Quote Of The Day 2: Toyota Tales Edition

by Edward Niedermeyer

Published: April 7th, 2010

The Detroit News has just published a quote that allegedly comes from a January 16 email from Toyota Motor Sales USA group vice president for environmental and public affairs Irv Miller to “company officials in Japan.” Miller’s quote reads:

I hate to break this to you but WE HAVE a tendency for MECHANICAL failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models. We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide on this one is over. We better just hope that they can get NHTSA to work with us in coming with a workable solution that does not put us out of business.

The DetN says Toyota refused comment on the quote, but doesn’t disclose how it obtained the email. If we had to hazard a guess at the source of the email, we’d say that one of the legion of lawyers currently suing Toyota might know something about it [UPDATE: The Freep says “the e-mail was among the 70,000 pages of documents NHTSA has collected as part of its investigation”]. Several lawyers are already gloating to Automotive News [sub] that NHTSA’s decision to pursue the maximum fine for Toyota’s unintended acceleration problem will help their cases (though this is hardly guaranteed), and they are desperately seeking any kind of evidence of a Toyota coverup. Meanwhile, Toyota’s UA-related recalls aren’t even over yet, as Reuters reports that the world’s largest automaker has only just recalled 13,000 Camrys from the Korean market. But considering that GM won’t have the much-hyped brake-override “failsafe” for unintended acceleration on all of its vehicles until 2012 [via AN [sub]], it will be tough to paint Toyota as being a complete outlier on automotive safety. In fact, the only thing that seems certain about this story is that there are million of reasons for lawyers and reporters to keep chipping away at a phenomenon that seems to largely have been a product of operator error.

#Lawsuit #PR #Quality #Recall #Safety #Toyota #UnintendedAcceleration

Edward Niedermeyer

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PeteMoran on Apr 08, 2010

@ carperson Are we talking the same terminology here? What are you referring to as a "witness" signal? Are you talking about ground level monitoring?

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- CarPerson on Apr 09, 2010
  
  To check the validity of a signal, control and instrument designers can include a second signal, often referred to as a “witness” signal. It is safe to presume 100% of all electronically controlled throttle pedals have two signals from the pedal to the ECU, one of them a witness signal. For ensuring the safety and integrity of the control system, the ECU compares the two signals. If they calculate out as a match, the process continues. If they do not match, a fault is indicated. In vehicles this may include illuminating a dash lamp and branching to “limp” mode. Draw the two signals on the same graph, signal vs. pedal position. You do NOT want to see parallel lines. This design is too easily defeated in the real world with the additional danger of the fault going undetected. One has to question the skill of the control designer or the technical management that allows the use of this design. Toyota and a few others are using a parallel witness signal from the throttle pedal. Liner vs. non-linear signals each has advocates, each having valid points. Consider it more a secondary point of discussion. Don’t let anyone tell you they have a “robust” design then show you two parallel lines on a graph. They don’t.
  
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- YotaCarFan on Apr 09, 2010
  
  Just b/c the two accelerator signals differ by a constant voltage does not mean the design is not robust. The chosen voltages are such that realistic failure modes (short between the two signals, short of one or both signals to ground, or short of one or both signals to 12v power) will always result in the two signals failing to differ by the expected voltage delta, and thus being detected by the ECM.
  
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- CarPerson on Apr 12, 2010
  
  @ YotaCarFan A constant voltage delta is NOT a robust design. Coupled with the fact the delta, in the Toyota design, can freely vary over a surprisingly large value, it is a design that belongs in a cheap RC toy, not a real vehicle. BTW, The discussion relates to trapping any and all shorts between the control and witness signals, not shorts to power or ground.
  
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PeteMoran on Apr 08, 2010

@ Angainor You're forgetting another Escalade SUA incident that hasn't received attention from the NHTSA; http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/golf/8383782.stm

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