
Secretive Culture Led Toyota Astray - DanielBMarkham
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704820904575055733096312238.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEADNewsCollection
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grandalf
I'm not sure why everyone thinks Toyota has failed. If two of the US
automakers hadn't been bailed out by the US Government, Toyota (with all of
its current challenges) would have bought up thousands of dealerships and
dozens of plants in the US and would be poised to totally dominate the
worldwide automotive market.

Instead, it had a bit of bad luck (requiring a recall) and it now faces stiff
competition from two companies kept in business by massive government
subsidies.

I think most people would still rather buy a Toyota than a Chrysler, Ford, or
GM vehicle, on the basis of both safety and reliability -- and increasingly
performance and styling.

The fact is, Toyota already won in the marketplace. It deserves to have a near
monopoly because it fought harder and smarter for decades, slowly earning
customer confidence and loyalty. What were the fruits of its labor? Now it
gets to fight against massively subsidized ghosts from its past who have
already lost the battle but are reanimated by politicians waving American
flags, etc.

And now the American press seems to be having a field day claiming that Toyota
has failed after one major recall. Note that similar stories about Toyota's
demise surfaced after the firm had its _first unprofitable quarter ever_ at
the same time that two US automakers became insolvent.

This anti-Toyota propaganda really boggles the mind.

~~~
mdasen
First, Ford didn't take any government money and actually reported a profit
for the past year.

Second, there's a difference between a subsidy and loans. GM and Chrysler got
loans. Now, they were loans they couldn't have gotten on the open market
because they looked too toxic. However, GM is now saying they'll be able to
repay the loan pretty quickly. That indicates that investors misjudged the
risk. Granted, it could have turned out otherwise (and I was one of the people
that thought that it would have).

And I think that people feel betrayed if a company has a potentially fatal
flaw in their devices. This isn't an issue of mere reliability. If my car is
unreliable, it's annoying and I have higher repair bills. If my car speeds up
to 100MPH and I can't stop it, I can die. Those two things sit differently
with consumers. And it looks like Toyota tried to write it off as nothing when
it was something and tried to protect their image rather than their customers
lives.

It's one of those things: if a company has produced a wonderful, superior,
reliable vehicle that kills 1 in 100,000, are they better? Most would say no,
but it's easier to hide and it looks like Toyota was trying to hide their
problems.

Toyota isn't failed, but this will be a huge setback for them (and it should
be). If you hide problems that are fatal to people, you deserve to have your
sales drop. There's an outrage over that.

Toyota screwed up big time for many years. The US auto makers also screwed up
for many years. The US auto makers troubles came to light slowly in a way that
was mostly about finances, wages, etc. Toyota's screw up is about human
fatalities and came to light very quickly. That's a lot of the difference in
the way it's being treated by the media.

~~~
MrFoof
>If my car speeds up to 100MPH and I can't stop it, I can die.

Is it just me, or is this a design problem just waiting to be solved.

Not the accelerator design, but to counter the fact that although there are
numerous ways to either slow down the car or bring it to a halt that consumers
_simply weren't aware of_.

Yes, you can shift into neutral. However, drivers didn't realize that. Yes,
you can also turn off the engine. However, drivers didn't think of that.

I had a friend years ago (college days) in which the brakes in his Trans-Am
decided to not do much of anything. Boiled off brake fluid? Bad master
cylinder? Overheated rotors? Who knows. Rather than downshift, or put it in
neutral, or turn off the engine -- and then wait and use the handbrake -- he
figured putting it into a tree at 60mph was his best option.

The fact that drivers will not think to employ a variety of methods to slow
down the car screams to me that there's something that doesn't exist, that
should, that better caters to the average driver's instinctual reaction (which
currently is depressing the brake pedal as hard as possible, and not giving up
until the car stops).

I realize that the vehicle could've taken both brake and accelerator inputs
and simply given total priority to the brake, which would've mitigated many
accidents, but there are other situations (like my friend who didn't think
things through) which probably merit a "panic button" solution.

~~~
grandalf
On the other hand, it shows just how reliable cars are that we don't think
about those things.

Generally people are quite foolish while driving. Have you noticed how people
driving heavy SUVs with 4 wheel drive (which get better traction in the snow)
think that they can safely travel 65 mph on icy roads? It seems not to occur
to them that the vehicle has lots of momentum and will slide on ice.

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gcheong
So how is this different from say the Ford Pinto exploding gas tank or the
Ford SUV/Firestone tire rollovers? Secretive corporate automaker culture
hardly seems limited to Toyota.

~~~
liquidben
I'm having trouble tracking down a citation, but Marketplace pointed out that
this is the first of these recalls to happen since the burgeoning of social
networking. Pintos got written up in newspaper headlines. The SUV/Firestone
debacle probably got snarky bylines on Fark. The Toyota "crisis" happened in
the full bloom of Twitter et all. The commonality of foreign cars means that
Bob can post to Facebook to warn any and all of his friends that they should
check their driveway for any of the recalled models.

