Japan media criticizes Toyota president

The company name is spelled and pronounced differently from the founding family name because Toyota was considered to have a luckier number of brush strokes when written in Japanese.

Toyoda is the second successive Toyota president to apologize for car defects. The first, Katsuaki Watanabe, shocked a news conference in 2006, bowing low to the group before promising to improve quality.

Toyoda bowed as he greeted reporters, but not in apology. He told the hastily called news conference that the company had not decided what to do about problems in the braking system of the Prius gas-electric hybrid. The high-mileage, low-pollution car is a leader in its field and a symbol of Toyota technology.

Toyoda and Shinichi Sasaki, who oversees quality control, offered no new explanations for the braking problem.

Prius drivers, mostly in the U.S. but some in Japan, have complained of a short delay before the brakes kick in — a flaw Toyota says can be fixed with a software programming change. The lag occurs as the car is switching between brakes for the gas engine and the electric motor — a process that is key to the hybrid's increased mileage.

Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said Friday the company continues to weigh options on how to handle repairs of the problem, and it is communicating with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the U.S.

Among options are a campaign to notify Toyota owners to bring their cars in for repairs, or a full-fledged safety recall. Michels said he could not say when Toyota would make a decision.

The automaker said it fixed the programming glitch in Prius models that went on sale since last month, but has done nothing on 270,000 Prius cars sold last year in Japan and the U.S.

The lack of action has raised questions about whether there is a bigger problem, but Sasaki denied any cover up.

There is high-level government concern in Japan about Toyota's quality fiasco. Cabinet ministers have expressed alarm and urged the company to move more quickly.

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