Govt to seek $16M penalty over Toyota recalls
By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press Writer Ken Thomas, Associated Press Writer – 6 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Transportation Department says it's seeking the maximum penalty, more than $16 million, against Toyota for failing to promptly notify the government about defective gas pedals among its vehicles.

The fine would be the largest civil penalty ever issued to an automaker by the government.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says evidence shows that Toyota knew of the problem with sticking gas pedals in late September but did not issue a recall until late January.

Toyota has two weeks to accept or contest the $16.375 million penalty.

Toyota has recalled more than 6 million vehicles in the U.S., and more than 8 million worldwide, because of acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius hybrid.

This article is complete fantasy land. I am an engine electronic controls engineer. I know exactly how these systems work. Conspiracy theorists love to point at electronic bugaboos because they have no clue what they are talking about. They see their PC crash or act erratically and assume that a computer on a car can do the same thing because 'they are both computers, right?'.

The systems operate on a completely different scale with automobile computer systems put through years of fault tolerance testing. Saying that EMI is causing problems is about equivalent to saying a ghost pressed on the accelerator pedal.

And for people calling for mechanical controls, you really have no clue. Mechanical controls failures are much more common and unpredictable than electronic controls. Over time mechanical controls wear out and are subject to all sorts of dirt and corrosion. Electronic connections can deteriorate but the connections are well protected and fail very rarely on their own. The computer itself is sealed and they rarely fail anymore even after 20 years of operation.

These overly simplistic articles about how easy it MIGHT be for EMI to cause unintended acceleration require major suspension of disbelief. I work for a major automotive company in the engine control software area, and have a bit of knowledge regarding standard industry practices so let me make a few points:

1. Article cites 1987 Hughes/GM memo raising concerns about EMI and unintended acceleration; all GM's vehicles in 1987 used mechanical throttles to control the air supply to the engine. Air is the most important determinant of how much torque/power and engine can produce(fuel and spark follow air's lead via the electronic systems). So how did the electronics move the mechanical throttle? ??? Perhaps the EMI was so great that the driver received a shock large enough to involutarily move his pedal foot to the floor? :-)

2. EMI is FAR more likely to cause an engine miss or stall. That is the major reason that auto companies emphasize immunity and robust design practices with regard to EMI and do intensive testing. The chances of EMI causing unintended acceleration are much closer to zero than your chance of winning the Poweball Lottery! It is very difficult to devise a scenaro for uinexpected power which does NOT involve a throttle pedal pushed significantly downward.

3. All manufacturers use at least two sensors to determine pedal position. These two sensors have different electrical charateristics. If the two different values from the two different sensors are not a matched pair (of different values), then engine power is limited. It boggles the imagination to think that an EMI source could occur which would overwhelm the actual signal and produced a matched set of inputs requesting full throttle and continue in intensity over the long distance traveled by a runaway vehicle.

4. The pedal sensors are low impedance inputs. What does this mean? An antenna circuit, for example is a high impedance input. Using the impedance form of Ohm's law, E = IZ where Z is impedance. This equation means that a very small induced current from an electrical signal will produce a significant enough voltage to be useful if it is amplified sufficiently and processed to produce music on your radio or a TV signal. Low impedance means that it would take a heart stopping lightning bolt in close proximity to develop a significant voltage on the circuit. See my driver electrocution point in item 1.

5. Your engine controller module has a GREAT deal of software which looks for oxymoronic conditions with respect to power produced vs. power requested via the pedal. For example is there an air leak allowing more air into the engine than would be expected based on the pedal position? This will be managed by actions ranging from adjusting the actual throttle position for small leaks to shutting off one or more injectors for bigger leaks to shutting off the engine entirely for a large leak. There are many, many more consistency checks within the main processor.

6. There is also a second, independent microprocessor which independently monitors engine functions and can shut off all the injector circuits if it detects a significant mismatch. So even if the main "brain" microprocessor is brain dead with the throttle wide open and just the right amount of fuel, the second processor will prevent fuel injection and the engine will stop.

So what to do if the pedal gets stuck under the floormat? Put the transmission in neutral and brake to a stop in a safe place with continuous brake action, do not pump brakes. The engine will not over-rev in neutral - we've got an App for that! Second choice: turn the ignition off and brake to a stop. Easy to do with a key; if you have push button stop start, you have to have the presence of mind to keep the button pressed continuously until the engine stops. This can be up to 3 seconds for some vehicles or as little as 1 second for others including our company's vehicles.

WASHINGTON – Five days before Toyota announced a massive recall, a U.S. public relations executive at the automaker warned colleagues in an internal e-mail: "We need to come clean" about accelerator problems, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet," wrote Irv Miller, group vice president for environment and public affairs. "The time to hide on this one is over."

The recently retired Miller wrote the e-mail on Jan. 16, 2010, as Toyota officials were on their way to Washington to discuss the problems with federal regulators. On Jan. 21, Toyota announced it would recall 2.3 million vehicles to address sticking pedals in six vehicle models.