nthach

Airbag control modules since the earlier part of last decade served also as a data recorder - but here is where the differences start and the similarities end. Ford, GM and Mopar had this functionality since the 1990s on certain models - and they have licensed the protocol and APIs for accessing the SRS data to Vetronix/Bosch even though there are a cornucopia of suppliers to Detroit: Takata, Siemens, Bosch and TRW. And these guys can record the last several minutes of vehicle parameters until a collision occurs.

Toyota's sole SRS system supplier is Denso, and they have not "opened" the doors so to speak, and it only records the 1 minute during a crash.

mmarshall

Anybody watch the House Committee hearings today? I listened to a good chunk of them (not all) on NPR. Most of the testimony was from Jim Lentz, Toyota U.S.A. President. Some of the questions/comments put to him by the Committee members seemed pretty good, legit, and well-phrased. Others were just political grandstanding and squawking, without any real idea of what they were talking about. A few of them, unfortunately, were quite hostile, and bordered on harassment.

One thing, however, did not look good. Lentz admitted, several times, that he was primarily a sales/marketing official, with a degree in buisness marketing, and had little knowledge of engineering, auto design, product liability, or what actually takes place in producing and servicing modern cars. In other words, his job was primarily to advance sales and make money.

RXSF

lol, yes, we did, the last 3 to 4 pages in this thread were about the hearing. Jim was really drowning and congress was pushing him into the water with their sticks

Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

So true!

bigbwb

Anyone catch the new findings from ABC world news? It seems now that after last nights test with the so called expert who introduced a electrical glitch into the Toyota avalon has now been duplicated by Toyota itself late last night after the show aired......hmm interesting.

Based on this and Jim Lentz testifying today, there may be some electrical issues at hand possibly? I sure hope whatever the problem is, that it is found and fixed. I drive a 2010 4runner and my wife has a 2008 Lexus IS350, so I do love toyota vehicles, and will continue to do so.

I will be curious to see/hear Akio testify tomorrow.

mmarshall

OK, Thanks. I didn't have time to backtrack through the 4 pages....perhaps I should have.

I agree it didnt look good, but that's because Toyota essentially sent a salesman (and some lawyers) down to the hearing room for something that they should have had an engineer or a true manager attend instead.

Indio

iTrader: (1)

Toyota made some big mistakes today:

Knowing what the questions would be about why send Lentz who runs sales and marketing? He admitted that the recalls will "not totally" fix the problems with sudden acceleration, an engineer would have been a better choice.

They had to admit the US execs don't have power to make any decisions, this needs to change, let the guys here do their job, as Bit pointed out all politics is local.

How can you have black boxes and only one reader still in the development stage? This did not cast them in a good light, if there are any electronic issues they better get out in front of it this time and not wish it away, this got much worse today because people don't follow the news they read headlines, and you know what the headlines will be...............

flipside909

Analysis: ABC News report shouldn't panic Toyota drivers

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/02/23/a...oyota-drivers/

Analysis: ABC News report shouldn't panic Toyota drivers
by Sam Abuelsamid (RSS feed) on Feb 23rd 2010 at 7:28PM


You may have noticed that there have been a large number of reports recently about Toyota and the continuing series of recalls it has announced in recent weeks. Here at Autoblog we try to be fair and tell the story as best we can without being inflamattory. Unfortunately, the same can not be said of all media outlets. ABC News, and reporter Brian Ross in particular, have been particularly vigorous in pursuit of a story – not the story.

Let's make one thing clear. Autoblog is not a cheerleading section for Toyota, or for trial lawyers, TV presenters or politicians with nothing better to do. We'd like to present the information to our readers without unnecessarily frightening anyone.

We also want to avoid the sort of debacle that happened with CBS and the Audi 5000 in the '80s and NBC with the General Motors side-saddle gas tanks in the '90s. In each of those cases, tests were setup to "simulate" the purported problem, but the tests did not exactly simulate real world conditions and showed unrealistic scenarios.

A recent report from Ross on ABC News featured an "automotive expert" named David W. Gilbert from Southern Illinois University attempting to demonstrate an electronic glitch in a Toyota Avalon. Let's discuss this report in more detail after the jump.

It's too early to say whether the unintended acceleration demonstrated in the report is representative of anything that can actually happen in the real world. Here on the web we can use as much space as we need to tell a story. On TV, air time is scarce and stories have to be edited down to meet time constraints. The result is that a lot detail about exactly how tests are conceived and conducted are left out of the final edit.

