Honda Motor makes rare hybrid recall, to fix software glitch

The Japanese car majors seem to be all having major trouble handling the recall shame; special thanks to the Japanese car component suppliers or the real trouble makers. While the recall chart is always headed by the world’s highest selling company and Japanese auto leader Toyota Motor, its Japanese fellow car makers are not far behind, especially Honda and Nissan.

Honda is probably the closest competition to Toyota when certain popular car models in the world are concerned. The Honda Hybrids are also the stiffest competition to the hybrid pioneer Toyota. Now, the Japanese car major Honda makes a massive recall for its hybrid vehicles as if to get equal with its primary Japanese rival.

This time around, the Japanese car maker Honda Motor Co. is going to recall its hybrid models due to some software glitch. Honda has revealed in a company statement that it is preparing to call back a massive 175,000 hybrid vehicles in its home market Japan. The Japanese car maker has stated that the faulty hybrids have some potential serious problems that could be really dangerous for the passengers as well as overall road safety. Honda has revealed that the hybrid models could have some severe software issues in the vehicles’ electronic control units that could cause the cars to accelerate all of a sudden, forcing the drivers to take emergency measures in order to prevent a road accident.

Honda Motor has stated that the affected hybrid vehicles comprise of some of the hybrid models of the popular Fit hatchback (also known as Jazz) as well as the Vezel sub compact SUV, and these vehicles could suddenly accelerate with no prior notice.

A Honda spokesperson in Tokyo has told the media that some incidents regarding the hybrid software glitch has been reported. The reported incidents involved unintended acceleration that has caused property damage so far with no injuries or deaths as yet. The company is recalling the affected vehicles only and the recall is going to happen only in Japan.

A technical expert has revealed to the media, that the recall made by Honda is really a unique one, as he thinks that this recall is most probably the first one which involves a car manufacturer admitting publicly that a software malfunction can be linked to sudden acceleration and involves the fixing of the software.

Interestingly enough, Toyota Motor is busy settling hundreds of lawsuits that involve its vehicles unintentionally accelerated. However, Toyota has never acknowledged of any software issue so far and always blamed other factors such as loose floor mats, driver error or sticky accelerator pedals for lots and deaths.

This is probably where Toyota and Honda defers, and this should actually benefit Honda as well as its consumers in the long run.

The market expert further added this acknowledgement of Honda of its mistakes and its acceptance of software issues are expected to safeguard the company’s reputation and save lives. The company has done a great thing by accepting its faults rather that pushing problems under the floor mat to avoid future problems.