"With myself taking the lead and keeping to the genchi genbutsu principle all of us at Toyota will tackle the issue in close cooperation with our dealers and our suppliers."
If I were translating his statement I might have put an explanatory note there: genchi genbutsu is a reference to the actual location and the actual materials at issue. It is sort of a catch phrase for Toyota -- one of their management principles is "genchi genbutsu genzitsu" -- roughly speaking, "Go to the actual location and see the actual machine/materials and you shall know the actual truth." Compare to delegating an underling to diagnose the issue over a phone.
Obligatory disclaimer: I work in Nagoya, but not for Toyota, to the extent that anyone in Nagoya can be said not to work for Toyota.
I'm not against the idea of such software being open source, but I don't think it's a guarantee of quality by any stretch. I've seen and used (or tried to use) some hideously kludgy open source software.
Who has the liability when some one breaks in and puts bad code on the car that causes it to misbehave? The code could maybe cause it to not properly brake and cause a death or it could maybe alter the timings on the injectors and cause it to be less efficient or maybe even ware out more quickly.
There has to be a certain allure to having a wifi chip in there and when you pull in to your garage at night, the car could install any updates to the ECU, the navi and any other systems that could need them, maybe sync against your itunes.. At the same time, it could send in some information about how it's performing, what maintenance has been done, etc.. It could almost be a profitable feature.
If I were translating his statement I might have put an explanatory note there: genchi genbutsu is a reference to the actual location and the actual materials at issue. It is sort of a catch phrase for Toyota -- one of their management principles is "genchi genbutsu genzitsu" -- roughly speaking, "Go to the actual location and see the actual machine/materials and you shall know the actual truth." Compare to delegating an underling to diagnose the issue over a phone.
Obligatory disclaimer: I work in Nagoya, but not for Toyota, to the extent that anyone in Nagoya can be said not to work for Toyota.