Prius owners in Japan rushed to dealers yesterday, a day after Toyota's president announced a global recall.
Instead of screwdrivers and wrenches, what the mechanic is using to tackle the fix is a small laptop-like device that rewrites programming for the brakes.
Some 400,000 Prius vehicles globally, about half of them in Japan where the gas-electric hybrid is manufactured, will get a repair for the glitch in the antilock brake system.
Prius owners in Japan are the first to get the fix - at Toyota dealers nationwide. A similar repair for 139,000 Prius cars sold in North America will follow as dealers notify owners next week. A fix is also in the works for 53,000 Prius cars in Europe.
At a repair shop in the back of a Tokyo dealership, a mechanic plugged a long black cord dangling from a handheld device - about the size of a book - into a socket at the bottom of the dashboard, beneath the steering wheel.
An assistant opened the hood, to make sure everything was all right, turned to the mechanic in the driver's seat, and asked, "Ready?" The mechanic began pushing buttons on the device and pressing on its black and white touch panel.