The Prius As A Paper Weight

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 10, 6:06AM EST

Toyota (TM) has announced a recall of its 2010 model Prius, the market leader in the global hybrid car sector. The company says that a software glitch causes a brake problem in the car and that the trouble is not a safety issue. Ford (F) recently recalled its Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids for software upgrades in their brake systems.

The hybrid got a good name among drivers who wanted fuel efficiency and environmentally friendly vehicles. Brake problems in many of the category’s cars may undercut the demand for hybrids and sales may take years to recover.

It may be obvious but still worth noting that people will generally put their own safety ahead of saving money on gas or helping to cut gases that hurt the enviroment and melt the polar ice caps. Very few people live above the circles that surround the Arctic or Antarctic regions. None of those people is likely to be a hybrid customers.

Hybrid vehicles have a high-profile because they have been in the vanguard of a generation of cars which can get high miles per gallon on gas but still offer the performance of a gasoline fueled car. That image may be so badly damaged that consumers will skip the hybrid and wait for electric cars. It is possible that the brakes will work on vehicles run off a battery.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.