Around nine million cars worldwide have been recalled since September

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Ed Gibbs – automotive consulting director, Frost & Sullivan on the global perspective on the massive vehicle recalls we’ve seen.

HILTON TARRANT: Unprecedented times in the car-making sector, with Toyota announcing a global recall of a number of vehicles. Now the hybrid Prius is also being recalled. Honda announcing a recall last week, another 440 000 cars being recalled now for faulty airbags. And a small numbers announced by Ford and other car-makers in recent days. It brings the total to round about nine million cars worldwide that have been recalled since September. Frost & Sullivan's automotive consulting director, Ed Gibbs, joins us on the line from London. Ed, what's your reading of the response by the carmakers so far, especially by Toyota?

ED GIBBS: Well, I think the initial response has been pretty much delayed, which has exacerbated some of the issues that the customers and the media have picked up upon. I think often with the vehicles it's not so much the recall itself, it's how it's dealt with. And I think in Toyota's case, certainly, it could have been managed a lot quicker, quite a lot better. One of the key issues was the ... that Toyota were aware of some of these problems for some time before it got released and launched to the owners and the drivers.

HILTON TARRANT: I suppose many people around the world don't necessarily appreciate the complexity of the global car-producing sector. You've got a number of producers sharing plant, sharing specific parts supplies, etc, etc, which makes a recall like this a lot trickier to coordinate, or to even investigate and announce.

ED GIBBS: Absolutely. You are quite right. It is a very much a global industry, and the supplier of the electronics for the accelerator pedal that Toyota has suffered with come from different parts of the world, and fitted to a number of different models - not just in Toyota. So those are the challenges that the globalised industry of automotive manufacturing is up against. Even to try and identify where the root cause of the problem is, is part of the battle, and then to remedy it as quickly as possible, especially where safety is concerned. And Toyota of course have got not just brake but accelerator problems which certainly hits the headlines.

HILTON TARRANT: Ed, based on what we've seen so far from the Japanese carmakers, what do you think the repercussions are going to be?

ED GIBBS: I think they are quite severe, especially with the number you mentioned, the nine million units that are affected by this. Not all of them are necessarily totally dangerous. I know that the brake issues - although there have been some damages and accidents caused by the brakes, certainly it's exacerbated the problems overall for Toyota. I certainly think it's very serious. I can see that it's going to affect them severely over a period of time. We can remember Audi suffering some technical problems in North America, and it literally took ten years for the brand to recover. So I'm not saying it's quite that severe, but I think that the brand has been affected. I think that their financial returns over the short and the medium term are going to be dramatically reduced - not only the cost to remedy these recalls, but of course the cost of lost sales because of the damage to the brand.

HILTON TARRANT: Ed Gibbs is automotive consulting director at Frost & Sullivan.