

Toyota's claim of gas pedal defect called a "red herring" - ilamont
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-toyota-pedal30-2010jan30,0,4401302.story

======
timurlenk
I don't want to imply a lot but it's important to note that Toyota's bad press
is coming overwhelmingly form the US. Of course this is not 100% relevant
since the US is a bad market but Toyota in particular and Japan in general
have quite a history of taking safety serious. It's unlikely for them to
ignore a matter of safety over economic concerns.

In case we are dealing with a cover up we would at least see some resignations
at a top level. Japanese take their job very serious and probably some would
commit suicide if it would be proven that they didn't do their job properly
and people got injured because of this.

Could it be that we are dealing with economic protectionism though propaganda?

~~~
wtallis
I think it's mostly the American tendency to inflate controversy, and it's
particularly juicy given that Toyota is the biggest car company and the Camry
is now basically the All-American Car. Of course, it seems to me that all the
controversy is warranted: I subscribe to the theory that the problem is with
the software that controls the engine and transmission.

This is because of my own experience with a Camry that shifts at the wrong
times and has unpredictable acceleration or lack of acceleration. Several
months after we bought the car (a 2007) we were able to get a firmware upgrade
that improved the performance somewhat, but at the cost of gas mileage. Since
the car doesn't perform as well as it should (it's nowhere near as responsive
or efficient as our '97 Camry was), it seems like the underlying problems
still haven't been fixed.

Toyota has offered two other "solutions" for their problems, but neither rings
true, and as the LA Times points out, neither can explain all the reported
incidents. If Toyota were covering up their inability to find and fix the real
problem, this is what it would look like. Here in the US, we've seen a lack of
honesty from Toyota that seems very typical of American corporations.

------
wglb
So it sounds to me quite like an electronic control problem. It seems like
there are several cases where the engine control logic prevents the throttle
from being closed--for example, during startup there is a faster idle.
Similarly, during shift of an automatic transmission, there is some throttle
control going on.

Thus, it doesn't seem too far-fetched to imagine that there is a glitch in the
engine control logic that is pulling the throttle and hence the gas pedal in a
way that makes it seem like there is a problem with the pedal itself.

~~~
ilamont
My question about this is: Why is Toyota so anxious to avoid identifying
electronic control issues as the culprit, as opposed to sticking pedals and
floor mats? Is it because they can't blame a supplier, or it's more
complex/costly to fix? Or something else?

~~~
wglb
The worst answer might be that it hasn't been identified--they can't find or
reproduce the problem.

~~~
bshep
I think that this is the most likely answer. They probably figure they can
gain some time during the recall and fix the actual problem. Question is what
will happen to the pedal manufacturer whose name has been dragged through the
mud?

------
xsc
Owning an `09 Camry SE, I can tell you, the problem is larger than reported.

Shifting at odd times, hard shifting, etc.

~~~
jackowayed
I'm not sure what your definition of "odd times" is, but automatic
transmissions' decisions of when to shift constantly annoy me. (Most of my
automatic experience is in a Honda CRV. Never driven a Toyota.)

------
ilamont
The article talks about the suspicion in certain quarters that it's an
electronic glitch.

~~~
Groxx
Which is a lot more what it sounds like to me, though there appear to be
legitimate literal-sticking claims too. "Sudden acceleration" != pedal not
letting off.

