Documents contradict testimony in Toyota unintended acceleration case
Compelling new evidence appears to
substantiate charges, made in this column and
elsewhere, that Toyota has
suppressed evidence that electronics could be a possible cause of
unintended acceleration (UA), responsible for many deaths, including San
Diegans Mark Saylor, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law.
Much of this is discussed in an article by David Hechler at Corporate Counsel at the law.com website, “Is Toyota Telling the Truth About Sudden Acceleration?”
The article cites a panel of independent experts
that now doubt Toyota’s explanation that floor mats or sticky
accelerator pedals explain the surge in complaints. “Instead, they
believe precisely what Toyota has for many years steadfastly denied:
that the problem is rooted in electronics,” the article states.
The panel’s opinion has been reinforced by the
disclosure of internal Toyota documents that directly contradict
testimony given to Congress by several key Toyota executives. Hechler
quotes excerpts from these documents to make his case. Some are included
below, along with additional quotes taken from the same set of
documents.
For example, Jim Lentz, the CEO of Toyota Motor
Sales U.S.A. Inc., testified that "We are confident that no problems
exist in our electronic throttle systems in our vehicles,” and that “We
have done extensive testing on this system, and we have never found a
malfunction that caused unintended acceleration.”
Takeshi Uchiyamada, then executive vice president
and chief engineer and now named as Toyota's next chairman, said in his
prepared statement submitted to the Senate Energy, Commerce, and
Transportation Committee in March 2010: “I want to be absolutely clear: As a result of our extensive testing,
we do not believe sudden unintended acceleration because of a defect in
our ETCS has ever happened” (emphasis added), and “We have testing data
that confirms its reliability for all the markets in which we trade
worldwide.”
Meanwhile, a few days later, senior Toyota
electronics engineer Takashi Ogawa, in stark contrast to the above
testimony, admitted under questioning by House investigators that there
is no test in existence that can conclusively prove UA cannot occur: “It
may be hard to understand, but there is no particular or special
testing that would directly prove that there is no unintended
acceleration.” Instead, he said, the engineers demonstrate UA prevention
by cobbling together proof through testing under “all conceivable
conditions” and to confirm it is “correctly realized as a design.”
But Toyota’s R&D chief Masatami Takimoto
contradicted his own engineers, admitting in a March 2010 memo that
every conceivable condition had not been anticipated: “When this
Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) system was inspected, didn’t
we fail to anticipate malfunctions such as an accelerator pedal itself
remaining open?”
The company’s problems with its quality control
activities were pointed out by vice president Katsuhiko Sakakibara in a
memo dated February 2010: “practices that prevent quality verification are now proliferating everywhere worldwide” (emphasis in original).
And again in testimony, in response to a question
by then-Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), Uchiyamada stated flatly,
“There was not a single case where we could identify that the ETC defect
was the cause of the unwanted or unintended acceleration.”
The claim was completely disproved in the same
hearing by a description of a Camry owner named Shepard whose car had a
UA incident. As described in the hearing transcript, Shepard’s own
mechanic later found an accelerator pedal sensor failure. This
documented failure of the ETCS was reported to Toyota at the time of the
incident, in 2004.
These newly revealed documents also tell a story of
what was happening behind the scenes among Toyota’s engineers, further
contradicting the executive testimony. The engineers admit to
electronics causes of UA events in the field.
In one email, a Japanese engineer based in Toyota’s
U.S. offices requests help from colleagues in Japan to fix a “software
bug” in the Tundra that causes the truck to behave in ways that “drivers
consider UA.” His colleague in Japan responded that this problem would
have to wait because they were too busy.
Another document is a Technical Field Report from
Toyota’s Cyprus dealer written in January 2009. The dealer pleads: “…
Engine revs stick at 6000 rpm without any reason. This issue occurs
without any warning and at random cases. … (there were) two big car
accidents in which the drivers miraculously escaped injuries. … the
vehicle accelerated in an uncontrolled manner … more than 5 times … the
Accelerator Sensor Assembly was replaced. … This issue could cost
lives!!”