In this particular instance, Mr. Gilbert demonstrated that he could independently command the throttle of the Avalon to go wide open regardless of the driver's input. Based on the report, two normally independent throttle pedal sensors were shorted together.

Let's start with some basic electrical background for those not familiar with such things. Electrical signals occur when electrons flow through a conductor such as a copper or aluminum wire. Conductors are wrapped in a plastic insulator, which prevents electricity from flowing to other conductive components with which the wire might come in contact. In a vehicle with an electronic control system, sensors provide inputs that are used to manage that system. These sensors typically have some sort of variable resistance based on whatever is being measured. That resistance affects the voltage flowing from the sensor to the control unit. If the insulator becomes worn, a short circuit can occur that bypasses the normal resistance causing the signal to go either much higher or lower than normal.

The control software that manages engines, transmissions, brakes and even power windows and seats in modern cars contains diagnostic algorithms. These diagnostic routines are used to try and detect anomalies in these signals and set a fault detection code and/or put the vehicle into a fail-safe mode.

There are a seemingly infinite number of things that could go wrong in any such system. Engineers spend a lot of time doing fault analysis to proactively determine what can problems occur. Part of the analysis involves rating the severity and likelihood of these problems happening. This analysis is used to determine what diagnostics need to be included in the system.

While it's certainly possible that a control system could be set up to try and detect everything that could possibly go wrong, there are good reasons to limit what the system looks for. If a fault has a high severity but zero likelihood of actually happening outside the realm of theory there's no point in including diagnostics to look for it.

All of these diagnostics are coded in software and anyone who uses a computer knows that software can have bugs. No matter how much something has been tested, bugs still slip through and automotive control systems are no different. If a piece of code doesn't do anything useful, it is better to leave it out than risk introducing a bug needlessly.

Useless code takes time to develop and requires memory space in a control unit, all of which adds to cost. With so many things in a car actually in need of space and attention, judgments have to be made about what is actually necessary. It's possible that Toyota decided that the type of short circuit demonstrated by Mr. Gilbert is not something that could actually happen in the real world.

Not knowing enough about either Gilbert's test procedure or the Toyota hardware in question, we cannot say with any certainty if the demonstration was realistic. Given Brian Ross' lack of engineering background, we doubt even more that he could say with any authority either.

Having said that, it is possible that some of Toyota's judgments could have been wrong. Without sitting down and pouring over Toyota's fault analysis documents and hardware, making any such declaration would be nothing more than speculation. We also don't know whether this is a fault Toyota meant to detect. That would be impossible to say for sure without examining the source code.

Coming back to Mr. Gilbert's testing, it's clear that he was able to make the car accelerate irrespective of the driver's wishes. It may well be indicative of either a hardware or software defect introduced by Toyota. Does this prove a defect? Not at all.

It may be nothing more than proof that Gilbert was able to create a fault condition that could never happen without human intervention. To imply otherwise is unethical on the part of both ABC and Mr. Gilbert. ABC has a vested interest in pumping up this story to boost its ratings. (Full disclosure: Autoblog is also dependent on advertising revenue to keep the servers running and the bloggers caffeinated.) Similarly Mr. Gilbert is being paid for his investigation by consulting firm Safety Research & Strategies of Rehoboth, Mass. That firm is under contract to at least five law firms currently involved in litigation against Toyota.

In a statement issued by Toyota on February 23, 2010, the day after the ABC report and the day Gilbert was to testify before a congressional hearing, the automaker revealed its recent correspondence with Gilbert. Gilbert first approached the company on February 16 with a different scenario about how acceleration could be triggered. Toyota explained that this scenario would in fact trigger a fault. Gilbert then came up with a different test, which was used in the video demonstration.

We are not accusing Mr. Gilbert or Safety Research & Strategies of any wrongdoing, nor are we trying to exonerate Toyota. Gilbert may in fact be right, although there is no conclusive evidence to support that at this time. It's also very possible that, in spite of Toyota's claims that there is no software problem contributing to unintended/sudden acceleration, exactly the opposite is true.

We recommend to our readers that they take all such claims from either side with a great deal of skepticism. This story is far from over, and it is not clear at this point what the outcome will be.

Credit: Autoblog

RXSF

actually, when they questioned his presence at the hearing, Jim said that the committee (Congress) invited him to be there

Dave600hL

The only reason it is difficult is b/c the laws here are different, standards and codes that need to be met are different, but the point you are failing to see is that it is the same laws for an "outsider" company as it is for the domestics.

