Toyota Motor Corp. (IW 1000/8) asked owners of its 2014-2016 Lexus luxury vehicles in the U.S. to go to dealerships for a fix to software that can disable navigation, audio and climate control systems.
The action also includes 2016 Toyota Land Cruiser sport utility vehicles, company spokeswoman Cindy Knight said on June 8. The software that runs several electronic functions was damaged by data broadcast via satellite by a weather and traffic service provider, she said, without identifying that supplier. Knight said Toyota doesn’t know yet how many vehicles or what regions are affected.
Some Lexus owners in the Chicago area and the southern U.S. complained to the company Tuesday about the software issue and customers in California said on Twitter that they also were affected. A posting on YouTube showed the navigation system on a Lexus RX350 SUV starting up, then going to a blank purple screen and restarting.
Knight said that in some situations, the faulty software can cause the center display in the dashboard to stop and then restart repeatedly.
Toyota stopped the broadcasting of the defective data Tuesday night, Knight said. For vehicles on which the software has been damaged, the affected computer must undergo a forced reset, she said.
Several owners posted on Twitter that they were able to reset the screens by removing the cable from the car battery’s negative terminal while the vehicle was off and then waiting about 30 seconds before reattaching the wiring.