It's one of the reasons I'm really not comfortable with a full-blown drive-by-
wire car. My car's windshield wipers sometimes lose their wiping pattern, and
skip a beat or delay by a second or so. If something THAT simple can't be made
foolproof, why would I trust my brake pedal to always work when each tire is
controlled independently to make me stop faster? Give me a hybrid system any
day, though.

~~~
cconstantine
I agree with others that this problem skinks of an electrical/software issue.

Drive-by-wire _can_ be made safe. All fighter jets made since the 70s have
been fly-by-wire. Their airfoils are inherently unstable (unstable airframes
are more maneuverable) and computers keep the plane from flopping out of the
sky. The yolk is a glorified joystick talking to a computer which controls the
flight control surfaces. Some aircraft even have programs for recovering from
various emergencies (stall, flat-spin, etc).

I believe most comercial aircraft are fly-by-wire too, and I know all the
Airbus planes are.

Doing fly-by-wire safely is done with a lot of very expensive QA, correctness
proofs and redundancy. If I remember right, all or most planes with fly-by-
wire have 3 computers that all vote on how to move the control surfaces. Those
3 computers' software is created in 3 completely separate groups in hopes that
2 groups won't have the same bug. The voting system means a software single
glitch or hardware failure doesn't result in a crash.

I really doubt Toyota (or any other car manufacturer) is putting that much
effort into their embedded computers. Hopefully this recall forces
manufacturers to think more critically of these systems.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _Drive-by-wire can be made safe._

Sure, if you're willing to spend 70 million dollars on a car.

Snarky one-liners aside, this hits on one of my pet peeves: software quality.
I mean, there's no reason why my IDE should die every time it tries to open a
.sql file bigger than about 500K, but it does; there's no reason why MacOS X
shouldn't have a "refresh" command in its Finder views, but it doesn't;
there's no reason why I have to bang my head against software issues _every
single day_ , but I do.

So, while the optimistic technologist in me would like to see what cars could
do with more advanced computer-controlled systems, the experienced and
pragmatic technician in me is really not looking forward to it.

~~~
Groxx
_there's no reason why MacOS X shouldn't have a "refresh" command in its
Finder views_

What would you use it for? It already updates in less than a second. If you're
looking for extremely up-to-date info, you're probably not a "Finder-only"
user, and know how to use the terminal, so use that.

OSX is tiered, it doesn't give you all options at the simplest level, which is
a HUGE reason for its success. Correctly so, IMO. No option overload, it "just
works". Want more control? The terminal is right there. Learn how to use it
and you'll pick up better practices than mashing the refresh button. (not
implying you are, just making a general statement)

~~~
thaumaturgy
The Finder frequently loses sync over Samba networks; the "updates in less
than a second" doesn't work perfectly (or even really all that well in a lot
of cases).

The only fix for such a situation is to _restart the Finder_.

I don't see how Command-R wouldn't be a better solution.

Incidentally, I'm far from the only technician dealing with mixed environments
on a daily basis that's had this complaint.

~~~
Groxx
Samba networks do that for me on Windows too, despite the ability to refresh
the window. More often, it'll crash Explorer rather than actually update the
info if something is already clogging the tubes. Plus, network shares almost
never update that quickly, and expecting them to do so is rather ridiculous.
Round-trip time to a server clearly wasn't implied as part of the Finder
update speed.

And again, I'll point out that the terminal is right there. If it's _Finder_
that's slow, the terminal will still work. If the _terminal_ doesn't keep up-
to-date, then it's a problem with their implementation of Samba, not Finder,
and a refresh button would do nothing (except maybe nail your network with
unnecessary requests by most people mashing it when something doesn't work).

~~~
thaumaturgy
Well, I guess we can continue to dicker about the relative merits of a
"Refresh" command in the MacOS X Finder, except:

1) It's not just Samba networks, it's other things too, up to and including
10.5 [1].

2) People have gone to the trouble to write Applescripts to do the job for
them. [2]

3) "Just use Terminal" does _not_ justify a broken auto-update system,
which...

4) ...is all fine and dandy when it works, but really needs some kind of
sensible fall-back system when it doesn't, which...

5) ...brings us to the _original point_ , which was that continuing to
integrate software of this quality into _automobiles_ , without manual
override systems, is just plain stupid.

So, would you like to continue to beat this dead horse?

[1]: <http://robsheldon.com/brokenopsys> \-- in which the problem frustrates
me enough to actually complain about it.

[2]: <http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/16/refresh-the-finder/>

