toyota sales halted (of 8 models)

[gone-ot]

"...you forgot to put *WHAT* safety feature into the nuclear bomb detonator!!!" --as, suddenly, everything 'fades' to blinding incandescent white!?!?!?

[cfg83]

Hello -

Just more grist for the mill :

Lawmaker: Toyota withheld key evidence - Autos- msnbc.com - Feb. 26, 2010

WASHINGTON - A House lawmaker said Friday that internal Toyota documents show the automaker deliberately withheld key vehicle design and testing evidence in lawsuits filed by Toyota drivers injured in crashes.

In a letter to Toyota's top North American executive, House oversight committee Chairman Edolphus Towns accused Toyota of shielding its testing data on potential problems with Toyota vehicles. Towns wrote that Toyota chose to enter hefty settlements with plaintiffs to avoid disclosing the database, which the lawmaker said was referred to as the "Books of Knowledge."

The Toyota documents "show a systematic disregard for the law and routine violation of court discovery orders in litigation," Towns wrote in the letter to Yoshimi Inaba.

Towns asked Inaba to respond to the issues raised by the documents by March 12.

Toyota said in a statement that it is confident it acted appropriately in product liability lawsuits, and it looks forward to addressing Towns' concerns. The automaker said it is not uncommon for companies to object to demands for documents made in lawsuits.

...

In a July lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, Biller accused Toyota of conspiring to withhold evidence in the rollover cases and forcing him to resign when he told the company it had a legal duty to release evidence to plaintiffs' attorneys.

The lawsuit says Biller was harassed by Toyota and suffered a "complete mental and physical breakdown." He made a wrongful discharge claim and agreed to a $3.7 million severance package.

According to memos Biller provided to the committee, Toyota had a database covering design problems and "countermeasures" that it developed to resolve the rollover problems. It could be searched by vehicles or component part, and was kept by Toyota's technical center. Biller said he discovered the database while working on a case, and warned that it should be released during litigation.

Biller wrote in an e-mail that he agreed to a $1.5 million settlement in 2006 to avoid disclosure in a roll-over case. He also warned that the company needed to keep better track of cases of unintended acceleration.

...

And in the interest of fairness to Toyota :

...
In an October statement, Toyota said Biller's actions were motivated by personal financial interests and denied that he resigned due to legal ethics concerns.
...

CarloSW2

[gone-ot]

...metaphors galore:

...when good love goes bad: "...HE said, SHE said..."

...employee vs. employer

...David vs. Goliath, etc.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by cfg83

Hello -

The lawsuit says Biller was harassed by Toyota and suffered a "complete mental and physical breakdown." He made a wrongful discharge claim and agreed to a $3.7 million severance package.

CarloSW2

Poor baby, he won't make a single car payment on that small amount.

In any event my statement still stands

Toyota is just a company, just like GM or Ford. They are not some knight in shining armor they are for profit and just as amoral as the rest.

The only difference is Toyota comes from a country with different sensibilities everything else is basically the same otherwise.

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

The only difference is Toyota comes from a country with different sensibilities everything else is basically the same otherwise.

...greed is universal, the only difference being the language and locale of greedy people.

[5speed5]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

The only difference is Toyota comes from a country with different sensibilities everything else is basically the same otherwise.

I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about Toyota and they were saying that the Japanese tend to be very nationalistic and they have lots of pride in Japanese workmanship and the quality of their products. It's ingrained in the Japanese culture.

That, however, is a double-edged sword. That same pride prevented them from acknowledging there was a problem much earlier (The Insurance Institute reported to Toyota back in 2002 that they were seeing a rise in the number of reported "sudden accelerations" of their cars). Once they did acknowledge it, they blew it off as a floormat problem. Then when that didn't fly, they invented this mechanical fix for the gas pedal (which, just by chance, I'm sure, was confined to the American/Canadian made pedals).

I'm personally enjoying a little schadenfreude over this Toyota debacle. GM/Ford took so much crud from the media and reviewers over the years and Toyotas were always given a pass (as though God himself personally touched every Toyota made) even though they had head-gasket problems, engine-sludge problems and a lot of the same niggling little problems that all cars do.

[cfg83]

5speed5 -

Originally Posted by 5speed5

...

That, however, is a double-edged sword. That same pride prevented them from acknowledging there was a problem much earlier (The Insurance Institute reported to Toyota back in 2002 that they were seeing a rise in the number of reported "sudden accelerations" of their cars). Once they did acknowledge it, they blew it off as a floormat problem. Then when that didn't fly, they invented this mechanical fix for the gas pedal (which, just by chance, I'm sure, was confined to the American/Canadian made pedals).

