EV operation and the secondary is certainly going to be better than conventional vehicles, but were not necessarily totally optimizing the system for charge sustaining mode because we don’t want to compromise electric vehicle mode.

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Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, sure seems to think so. “I think long-term, Prius as a nameplate could even outsell Camry as a nameplate, into this next decade,” he tells Wards Auto. When asked if the Prius’s success would trade off with the Camry, he replied in the negative, saying “I think Prius will become just that much stronger.” But it’s been a long time since a Prius-sized vehicle, let alone a hatchback, has been the best-selling car in the US. And perhaps Lentz was merely making the case for a full line of Prius-branded vehicles, an idea he says has not been approved, but remains his “dream.” Prius will need something to push it past its larger sibling. Both models set their all-time annual sales records in 2007, when the Camry sold 473,108 units, while Prius sold only 181,221 units.

For politicians, the sphere of the personal shrinks as that of the political swells, until for some, the personal all but disappears. Then, even the choice of car becomes political. During the recent elections, one car loomed so large in the fleets of presidential aspirants that the manufacturer actually touted it as “The Candidates’ Choice” in advertisements that ran in Capitol Hill publications, such as Roll Call. Even more tellingly, the particular vehicle was unique to the left side of the aisle, and all were 2007 models, purchased after election season had begun.

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Some politicians who supported the Cash for Clunkers program didn’t want to be seen promoting a billion dollar (or three) bailout for car dealers, what with car dealers rating just above sex offenders as “people who I’d like to support with my taxes.” So, not surprisingly, the C4C bill was wrapped in a mantle of green; structured to reward buyers who traded gas guzzlers for [marginally] more fuel efficient vehicles. In practice, the “program mostly involved swaps of old Ford or Chevrolet pickups for new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage, according to an analysis of new federal data by The Associated Press. The single most common swap — which occurred more than 8,200 times — involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers.” It gets worse . . .

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A brand is a promise to the consumer. It’s the umbrella under which all products must shelter. All the people responsible for a brand must ensure that it meets that promise. The Toyota Prius is a promise of reliable transportation that achieve high-mileage with low emissions. So it’s no wonder that Toyota has decided to stretch the brand to other vehicles. Oh, wait, the Prius isn’t a brand. It’s a model within a brand, which contains other examples of reliable transportation that achieves high-mileage with low emissions. Is that confusing? Well if it isn’t now, it soon will be. “The Highlander hybrid and Camry hybrid do OK, but calling it ‘Synergy Drive’ never resonated with consumers,” veteran Toyota dealer Earl Stewart told Automotive News [sub]. “But they can make hay on the Prius name. It’s a magic name. If somebody says ‘I drive a Prius,’ everybody knows what he means.” But for how long? The truth about a brand is that its products must fulfill the brand’s promise, or the brand dies. Confusing that brand diminishes it and alienates the people who gave birth to it in the first place. Maybe not straight away, but eventually. And forever.

Sitting in the new Toyota Prius, I suddenly blurted out, “Open the pod bay doors, Hal,” half expecting something to happen. Alas, I was still entombed in the resin chamber that passes for an automobile interior. If Ralph Nader had been an engineer, this is the car he would have designed, a vehicle for people who loathe automobiles.