Do you think a Toyota here is exactly the same in the US or Canada for that matter? Your speculation about US companies not getting a fair deal in other countries is unjust.

encore888

Agreed. There does however seem to be a response:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2312046420100224

Thx also for that Autoblog link which does ask some important questions about that staged ABC demonstration.

TRDFantasy

Accident "SWAT teams", interesting. This is sort of similar to Mercedes who would sometimes send teams to big accidents to examine and analyze a damaged Mercedes. I'm not sure if Mercedes still does this.

pagemaster

Toyota strayed in quest for rapid expansion, CEO to admit



In prepared testimony to be delivered Wednesday in Washington, Akio Toyoda says safety was compromised and managers will now be required to drive Toyotas

The embattled scion of Toyota Motor Corp.'s founding family is admitting that the company strayed from its core values in a quest for rapid expansion.

The priorities of the world's largest auto maker are supposed to be safety, quality and volume, Akio Toyoda says in a prepared statement he will make on Wednesday while testifying to a congressional committee in Washington.

“These priorities became confused and we were not able to stop, think and make improvements as much as were able to before …” Mr. Toyoda says in the statement, obtained by The Globe and Mail.

His testimony to a committee of the House of Representatives follows the drama that played out Tuesday before another committee in Washington, where one woman broke down in tears as she told a harrowing tale of speeding down the road for six miles before she got her Lexus under control.


“ I will ensure that members of the management team actually drive the cars ”
— From testimony to be delivered by company CEO Akio Toyoda


And in a startling confession at the same hearing, Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., said recalls to replace floor mats and redesign gas pedals may not entirely solve the problem of sudden acceleration. Toyota may be unable to determine the cause in as many as 70 per cent of reported complaints, Mr. Lentz said.

Mr. Lentz's appearance Tuesday, and his boss's testimony Wednesday, come as the auto maker founded by Mr. Toyoda's grandfather in the 1930s battles a firestorm of criticism about defects in its vehicles that have been blamed for sudden acceleration and more than 30 deaths in the United States.

Tuesday, while Mr. Lentz insisted that electronic throttle controls in vehicles are not the cause of the problem, members of the committee blasted the company for what they said was its resistance to the idea that electromagnetic interference can cause those systems to go haywire.

Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan, said Toyota “misled the American public by saying that they and other independent sources had thoroughly analyzed the electronics systems and eliminated electronics as a possible cause of sudden unintended acceleration when, in fact, the only such review was a flawed study conducted by a company retained by Toyota's lawyers.”

Mr. Toyoda made a striking comment of his own in outlining ways Toyota will strive to make sure quality is improved.

“I will ensure that members of the management team actually drive the cars and that they check for themselves where the problem lies as well as its severity,” his statement says.

As for how Toyota lost its way, he noted that it has not spent enough time developing quality employees to design and manufacture its cars.

“Toyota has, for the past few years, been expanding its business rapidly …” his statement says. “We pursued growth over the speed at which we were able to develop our people and our organization and we should be sincerely mindful of that.”

Canada and the United States have benefited from that growth, with two Toyota assembly plants in Ontario – one of which is scheduled to double production and add 800 workers next month – and several others in four U.S. states that represent the bulk of the company's more than 40,000 employees in North America.

If Tuesday's hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee – where Mr. Lentz spoke –provides an example, the 52-year-old grandson of founder Kiichiro Toyoda will face some hostile politicians.

Members of the committee heard from Rhonda Smith of Tennessee, who was at the wheel of a Lexus during a 2006 incident when her car raced to more than 160 kilometres an hour before she was able to bring it under control. “After six miles, God intervened” and the car slowed, Ms. Smith told the committee.

Ms. Smith blasted Toyota and the U.S. regulatory agency for delays in responding to her complaints.

Mr. Toyoda expressed his condolences to a family in San Diego, Calif., at the centre of the most public and horrifying case of sudden acceleration. Four members of the family died last August when their Lexus ES350 crashed and caught fire.

That accident has been blamed on improper floor mats jamming the accelerator pedal.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...rticle1479047/

RXSF

Im not trying to be racist or anything, but does Toyoda speak english? I look forward to watching the hearing with him, but obviously, some things are not going to translate perfectly from one language to the other.

encore888

There have been articles about this, he did study here, but his English in last week's press conferences was criticized by local media (and that was reading a prepared statement). He's bringing a translator to DC tomorrow.