I'm personally enjoying a little schauden freude over this Toyota debacle. GM/Ford took so much crud from the media and reviewers over the years and Toyotas were always given a pass (as though God himself personally touched every Toyota made) even though they had head-gasket problems, engine-sludge problems and a lot of the same niggling little problems that all cars do.

2002 would jibe with the article, aka the timeframe when they pushed for cost-cutting and started introducing the inferior pedal design.

I wish I had the URL, but I read that in Japan this has been getting almost no media play. That may have changed with the Congressional hearings, but I think that was true at least a month ago. When it does, often the angle is that it is either a conspiracy of American auto manufacturers or the fault of the USA manufacturing components.

Toyota is definitely a cultural institution in Japan. Kind of like ... GM used to be ... here.

In terms of who makes better cars, I won't dispute that Japanese cars are superior. On the other hand I don't think the quality-gap is enough to make me shun American manufacturers. My goal is to buy "as American" as I can and work with it. I understand that statement doesn't mean what it used to, but that's the best I can do in terms of choices.

CarloSW2

[cfg83]

Me -

Originally Posted by cfg83

Neil -

Wow. So it's the electronics, but it's also garbage-in, garbage out. I consider the artificial-short to be a "sensor gone bad". The software in the car computer is gets bad sensor input and CHOOSES to ignore the driver's input. I am guessing that Toyota will state that the test is not fair, but it does replicate the symptoms quite well. Even if they need a hardware fix for the short, I think a software upgrade would be cheaper to do (rock = ???, paper = accelerator, scissors = brake).

The Titanic Syndrome lives (a set of ifs leading to disaster [for Toyota])!

CarloSW2

As one would expect :

Toyota aims to refute critic who blames electronics, not gas pedals, for sudden acceleration | Washington Examiner

Toyota gave detailed evidence Monday that it says disproves claims that electronics may cause the unwanted acceleration that led to the recall of more than 8 million cars and trucks.
Toyota was attempting to counter tests by an Illinois engineering professor who said Toyota engines could rev without a driver pressing on the gas. The automaker says mechanical problems, not electronics, are to blame.
...
The professor's work "could result in misguided policy and unwarranted fear," Gerdes said.
The work of David W. Gilbert, an automotive technology professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, has been the basis of many doubts that Toyota's mechanical fixes for unwanted acceleration will truly solve the problem.
Gilbert told a congressional hearing Feb. 23 that he recreated sudden acceleration in a Toyota Tundra by short-circuiting the electronics behind the gas pedal — without triggering any trouble codes in the truck's computer.
"We do not believe that electronics are at the root of this issue," Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman, said during a demonstration at the automaker's North American headquarters in Torrance, Calif.
Toyota says faulty gas pedals and floor mats, not electronics, are the cause. It is fixing millions of vehicles to correct those problems. But some drivers have reported continued problems in vehicles that have already been supposedly fixed.
...
According to Exponent, Gilbert connected sensor wires from the pedal of a 2010 Toyota Avalon to an engineered circuit, revving the engine without using the pedal. Gilbert demonstrated the method in an ABC News story last month.
Exponent said it reproduced the test on the same model year Avalon and a 2007 Camry and was able to rev the engine. But it concluded the electronic throttle system would have to be tampered with significantly to create the right conditions.
"Dr. Gilbert's scenario amounts to connecting the accelerator pedal sensors to an engineered circuit that would be highly unlikely to occur naturally, and that can only be contrived in a laboratory," an Exponent report said.
...

This is a fair beef on Toyota's part. I would make the same complaint. From what I have read, it's hard to tell if Gilbert qualified his statement. He recreated a "sensor failure" that led to the sudden acceleration behavior, but I want to know the likelihood of this same sensor failure outside lab conditions.

CarloSW2

[Piwoslaw]

'Runaway Prius' claim dismissed by Toyota - BBC News

Mr Sikes, 61, claimed his car suddenly accelerated on a San Diego freeway and that he could not stop it for some 20 minutes until a highway patrol officer helped him slow the vehicle down.

I couldn't find anything about:

1. What was his max speed during/after 20 minutes of acceleration,
2. How exactly did the police officer help him slow down. What did the officer do that the driver couldn't do himself?

[gone-ot]

...in my best Clint Eastwood voice: "...do you feel lucky Toyota driver, well do ya?"

...of course, the same statement applies to me and my '09 Vibe (yikes!).