Toyota's Lentz to hold live interview on Digg today

Taking a page out of the president's playbook, Toyota President and Chief Operating Officer Jim Lentz is taking to social media to answer questions about the car maker's controversial recall of hundreds of thousands of its most popular vehicle models.

Today at 5 p.m. (eastern time), Lentz will be on Digg to answer the the community's top questions about the situation. The live interview is part of what the site calls Digg Dialogg.

Toyota's recent recall due to sticky accelerator pedals has drawn congressional probes and transportation oversight investigations from Washington.

The format is much like that used by President Obama for his YouTube interview after the State of the Union address. Citizens can submit questions and the most popular ones get asked during the live interview. Unfortunately, the question submission and voting period has ended, but you can get a flavor of the questions here. 

A few examples: "What car do you drive?" and "When will Toyota start making hybrid cars that aren't ugly as sin?"

Digg strikes me as an unusual platform for a live interview of this nature, but Lentz is in good company. Past Digg Dialogg guests include FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, actor Matt Damon, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Google exec Marissa Mayer.

Lentz is reponsible for the sales and marketing of Toyota, Scion and Lexus vehicles in the U.S.

Digg says he'll talk about what the heck happened that led to the recalls, what the company is doing to fix it and what Toyota owners need to know.

Sure, it's a good public relations move for a company that's come under such harsh criticism in the past two weeks. But with analysts saying it usually takes more than a generation for a car company to gain back consumer trust after an incident like this, I'm not sure how much live online chats can ease the pain.