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Toyota's Jim Lentz Digg Dialogues
by
Edward Niedermeyer
(IC: employee)
Published: February 9th, 2010
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Perhaps the biggest surprise of Jim Lentz’s appearance on Digg Dialogue was the number of questions that were unrelated to Toyota’s ongoing recalls and quality issues. But even if crowdsourcing had yielded a number of truly tough questions, Lentz had access to them ahead of the interview, giving him time to craft slippery answers. Still, the session provides an interesting of a preview of Toyota’s defense ahead of tomorrow’s congressional hearing. The main thrust: unintended acceleration is mysterious phenomenon, and finding a common cause for multiple incidents could be nearly impossible. Unless investigators find a ghost in Toyota’s electronics code, that may be as good of an answer as we’re ever going to get.
Edward Niedermeyer
More by Edward Niedermeyer
Published February 9th, 2010 12:25 PM
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That video is 28 minutes long, and 28 minutes of PR speak is awful long to stomach. I have to wonder how many people will actually sit down and watch all of that, even for all the people that bothered to ask a question on that "Digg Dialogue" page?
I'm obviously pro Toyota here, but why is TTAC so against them? I watched the 28 minutes and thought he addressed each concern with the facts. Plenty of people are speculating about other possible problems, but there are just as many people speculating about all of the other brands.
If the problem lies in the control software, it will be a bear to find. Writing in a hard override that says, "When the brake pedal is pressed, ignore everything else and apply the brakes", will stop the runaways, but it won't do anything to discover where and why the software is going wrong.
Generally the order for the Prius should be : Electronic drive for MG1 or MG2 has internal fault, inhibit MG1. Foot brake at full travel or parking brake on, inhibit MG1 ( effectively disconnects engine ). MG2 the main traction motor is only allowed a 10kw regen. In the event that the battery controller suddenly disallowed this much braking recharge current because the battery State Of Charge was about to exceed 80% (considered the highest safe level for battery longevity) I would say that the mechanical braking system could easily subsume this. If we are expected to believe that both the brake and accelerator inputs can be ignored - an intermittent ground wire perhaps ? - then Toyota will have to include a redundant sytem with independent brake and accelerator pedal sensors to preclude that scenario. I absolutely don't expect that Toyota will hand over their source code to federal regulators as it is usually treated as a trade secret.