Toyota will likely announce this week that it plans to recall at least 311,000 of its 2010 Prius hybrids around the world to fix the brakes, reports Japanese media and the New York Times.

It will become Toyota's third major recall at present, following two for unintended acceleration. But at least on this one, at least the numbers are fairly paltry compared to the eight million cars under recall around the world, more than five million of them in the U.S.

A Prius recall hurts, however, because the car has been emblematic of how Toyota differs from other automakers:

It's a high-volume hybrid that sells at a relatively affordable price, often cited as the kind of vehicle that Detroit should have been building.