Lexus has announced a new round of recalls for the 2010 Lexus HS 250h. During NHTSA crash tests, the car spilled fuel sparking Toyota to stop delivery and announce the pending recall of 17,000 vehicles.

The test, performed by an independent contractor, replicated “extreme conditions” and resulted in a “very small amount” of fuel to spill, according to Toyota.

In the test, the vehicle was struck from behind at 50 mph then mounted on a device that spun it around to simulate a rollover. The spill occurred while the vehicle was on its side.

Toyota has not announced a fix for the problem, stating that they will have to replicate the conditions to find out what went wrong before they can address the problem.

Toyota will announce a solution to owners when it becomes available. Owners can continue to drive the car, says Toyota, citing the extreme nature of the test.

Toyota is set to open a new plant in Mississippi, which will take on work that would have been done by the NUMMI plant in California. Toyota shut down the plant shortly after receiving General Motors’ ownership stake in it, and defaulted on the pensions, which are instead being covered by American taxpayers.

The new plant will build Corollas, using 2,000 employees who will technically be working for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi (TMMMS). Toyota operates factories under independent companies to allow for transfer of pension obligations to the American government, and to claim that Toyota has not shut down any plants.

Opening the plant will once again allow Toyota to claim that “nearly all” Corollas for North America will be locally built; once NUMMI was closed in April, Japanese factories built many Corollas for North America.

American taxpayers provided $300 million in subsidies for Toyota to bankrupt NUMMI and move production to the new plant in Mississippi.

Some NAFTA Toyota manufacturing executives have been promoted, ostensibly to allow Toyota to make decisions more quickly; the presidents of the Georgetown (Kentucky), Blue Springs (Missouri), and Cambridge (Ontario) plants were named chairmen, and new presidents were named to replace them. The president of the Princeton (Indiana) plant has been replaced.

North American Toyota plants are operated by separate companies, allowing them to close plants and have the U.S. government pick up the pensions of the workers, as they did with the former NUMMI plant after GM transferred their share to Toyota.

Toyota said it would increase regional operations’ autonomy after its slow process of having all major decisions routed through Japan was exposed in Congressional hearings.