Ghost Busters Go Bust: Toyotas Declared Ghost-Free
After tarring and feathering Toyota for alleged sudden unintended acceleration, after inventing a mass murder of 89 that creates a massive 261,000 hits on Google, after dragging executives in front of tribunals of the Washington Inquisition, after shaking down Toyota for unprecedented $48.8 million in fines, after NASA engineers subjected Toyota cars to torture worse than waterboarding, the NHTSA today announced that they found …
… exactly nothing.
In a press conference today at 2pm in Washington, the DOT presented the results of a 10-month review. It was commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and conducted by NASA engineers. The engineers who usually busy themselves with Mars and Venus went on the hunt for the ghost in Toyota’s machine.
“A U.S. government investigation showed no link between electronic throttles and unintended acceleration in Toyota Motor Corp vehicles,” writes Reuters, “a victory for the world’s top automaker battered by recalls over runaway vehicles.” The NASA’s scientists found no ghosts, no tin whiskers, no shorts, not a shred of evidence.
Even “hold Toyota’s feet to the fire” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had to concede: “We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended acceleration in Toyotas,”
However, the punishment of Toyota before found guilty left lasting marks. Hounded by a government that has ownership interest in two car companies that are in direct competition with Toyota, the Japanese carmaker lost a full two percent of market share in the U.S. in 2010. While the market grew 11 percent in the U.S. in 2010, Toyota was treading water. This was the first time in 12 years that Toyota lost ground in the U.S. Interestingly, SUA remained a U.S. phenomenon, as freshly evidenced by Toyota’s strong sales elsewhere.
As Reuters notes: “The recalls, government scrutiny, which included testimony by Chief Executive Akio Toyoda at congressional hearings a year ago, and more than $30 million in fines damaged Toyota’s reputation for quality and reliability.”
Toyota’s troubles in the U.S. are far from over. Toyota has to contend with hundreds of lawsuits, along with an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they can grind you down.
Audi had received a similar, but by comparison much milder treatment in the 80s that nonetheless nearly killed the brand in the U.S. Audi was subsequently exonerated by the NHTSA, which concluded that driver error was the cause. At the time, I had witnessed the drama from the inside. Today’s revelation comes as no surprise to me.
Nonetheless, SUA remains a phenomenon that affects all brands. After Toyota had been singled out and painted as SUA incarnate, there is a belated study by the august body of the National Academy of Sciences which looks into unintended acceleration in cars and trucks across the auto industry. Results are expected sometime this fall. Any guesses what they may be?
Despite coming up empty, LaHood said the NHTSA is thinking about new regulations: Brake override systems on all vehicles, standardizing keyless ignition systems, event data recorders in all new vehicles.
The NHTSA also considers conducting more research on electronic control systems and will look into the placement and design of accelerator and brake pedals. Shades of Audi …
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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@ PeteMoran > I don't think so. All the headlines, including those on this forum, state that NASA cleared the electronics, when that is not what the full report states. Unlike the NASA engineers, LaHood stated unconditionally that the electronics were not to blame. That IS dishonest. The fact is that NASA did find faults, but they couldn't duplicate a SUA condition. There is a statement on p. 20 of the full report that clearly indicates that NASA still believes that an electronic-based SUA condition could exist, but that they simply couldn't find it. I didn't intentionally leave anything out of my post. I thought it was already too long. While you responded point-by-point to my post, you also left out details that support the position that I was advocating. For example, they did verify that there was a condition that could result in a SUA. However, it requires two faults to occur. While that alone would be sufficient for most to discount it, which is what Toyota wants us to do, those two faults do not have to occur simultaneously. In fact they could occur years apart and the ETC wouldn't report a problem. The tin whiskers they found could result in triggering one of those faults, possibly both. Even the report states that 10-months was not enough time to do all the testing they would have like to have conducted. Some on this forum claim that I am advocating that vehicles be 100% safe. That is not at all what I care about. I do care that the manufacturers be honest that they really can't say with certainty that their systems are 100% safe. That IS dishonest. That is why I have been playing devils advocate. I can not respect anyone or any company that would make such a statement as Toyota has (and now LaHood). At least the non-political part of the report is honest, (not the executive summary ("the findinds" as you put it), which is written for politicians). Call me a geek, but I actually found the report to be very interesting. I actually intend to read it much more carefully in the next couple of weeks, including the Appendicies. > Testing code without the actual hardware in the loop is foolish, especially for life-critical systems. Without hardware in the loop testing is only as good as your model of the hardware and your understanding of the logic flow. If your model isn't accurate, then garbage in, garbage out. NASA was not truly given full access to the code. If they had, they would have been able to take the code back to their own lab and would have tested it with actual hardware in a controlled environment.
@ Sandy A Testing code without the actual hardware in the loop is foolish, especially for life-critical systems. Firstly, you're probably thinking that the ECU hardware as delivered into vehicles is capable of being 'debugged'. Again, these are not general purpose computers running your favourite flavour of Basic, Pascal, Logo, Fortran, C++. (I believe Toyota actually use some ADA-like software which is why NASA probably were an excellent fit). Secondly, you're possibly not familiar with the way such systems are developed; usually you have a 'rig' and simulator that works up both the process control logic and hardware before commitment to manufacture. Part of the function of the test-bed is to supply out-of-range inputs to the controllers/logic. Early manufacture components might have the debug/hook-up parts, but they are not retained. All sorts of complex control systems are developed in this way including Airbus and Boeing (as examples).