But this week concerns about the Prius have accelerated, and Steve Wozniak -- yes, the co-founder of Apple -- has been in the driver's seat, steering the conversation to problems he's had with his own 2010 model.
Speaking at Discovery Forum 2010 in San Francisco on Monday, Wozniak detoured from the official topic and started talking about a "very scary" problem with his 2010 Toyota Prius. "I don't get upset and teed off at things in life, except computers that don't work right," he began, adding that he'd been trying to reach Toyota and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for three months to tell them about what he thought was a software-related acceleration problem.
According to this CNet report, "Toyota has this accelerator problem we've all heard about," Wozniak told the crowd. "Well, I have many models of Prius that got recalled, but I have a new model that didn't get recalled. This new model has an accelerator that goes wild, but only under certain conditions of cruise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again -- safely.
"This is software. It's not a bad accelerator pedal. It's very scary, but luckily for me, I can hit the brakes," he said.
Other drivers have not been as lucky, as this April 2009 Westword feature documented. And this week, the NHTSA finally revealed that it had received about a hundred complaints about the Prius.
Which is still not part of the recall.