Furthermore there's an angle on the story: Toyota's reputation is build on
reliability. I can't speak for the Pinto, but I don't recall Ford's SUV having
that reputation. With sentiments currently against big business, suggestions
of deceit are juicy linkbait.

Beyond that, some speak of Toyota's timeliness in issuing an apology. The
Asashi, 2nd leading Japanese national newspaper, accuses them of apologizing
too late. I personally wouldn't know how much weight that holds, but I find it
interesting.

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vl
All these stories made me thinking that it makes sense to have mandatory black
boxes in new vehicles. This will help to investigate many safety problems and
other accidents. It's more important to have such black boxes in the
computerized cars: all this software needs to be debugged, and you can't debug
if you don't know what happened.

~~~
chadgeidel
I'll go along with it as long as you can't retrieve the data without a
subpoena (which I assume is easy to acquire during an accident investigation,
but much more difficult to acquire "by asking").

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gxs
This was an interesting article if only for the nice summary as I wasn't
completely aware of the situation.

The tidbit in the end surprised me though- Toyota is trying to hard to spin
that they stopped selling cars as a safety precaution. Turns out the NHTSA
forced them to stop selling.

~~~
grandalf
Would you buy a Toyota today? I would. Do you really think that the NHTSA
might not be doing this partly as a handout to the government's own auto
companies (Chrysler and GM)?

~~~
mdasen
It does benefit other auto-makers, but Toyota has admitted that there are
flaws in its vehicles that can kill people. It doesn't mean that Toyotas
aren't otherwise good, reliable cars. However, they covered up a fatal issue
and they shouldn't be allowed to sell new cars with the issue and they should
have to repair the ones with the issue.

Should Toyota be allowed to sell cars with this known fatal flaw? Of course
not! Should they have to recall and repair cars with this known fatal flaw?
Yes! Those are the things that have happened to Toyota. It's not some
conspiracy case of the NHTSA trying to give domestic firms a leg up. It's a
case of Toyota having to fix a fatal problem with its vehicles.

How is this different from the Ford/Firestone incident from the past? Was that
the NHTSA trying to give Toyota a leg up by requiring Ford to fix that
problem?

~~~
grandalf
All cars have fatal flaws, they just occur with some probability between 0 and
1.

The flaw you are mentioning also has a probability of killing someone of
between 0 and 1.

The point is that car companies decide when to do a recall based on a
cost/benefit analysis and not just because there is a low probability flaw
that could occasionally be fatal.

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mcdoh
Automobiles are incredibly complex and I don't think anyone really faults a
company for having to issue a recall to fix a problem. What's unsettling about
Toyota, though, is the coverup. They attributed the problem to floor mats and
even blamed drivers for adding extra floor mats. This wouldn't be an issue if
Toyota had just been upfront from the start and not tried to sweep their
problems under the rug.

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seldo
The idea that a software/firmware bug in the electronics that controls the gas
pedal could kill me is deeply, deeply unsettling. If you put electronics into
basic systems of a car like this, I want it to be like plane electronics:
three of everything, with a majority rule.

~~~
potatolicious
I've worked in an automotives parts plant, and let me tell you right now: be
afraid, be very afraid.

Well okay, that's overly dramatic, but your expectation of cars being built
like planes is just not happening, nor is it likely to ever happen.

The fact of the matter is, car prices are something that is constantly under
intense consumer and competitive pressure. Every auto maker wants to make
their cars cheaper and cheaper, and at the end of the day something has to
give for the prices consumers demand... this includes redundancy and QA.

In the short time I was in the industry, I was involved in multiple recalls -
none of which as deadly as Toyota's here, but all of which were the direct
result of cost cutting. In two of those recalls, the blame lied solely on
using cheaper, brittle plastic parts as a cost-cutting measure applied by the
major automakers. Not that they're pocketing the savings of course, those
generally get passed straight onto you, the consumer.

Shortly after I left the industry Toyota unveiled the Camry redesign - and I
remember remarking that something bad had to happen with this car. It gave way
too much bang for your buck, I cannot imagine the invisible corners that were
cut to bring this vehicle to market. Now I suppose we know - and the age-old
mantra still rings true: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Keep that in mind when you buy your next car, seriously. The plant where I
worked made parts for everything from cheapo Pontiacs to expensive Mercedes -
and let me tell you, you _do_ get what you pay for. Disregard ignorant laymen
who insist that the expensive marques are nothing but branding, there is a
very, very real difference in what you're getting (and that includes
tolerances, redundancy, and testing level).

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jonknee
Reminds me of Fight Club.

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear
differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside.
Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A,
multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-
court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of
a recall, we don't do one."

What a gift this is to the lawyers involved in suits against Toyota for
acceleration related wrecks. It appears they knew about the problem and
stalled fixing it while people died. A jury will eat that up.

