US transport chief to press Toyota on Japan trip

WASHINGTON: US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will visit Toyota's headquarters in Japan next week and deliver a tough message to the auto giant to improve safety, officials said on Friday.

LaHood will travel Monday to Toyota Motor Corp.'s headquarters in central Aichi prefecture to speak to the automaker's president, Akio Toyoda, in the wake of millions of recalls by the automaker.

"You can expect his message to be tough," a Department of Transportation official said on condition of anonymity.

"He appreciates the efforts Toyota has recently made towards improving safety, but only time will tell if they hold to their promise," the official said.

The fast-growing automaker has seen its reputation battered after recalling around 10 million vehicles worldwide, mostly for problems with sudden acceleration which have been blamed for 58 deaths in the United States.

In April, the company agreed to pay a 16.4-million-dollar fine, the largest for an automaker in the United States, for hiding for at least four months the accelerator pedal defects.

Toyoda visited the United States in February and tearfully apologized for the safety woes. He pledged to overhaul quality control measures, including creating a new US safety post and requiring executives to do test-drives.

LaHood is visiting the auto giant's headquarters at Toyoda's invitation. LaHood had previously planned the trip to see Japan's famous bullet trains as President Barack Obama looks to expand high-speed rail in the United States.

LaHood will go to Yamanashi prefecture near Tokyo to visit the test line of Central Japan Railway Co.'s maglev, or magnetically levitated, train, which travels above the ground through an electromagnetic pull.

The company plans to build the world's fastest passenger train, a maglev that would run between Tokyo and Nagoya in Aichi prefecture, at a cost of 5.1 trillion yen (55 billion dollars) by 2025.