Toyota Recall

[95previa]

Does anyone know if the accelerator/throttle in the affected models is a 'drive by wire'? i.e. is there a mechanical connection via cable between the accelerator pedal and the throttle butterfly or not?

[jmoa]

i do not know. call the dealer

[arp]

I heard there is no mechanical connection, its a software problem, makes you thankful for our old vans huh?

[95previa]

Yeah, actually it does make me appreciate the old van a bit more. Strikes me as a case where 'new' is not necessarily 'better' and in fact may be much worse. I'm waiting to see if it turns out to be a software error. Think about the damage that could result from a corporate-level hacker deploying malicious (or buggy) code that runs critical vehicle control systems like throttle, brakes, and steering. Removing physical control from the operator just seems like a bad idea because there is an immense amount of environmental variability that could adversely impact an electronic system and for which it is not realistically possible to test all the combinations of conditions. Think I'll stick with the old technology for as long as I can.

[jmoa]

i called the dealer number one and the front desk is like; they are really busy today on the phone lines as you can imagine.
so i called the second dealer and they told me it only affects the drive by wire technology.
now i though of telling them my gas pedal sticks down when i cancel the cruise control; but he was probably going to tell me to " bring it in and we will have a look for you..."

[NEC]

I am a Toyota dealer. we found out about the recall first on CNN and later that day from our corporate reps. The recall is on the electric (fly by wire type) accelerator pedals. As of now, Toyota has placed a stop sale on most newer models (new and used) that use this type of pedal, with a few exceptions. This means we can not deliver 90% of the cars in our inventory because they have the recalled pedals. So far (as of closing time today), Toyota has only issued the "stop sale" and not issued an official recall with remedy instructions or new replacement part numbers to fix this issue. It has been a real nightmare for the sales staff, selling a new Tundra, for example, getting it financed, and then telling the customer that we can't deliver it until it is fixed, and that we don't know when or how that will be done. As of now, most of our cars have "not for sale" signs on the dashboard. If you own one of the affected models you will be notified by Toyota when they have a fix in place. For questions you can try your local dealer or http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota/toyota-consumer-safety-advisory-102572.aspx?srchid=K610_p228906387 for the scoop. Just googled "toyota recall" and that was the 1st on the list damn you gotta love that innernet..

[95previa]

And now it is reported the Prius has software issues affecting its brakes.

Who is writing the software and manufacturing the electronics that control these critical systems? What kind of safeguards against tampering are in place?

Suppose that some malicious entity was able to purposely introduce 'bugs' into the embedded controllers used by toyota. Mechanical tampering should be relatively easy to detect and guard against, but electronic tampering is much more difficult due to the complexity of the system.

There's also the issue of environment. The pruis exhibits the problem while braking on a bumpy surface. Why was this not caught during the development phase? I suspect it is because the nature of design and development is, there are too many combinations of variables to physically test all the possibilities, and this particular use case wasn't checked.

[JPERL]

I wonder if this will damage Toyota's reputation so much that Toyota will have to start offering 100,000 mile power train warranties to bring back sales

[bad egg]

What I find funny is that I have long been skeptical of the drive-by-wire software... it's just common sense that it's only a matter of time before a glitch of some kind happens, or something corrodes, or whatever.. and on another board the guys would laugh and say that planes and other high-technical vehicles have had the technology for a long time and people were silly to worry about it. I wonder what they say now... (I won't know, toyota threads get locked on that board.)

[slosurfer]

What I find funny is that I have long been skeptical of the drive-by-wire software... it's just common sense that it's only a matter of time before a glitch of some kind happens, or something corrodes, or whatever.. and on another board the guys would laugh and say that planes and other high-technical vehicles have had the technology for a long time and people were silly to worry about it. I wonder what they say now... (I won't know, toyota threads get locked on that board.)

From my friends who work for toyota and from the news stories, it isn't a problem with the drive by wire, but it actually is a defect in the way the pedals were designed and how they are hinged.

[NEC]

From my friends who work for toyota and from the news stories, it isn't a problem with the drive by wire, but it actually is a defect in the way the pedals were designed and how they are hinged.

Yeah, what he said. There are two recalls: the first one is dealing with possible accelerator pedal sticking partially off idle or slow return to idle position. The pedals have plastic friction parts inside the hinge which create drag on the pedal to simulate a "conventional" type feel. Without these friction parts, the pedal would feel as it it is constantly "floating" and would be hard to maintain a steady speed. When the (almost all plastic) hinge fails, it collapses in on itself causing too much force to be applied to the friction parts. Most models are cured by reinforcing the weak point in the plastic "hinge" with a piece of precision ground steel to keep the whole thing from collapsing in on itself and binding up. the part takes about 10 minutes to install.

On the Camry, in the seperate recall dealing with possible pedal entrapment caused by incorrect floormats, we are modifying the pedal and floor to make more space between them, thus making it really really hard to get anyghing stuck between your floor and gas pedal. As part of the recall we are also re-flashing the vehicles onboard computer to cut engine power if it sees simultaneous application of the accelertator and brake pedals.

As far as the Prius is concerned, I have no solid reports, and haven't heard of any recall as of yet, but from what I understand about the investigation there have been reports of in rare cases (like juming train tracks or going over huge potholes) that the ABS has been "hyper sensitive". In other words, if one tire comes up off of the ground and the other 3 aree still rolling, the abs freaks out for a split second (which may feel like a lot longer) because it doesn't know if it should Stop or Go. They say this will probably be addressed with a simple re-flash.

[bad egg]

Well that makes more sense...

[Brenton Netz]

I'm guessing Toyota's market competition is having a field day with this? It's another one of those examples that highlights the difference between people who value simplicity (good ol push on the pedal, cable pulls on throttle, and away you go...) and the never-ending need for "progress" to justify it's own existence (Hey, lets complicate it simply because we can) 80's Toyotas are the best: a marriage of refined engineering, motive to win over customers (instead of retain them via propaganda) and farily simplistic technology (except where smog technical comes in) I wonder if the future will come down to whom ever has an old car in drivable condition will drive while the rest take out 30 year mortgages on new vehicles to do the same. The whole wave of refi'ing one's home so as to buy overpriced toys like new trucks (that fed the recent economic collapse) is a version of that. This topic touches as many areas of modern life as one can imagine.--Brenton

[jmoa]

i am all up for the vintage vehicules riding around while the new car owners are left on the waiting rooms of the dealers waiting to have their cars service under warranty.
what is it going to happen when another one of this disasters strike out of warranty? what are these tps drive by wire worth new?

[timsrv]

Safety recalls have no expiration dates. In the long term this is somewhat of a good thing because it highly motivates Toyota (and others) to find permanent solutions and prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Too bad people had to die for it to become a serious enough issue to finally get to this level. Don't forget when our vans came out the old timers were complaining about fuel injection and the new fangled electronics, but look at how much better they have proven to be! I still believe in progress and I think we should be moving with technology. IMO these are just growing pains.......as time goes on I believe technology will make things easier to work on and troubleshoot (if you have a laptop with the correct interface cables and software installed). Tim

[JPERL]

i am all up for the vintage vehicules riding around while the new car owners are left on the waiting rooms of the dealers waiting to have their cars service under warranty.
what is it going to happen when another one of this disasters strike out of warranty? what are these tps drive by wire worth new?

prices for a new accelerator pedal drive by wire average $400-$500 No TPS per se the Pedal is the TPS

[Brenton Netz]

Safety recalls have no expiration dates. In the long term this is somewhat of a good thing because it highly motivates Toyota (and others) to find permanent solutions and prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Too bad people had to die for it to become a serious enough issue to finally get to this level. Don't forget when our vans came out the old timers were complaining about fuel injection and the new fangled electronics, but look at how much better they have proven to be! I still believe in progress and I think we should be moving with technology. IMO these are just growing pains.......as time goes on I believe technology will make things easier to work on and troubleshoot (if you have a laptop with the correct interface cables and software installed). Tim

I'm of the opinion that any "progress" being made in the market place these days is designed purposely to serve and benifit the producer only. Of course the technology is there to make all of our lives easier and better, it's the application of said technology that's the problem.

