GENEVA (AP) — Toyota Motor Corporation kept up its worldwide damage-control campaign, apologising to European customers at the Geneva Auto Show for its safety issues and the concerns they have caused.

Vice-chairman Kazuo Okamoto's apology follows public apologies by Toyota President Akio Toyoda in China and the United States.

Analysts say Toyota must do more than show appealing new products to win back customers — it will have to persuade consumers it is taking steps to identify all safety issues and correct them and any systems.

Okamoto pledged that the automaker is "taking a fresh look at every process in our operations," including design, manufacturing, sales and service.

Toyota has issued global recalls totaling 8.5 million vehicles since October for sticky gas pedals, faulty floor mats and glitches in braking software.

Although it is the world's largest automaker, Toyota's position is far less dominant in Europe than it is in the United States.

The Japanese automaker has just a 5 percent market share in Europe, home to a very fragmented market with many national brands winning favour with domestic consumers, like Volkswagen in Germany, Fiat in Italy and Citroen and Renault in France.

Speaking later to reporters, Okamoto said Toyota never set out to become the world's largest automaker, and the company viewed the achievement as consumers' response to Toyota's quality. But he acknowledged the recalls have forced a rethink not on the company's size but its response.

"From now on, when we have customers coming to us to say we want to have your car delivered to us, maybe now we will ask them to be more patient so we will really give them optimal quality," he said.

Among the underlying issues that have emerged from Toyota's quality issues is that the automakers' regional entities did not communicate enough with each other to allow earlier identification of issues.

Toyota Europe CEO Tadawshi Arashima said new regional committees with powers to issue their own recalls will give Europe more autonomy. About 20 European executives will be on the company's new special committee for global quality, chaired by Toyoda.