Today is set to be a rough one for one of New Zealand's most popular vehicles.
A lawsuit has been lodged in Australian federal court by lawyers from Bannister Law and Gilbert and Tobin. In it, they allege that Toyota Hilux, Fortuner, and Prado models fitted with the brand's prolific 1GD-FTV 2.8-litre turbo-diesel engine fail to meet acceptable exhaust emission standards. It's understood that over 250,000 vehicles in Australia are affected by the potential fault.
In particular, the action states that the issue stems from potentially dodgy diesel particulate filters (DPF) fitted to vehicles with the aforementioned engine sold between October 2015 and July 2019. A DPF ordinarily is designed to collect soot and dangerous particles from between the engine and the exhaust, ultimately burning off these contents in a process called regeneration.
“This regeneration system fails, or has a propensity to fail, to prevent the DPF from becoming partially or completely blocked,” reads the Bannister Law notice.
“This, in turn, causes the Affected Vehicles to experience a myriad of other issues, including decreased power, increased fuel consumption and the emission of excessive white smoke and diesel particulate matter into the atmosphere.”
Specifically, accord to the lawsuit the faulty DPFs don't burn off particulate matter in urban driving (which is the majority of driving for most vehicles), which leads to DPF blockages, increased emissions, increased engine wear, and worse economy.
Driven contacted Toyota New Zealand for a statement on the developments, and it responded by confirming that its is working on the issue.
"Toyota New Zealand confirms it has been working with owners of diesel vehicles produced between late 2015 and mid-2018 to fix a Diesel Particulate Filter issue. Technical experts from Japan are also in New Zealand this week working with Toyota New Zealand diesel technicians on the small number of vehicles that persist with the problem," it said in a pre-prepared statement.
"The DPF issue is mostly confined to Toyota Hilux vehicles in the North Island. Diesel-powered Toyotas manufactured since mid-2018 are not impacted.
"Toyota apologises sincerely to affected customers and can assure them that it is doing its upmost to expedite a solution. Customers seeing unusual white exhaust smoke from their 2016- mid 2018 Hilux should contact our Customer Dialogue Centre on 0800 TOYOTA or their local Toyota store, and if you are a fleet customer contact your Toyota account manager, to arrange an engine inspection."