Toyota Review by U.S. Finds No Electronic Flaws in Runaway Cars

[IDemo]

Source: Bloomberg

February 08, 2011, 1:36 PM EST
By Angela Greiling Keane

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Unintended acceleration in Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles was rooted in mechanical flaws rather than electronic defects, a U.S. investigation found.

NASA, the U.S. space agency, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today said a 10-month probe of defects that led to recalls of more than 8 million vehicles worldwide found no electronic causes. Safety advocates and some lawmakers had pointed to electrical faults as a reason for the reports about the world’s largest automaker.

“Our conclusion, that Toyota’s problems were mechanical, not electrical, comes after one of the most exhaustive, thorough and intensive research efforts ever undertaken,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in prepared remarks.

The review may put to rest questions about quality at Toyota, the only major carmaker to post a decline in U.S. sales last year as the overall market gained 11 percent. Toyota sales fell 0.4 percent to 1.76 million vehicles as the company paid $48.8 million in fines to U.S. regulators over the way some of the recalls, the largest by an automaker, were conducted.

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-08/toyota-review-by-u-s-finds-no-electronic-flaws-in-runaway-cars.html

[fatbuckel]

1. There were people able to re-create the problems electronically.

[dmallind]

2. And I can recreate Ford's electrical fires with a blowtorch. Doesn't mean one caused them

I tend to think NASA and the DOT have enough electrical and mechanical expertise to get this right in ten months.

[naaman fletcher]

3. I remember the audi scare..

In the end, it was people putting their foot on the wrong pedal. same here I am sure.

[1monster]

5. I had two vans do the sudden acceleration bit. The first was my husband, and his

van did it several times, but despite having the van checked out by five or six different garages, including the dealership, no reason was ever found and he got rid of it.

Ten years later, in a different van, I was turning into my driveway at about two or three mph when my car did the same sudden acceleration. I did not have my foot on the gas thinking it was the brake. I was standing on the break and the van kept moving toward the house. (Proof: my driveway was covered in pine needles and my rear tires tried so hard to grip the pavement that they cleared two tire-sized paths.)

When I realized that the van was not going to stop, I threw it into park and stopped immediately. It should have been neutral, but I was getting slightly panicky...

The difference from ten years before was that a reason for sudden acceleration had been found. A miniscule amount of water got into the wiring in the cruise control and created a circuit which caused the engine to accelerate. The next day, I had the cruise control, which I never used anyway, disconnected and I never had another problem like that.

The reason the car companies always come up with is that the driver hit the gas instead of the brake. But that was not true in many of the cases.

[Xithras]

4. Not exactly.

A couple of people managed to simulate the runaway effect by shorting a couple of the wires leading to the computer and engine. By shorting the RPM sensor, for instance, they managed to trick the computer into accelerating out of control. They didn't recreate a software problem, but instead created an old fashioned "crossed wire" problem. Several "cable media engineers" theorized that friction on the wires could expose the copper, allowing this kind of short to occur. It was briefly considered to be one of the most likely scenarios for a runaway engine.

Several of the cars involved in runaways were examined for this type of failure. No wire defects were found. Wire shorts are not the source of the problem.

[IDemo]

6. Gilbert was pretty well exposed here ->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3gQWGZ8uBw

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

7. syringes in pepsi cans and fingers in chilli all over again,

shitheads looking to cash in on public hysteria.

[Kurmudgeon]

8. The policeman, his family, the grandmother and others weren't able to cash in.

[Festivito]

9. Suddenly we can ASSUME runaway FAIRNESS on the part of government.

Only 25-billion dollars involved for Toyota. What could go wrong?

We, as a nation, assume we are run by fairness, not money madness, when it suits us. Or, is that when it suits our money madness.

[Nihil]

10. Even the government give up flogging the dead horse after a while ...

> a 10-month probe of defects that led to recalls of more than
> 8 million vehicles worldwide found no electronic causes.

Shame that the GM contingent can't.

As for the Audi "unexpected acceleration problem", this was operator error.

:shrug:

[dmallind]

11. Well not entirely

Brake pedal and floor mat interference was a culprit too - just not the Luddite brake by wire conspiracy theory.

[Nihil]

12. True.

> Brake pedal and floor mat interference was a culprit too

How could I have forgotten the classic "Floor mat installation
instructions for US dealerships" bun-fight?

Oops. :blush: