i-reporters. and there you see the two experts right there. joining me to talk about toyota and the recalls and all of the problems, the image that analysts auto analyst, lauren fix and carlos valdes-dapena, from cnn.com, thank you for being here. we ve finally heard from the president of toyota, he apologized today saying it is his responsibility to fix this. now, we can assume that he is talking, number one, about the physical repairs to the cars, but there s also going to be some image repair. lauren, how tough is this going to be? oh, it s going to take some time, don. i mean, you think about how long it took for toyota to come around as a little japanese auto manufacturer and build the brand image, the reliability, the quality, the consumers know they will walk in and have a great car, great resale value. now we don t know what impact this will be. sales are down. obviously this black eye, if you
braking system. they are trying to fix gas pedal problems on millions of recalled cars. how much is this hurting toyota? cnn s kyung lah tells us about it. i m going to give them an opportunity to prove himself. reporter: many loyal toyota owners battered by headlines of recalls and run-arounds now wary of a company they ve trusted for decades, and here s why. number one, accusations the auto giant failed to come clean with customers about serious safety issues. according to cnnmoney.com, toyota knew and didn t tell you, at least not right away, with the flaw on its braking system on the hot-selling prius hybrid, the automaker knew about it a month ago and claimed it made repairs on the assembly line at the end of january. little comfort for those who bought a prius before last week. toyota is confirming it s now checking for possible problems with its lexus hybrid 250-h.
but i am rooting for them. i appreciate that, thanks, steph. sure. checking the top stories right now. the latest numbers show a lower jobless rate, but many more jobs lost in this recession than we thought. the president wants to get people back to work. we re waiting for him to speak, where he has been meeting this hour with small business owners. he s going to speak in just a little bit. that was scheduled for the bottom of the hour, 12:30, the president running a little bit late. see him in just a bit. an apology, but no word of a new recall. for the first time since toyota s problems began piling up two weeks ago, the auto company s president speaks out, akio toyoda set it s a focus on quality. and a dangerous winter storm bears down on the mid-atlantic and parts of the northeast, some areas could get up to 2 feet of
let s be realistic. come on. you re talking to a louisiana guy here. you saw the trouble with the satellite, that s probably because of the weather, and they just got slammed last weekend, chad. they did. and there s going to be a very, very quick line between snow and no snow, don, we ll get into this in the next hour as well, but i think d.c. s going to get what we considered called underdeveloped snow, at least for the first ten hours, it s not going to be big, light, fluffy stuff that falls to the ground like in colorado and utah, this is going to be heavy, wet, slop. there you go. it could be 10 inches of snow, but by the time it slops down, it could be 5 inches of slush, and that is going to be very difficult to move. it s going to be hard on your heart to move, i don t want to lose people just because you re trying to shovel driveways, although you re supposed to, and your walkwaywayw ways, but thisa dangerous snow, and high water content and very heavy. we will chec
many service centers are swamped, staying open 24 hours to fix the sticking accelerator pedals that prompted last month s recall of millions of vehicles. it causes you to be anxious. you can t just jump in your car and expect it to do what it s supposed to do now. reporter: but now many auto experts claim an electrical malfunction may be the rob, not those pedals. s and big picture, toyota will almost certainly have a credibility problem long after all the repairs are complete. every car manufacturer has issues. right. and the secret is that, you know, they do build a quality product, and i think it will cause a lot of customers to go elsewhere and it will be very hard and expensive to earn their loyalty back. kyung lah joins us now from japan. it s the top story here in the united states, so how is it playing out there in japan? reporter: well, it s playing out here more as an economic story, because toyota in this export-driven economy is the