In another communication, a driver reported a
Tundra zooming to 80 miles per hour, uncommanded, with ineffective
brakes. When the truck was fixed, the technician noted, “short
(circuit), insulation defective,” and replaced the gas pedal sensor
assembly. The same document lists 547 pedal position electronic sensor
assemblies that were replaced to fix speed control malfunctions that had
been attributed to a mechanical “sticky pedal.”
Japan engineers also noted or investigated many
varied electronics-related causes of UA and speed control issues. They
include short circuits in the pedal position sensor, cruise control,
poor wiring connectors, electromagnetic interference (EMI), and voltage
irregularities. Numerous times throughout the documents, the electronic
Engine Computer Unit (ECU) is mentioned as a possible cause for vehicle
behavior that they could not understand.
Another document shows that Toyota investigated
speed control issues in the car of Crown Prince Naruhito in 2008, and
admitted the cause was the endless problems with the ETCS’s many
components.
In spite of all of the internal discussions about
electronics, Toyota stuck with its public story through its PR
campaigns, advertising, sworn testimony and in its recalls, that UA is
caused by floor mats and sticky pedals.
When evidence surfaced that there were other,
electrical-related causes, and independent experts advanced plausible
theories, Toyota never changed its public story. In several cases Toyota
representatives disparaged these experts and even sued.
So where did these documents come from? They were
provided to Congress by Betsy Benjaminson, an Israel-based translator
who was hired to translate Toyota documents used by law firms working
for Toyota in their litigation. Most are marked “secret” and
“confidential” and, as a set, they disprove many of Toyota’s public
pronouncements.
Benjaminson says she has gone public because she
considers this to be a situation that involves life and death. She says
she saw with her own eyes many hundreds of documents that revealed
important details of just how much the company knew, and when the
company knew it.
The documents were provided last year to the staff
of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the Judiciary
Committee, who has been investigating this issue. Sen. Grassley's office
said the documents were reviewed by experts who found them to be
inconclusive.
When asked about the new documents, Toyota issued a
statement, saying, "At Toyota, our core values have always been to
pursue the highest levels of safety and quality and to continuously
improve. To conclude otherwise based on a few handpicked documents,
including internal deliberations about quality improvements or
descriptions of prototype system testing, is misleading and simply
wrong.
"At no time has anyone ever put forth any reliable
scientific evidence of an alleged electronic defect in our vehicles that
could cause unintended acceleration (UA). In fact, despite more than
two years of unprecedented discovery and full access to our proprietary
source code, plaintiffs’ counsel in federal multidistrict litigation
acknowledged that they were 'unable to reproduce a UA in a subject
vehicle under driving conditions,'" Toyota said in the statement.
Yet the documents indicate that the engineers consider the electronics to be a possible cause.
But it’s not only Toyota that has tried to dismiss
electronics as one of the causes of UA. When the root causes of UA
remained a mystery, despite all the Congressional hearings, Ray LaHood,
Secretary of Transportation, enlisted the help of NASA engineers to
perform an analysis of Toyota’s electronic throttle control system. But
before their investigation could be completed, LaHood exonerated Toyota,
based on NASA not having yet found conclusive evidence of a specific
flaw in Toyota’s system design.
But subsequently, the National Highway Traffic and
Safety Administration, which administered the NASA study, admitted that
no system safety analysis was performed. According to engineering
experts, such as those quoted in the Corporate Counsel article, LaHood’s
sound bite summarizing NASA’s findings as exonerating Toyota, was
inaccurate and misleading.
In fact, a source that I spoke to within the
government with knowledge of this work at NASA, said NASA engineers were
quite incensed at LaHood’s statement, particularly because they were
not given the tools or evidence to conduct the investigation. I would
not be surprised if NASA eventually comes forward with evidence that
shows some electronic anomalies.
While the documents don’t show that the company
fully understands the exact electronic failure mechanisms leading to UA,
they offer compelling evidence of misrepresentations of the company’s
knowledge about the many kinds of electronics-related causes of UA that
occurred and could not be attributed to mats, sticky pedals or driver
error.
Other memos and emails show a lack of understanding
of the true causes of UA resulted from Toyota’s failure to do a
thorough job in the design and quality testing of the cars in question.
