Prius owners face testing woes in Ga.

ATLANTA, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Georgia emissions testing officials have discovered a glitch with the 2004 Toyota Prius electric hybrid car that causes the vehicle to fail emissions tests.

Tim Smith, the program manager for the vehicle emissions and inspection program at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said the software used by the testing program, which hooks directly to a car's onboard diagnostics module, is incompatible with the Prius, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday.

"We are concerned about this becoming a larger problem," Smith said. "We expect a lot more of these vehicles to show up at these stations."

Smith told the newspaper the department hopes to have a solution for the problem by next year, when many more Prius cars in the state will come off Georgia's three-year emissions testing grace period for new cars.

The official said testers have been informed of a 10-step process that can be used in place of the standard test but lack of practice has made the system difficult to execute.

However, Smith said to the Journal-Constitution that with practice "we expect that they will be able to do it blindfolded."