Example: Cell phones designed to die before the service contract is due (this has been documented and even class actioned in other countries) In-house design teams hired to build-in pripriatary components to make sure the consumer can't use his/her old: battery, charger, software, etc etc. from the last product bought (that was designed on purpose to die) it's called advanced stage planned obsolesence, and it's real.

Vehicles: So you're saying fly by wire is "progress" over cable and leverage? Yes there are some examples of true improvements in vehicle/combustion technology. EFI over Carb (though carbs do have some advantages depending on application) VVT-I motors are another advancement IMHO (the MPG to HP ratio is amazing) but take the Prius (as an extreme example) it's champianed as having a lower carbon footprint amoung other things. In truth it's one of the most environmentally destructive vehicles ever produced. I'm sure you've seen this before TIm, but I'll post the link in case others haven't:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk

Hard to call that "progress" if you ask me. And I'll point out again, my 93 festiva gets better MPG's, not to mention my Metro. Both far simpler than a hybred. ("oh, but they aren't safe!")

I could take this all the way back to MArx, it's not technology that's the problem, it's the appication of it.

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"

Brenton

[Makelo]

Talk about payback is a (you know the rest) that's what Toyota gets for the cash for clunker fiasco and the crushed commercials of the Land Cruiser and Cressida. Without a doubt, Toyota's image has been burned. It will take years for them to recover from this. Have you guys seen the "I'm sorry" Toyota commercial?
Good thing I still have Honda to rely on

[JPERL]

Good thing I still have Honda to rely on

Yeah as long as the airbag in the Honda does not kill you

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Honda-add ... 1.html?x=0

Every car maker has their obstacles. I noticed that the sentiment on the forum seems to be that Toyota "deserved this"

As for the cash for clunkers this was an intiative by the federal government to stimulate the economy not Toyota's intiative to get people out of old Toyota's so I don't know why this is "pay back" for Toyota. If this is payback then it's payback for all automakers across the board as the cash for clunkers was availiable to all makes and models that fell below a certain mpg. We here on the forum love our old Toyota's but we are only a small niche and the majority of the car driving population is not going to continue to embrace 20 + year old technology especially when so many parts are no longer availiable.

[Makelo]

Good thing I still have Honda to rely on

Yeah as long as the airbag in the Honda does not kill you

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Honda-add ... 1.html?x=0

Every car maker has their obstacles. I noticed that the sentiment on the forum seems to be that Toyota "deserved this"

As for the cash for clunkers this was an intiative by the federal government to stimulate the economy not Toyota's intiative to get people out of old Toyota's so I don't know why this is "pay back" for Toyota. If this is payback then it's payback for all automakers across the board as the cash for clunkers was availiable to all makes and models that fell below a certain mpg. We here on the forum love our old Toyota's but we are only a small niche and the majority of the car driving population is not going to continue to embrace 20 + year old technology especially when so many parts are no longer availiable.

How many people have died from Honda airbags compared to toyota (34 confirmed deaths due to sudden acceleration?)

Take for example all the issues toyota has on all of its eight models Stuck accelarators (Camry's, Corollas, Tacomas, Tundras, etc) sudden loss of brake pressure (Prius) steering issues (Corolla again) broken driveshafts (Tacoma and Tundras) excessive chasis oxidation (Tacomas and Tundras) Toyota far outweights Honda with their recall of the Accord airbags and the Fit's window switch

When it comes down to it, I rather take an airbag to the face than loose control of the accelerator and ram into people.

In regards to the Clunker fiasco, I was referring to Toyota's commercials of how they sold their heritage by airing commercials that clearly show the destruction of two of their most iconic cars (Land Cruiser & Cressida) for the pieces of crap cars they now make (Tacoma & Camry) Come on, when did you see Ford airing commercials crushing Mustangs or F150's ? You will never see Chevy crushing Suburbans & Corvettes? Nor Nissan crushing Maximas and Patrols?

We represent an issue to Toyota, and like you mentioned we are a niche of toyota loyalist. But Toyota has a problem with our loyalty do to their greed. We are the problem for not buying "new" Toyotas and our old vans are a problem because they are better built and last longer than their new products. So now, Toyota is committed to force us into buying their new products by slowly "discontinuing" parts that help keep our vans running . Toyota's goal is to discourage us from driving and owning our vans and old toyotas.