One admission comes in a memo from Toyota’s
then-R&D chief, Masatami Takimoto, written to Uchiyamada and Sasaki
who were about to testify in the Senate.
“This is Takimoto. I read in the newspaper that
you were both called to testify in the Senate. I think the cause of all
this trouble is that we did not complete the vehicle development process
sufficiently. There is no excuse and I am sorry.”
Meanwhile, Uchiyamada insists in an email to a subordinate prior to his testimony: “We
are severely tortured to no end, aren’t we? We may have made technical
errors and our response may have been slow, but all we can do is keep
the faith that Toyota is not lying or being deceitful (Toyota is not
that kind of company).”
Well, is it, or not?
On Feb. 15, 2010 in this column I wrote, “In the
case of Toyota, its recent problems are not that they occurred, but that
the company failed to take quick action to fix them once they were
discovered. Instead Toyota risked its reputation, built up painstakingly
over five decades, by minimizing the seriousness of these issues, by
not being forthcoming, and by covering them up.” Based on this new
evidence, that remains true.
My conclusion is that there were, and hopefully
still are, dedicated, hard-working engineers within the company trying
to find the electronic causes of UA. There is nothing that indicates
that Toyota has found an answer and has covered it up. Its fault has
been in providing false reassurances to the public that electronics can
be ruled out and the causes of the problem have been identified.
Toyota executives let their engineers down, as well
as owners and future buyers of Toyota automobiles who continue to face
risk. And sadly, our own government was complicit, as well. Most
importantly, Toyota owners, including myself and my family, should not
accept the assurances from Toyota executives that electronics is not a
cause.
related Topics
Oopsies! Toyota Not To Blame For Unintended Acceleration
A federal investigation looking into the unintended acceleration of
Toyotas has concluded that Toyota is not to blame. Jalopnik, my
favorite automotive blog, features a great posting by Justin Hyde on this subject:
The U.S. government’s ten-month probe into Toyota validates the initially unpopular argument we at Jalopnik put forth at the start of this unintended acceleration witch hunt: This was a case of people pressing the wrong pedal. In every way, this was Toyota’s beige-ification of cars biting them back, and hard.The probe by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA scientists examined 280,000 lines of Toyota software, 3,054 complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles and several dozen individual vehicles. “There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas. Period,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
(The NASA team did find one theoretical way for a Toyota’s electronic throttle control to screw up and open wide even when the brake was depressed. But doing so requires two inputs at a precise electrical resistance; any variation and the car’s warning lights come on, and NASA reviewed Toyotas own warranty data and found no evidence of any such faults.)
NHTSA officials said the causes were the ones they suspected all along — bulky floormats, sticking gas pedals and driver mistakes. “We found that when a complaint alleged the brakes didn’t work, what most likely happened was pedal misapplication,” said deputy NHTSA administrator Ron Medford.
Yet the proposed solution? More electronics and more regulations. NHTSA officials say they’ll now push forward with three new rules for vehicles, requiring brake-override software, electronic data recorders and new rules for keyless ignition so that people don’t get confused when they have to shut down a car by holding a button for one-Mississippi two-Mississippi. NHTSA will also study pedal design, to see whether vehicles need to be designed with podiatry standards in mind.
I’m still not convinced that Toyota is fully in the clear, especially
if gas pedals were sticking, although that falls more on the supplier
of the pedals. Much of what goes into a car is not made by the auto
company, but rather by suppliers. The automaker designs, manufactures,
and markets the vehicle.
Anyway, this investigation is a major victory for Toyota, which took a
beating from the U.S. government. A government which partly owned two
Toyota competitors (GM and Chrysler). I don’t want to sound all
conspiratorial, but the government had an interest in hurting Toyota and
helping GM and Chrysler.
As for the stupid drivers who hit the wrong pedal, you deserve to
crash if you’re that stupid. And if your car does, for whatever reason,
start to accelerate on its own, slam on the brakes and shift into
neutral. You won’t damage your car. Brakes are designed to stop cars
even if the throttle is wide open, and engines have rev limiters so that
shifting into neutral won’t blow your engine.
The proposed solution, more regulation and electronics, won’t do
anything in my view. The problem in this case was idiot drivers. The
government needs to learn their are some things it can’t prevent.
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