Suspending Sales? Wow!

[Orchidflower]

I've had 4 Toyotas so far, but this may start me thinking about Honda....yup...may switch next time IF my Solara ever does die.

 

[Telly]

The media is having a hard time keeping all of this straight.

There is the big recall for "pedal entrapment".

Then there is this week's recall/stop sales/stop production for "sticking or slowly returning pedal".

And now later Wednesday, another 1.1 million Toyotas have been added to the "pedal entrapment" recall, they were not included originally.

 

[Telly]

I didn't know about it when I bought my Venza yesterday (which isn't one of the affected models). snip

Today the 2009 & 2010 Venza, along with some other Toyotas, 1.1 million total, were added to the pedal entrapment recall.

Whether your new Venza was built with a different pedal design, or already "modified", who knows.

The short-term "fix" for pedal entrapment was for the dealer to cut off part of the pedal (the bottom-most part, I believe), to make it shorter. Then many months later the owner would be notified to bring it in again to have the "modified" pedal replaced with a newly-designed one, when they are available.


Designing new parts or assemblies takes time. Then building and exhaustively testing prototypes including temperature testing, cycling, aging, etc. And then if the design looks good, then a mfg. has to tool up to produce production samples, to be tested again, and if OK, then released to parts production. Then the parts mfg. has to acquire materials and ramp up production. To make millions of parts. It's gonna take a while...

 

[TheSweetLife]

I drive a 2005 Avalon and love it! Toyota customers are pretty loyal. I know I am. I look forward to getting this fixed, and it won't deter me from buying another Avalon in the future.

 

[brewer12345]

Not that I was planning on buying anything soon, but this cements my utter lack of interest in Toyota products.

 

[Zathras]

What I wonder is how do they know which vehicles are excluded ? Since the Solara was basically a sporty Camry but it is excluded from the recall . I love my Toyota but I'm not sure if I'll stick with them after this incident . That article from the Los Angeles Times has me pretty spooked .

Latest word is that no one yet knows why this is happening in a very small percentage of cars.
Toyota has apparently isolated this to occuring in vehicles with a part from a particular supplier. Only some models use that part. So to be overly cautious Toyota is recalling all models that use that part.
I applaud them for this as it is an extremely expensive way to do it, but also the most cautious.
Ford this morning has also stopped production in China of some models of their commercial vehicles which use accelerator parts from the same supplier.

 

[Zathras]

Edit to add: The vultures are already flying overhead.
Quote:
Hoping to capitalize on the problems facing Toyota and its recalls, GM will offer a monthlong incentive to Toyota and Lexus owners. The move comes as a response to “thousands” of calls and e-mails to dealers from Toyota owners asking for help (believe it or not).

The incentive runs through the end of Feb. and will offer the following:

* Those who choose to lease a vehicle may waive three payments for up to a total of $1,000.
* Qualifying customers who are financing a vehicle purchase can receive 0 percent financing for up to 60 months.
* Cash buyers can receive $1,000 off their purchase.

According to GM spokesman Tom Henderson, the incentive applies to GMC, Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet vehicles.

They have the same opportunity with this buyer as they always have. Build a car that gets better mpg than my Prius, or better yet a pure EV and I will buy it.

 

[TromboneAl]

From Wikipedia:



Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, class-action lawsuits claimed that Dow Corning's silicone breast implants caused systemic health problems. The claims first centered around breast cancer, and then migrated to a range of autoimmune diseases, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and various neurological problems. This led to numerous lawsuits beginning in 1984 and culminating in a 1998 multi-billion dollar class action settlement. As a result, Dow Corning was in bankruptcy protection for nine years, ending in June 2004.


A number of large, independent reviews of the scientific literature, including the U.S. Institute of Medicine, have subsequently found that silicone breast implants do not appear to cause breast cancers or any identifiable systemic disease.[1][2] [3]

 

[lets-retire]

I am surprised Chrysler can sell one car... but I bet I might hear from someone on the board why they bought one...

I didn't buy a Chrysler, but I did buy a 2008 Dodge, during the brief period it was owned by Americans. The reason I bought the car was I had one as a company car and worked it mercilessly. I knew I was going to be leaving the job soon and used the time as an extended test drive. It kept running without a problem. I can honestly say I've been pleased with the performance of the car I purchased. It has been in the shop for warranty work two times in the two years I've owned it. Once for leaking fog lights and once for a cracked piece of trim. That is far less than the GM I owned and about the same as the Ford I own. It is not that I don't like foreign cars, I just don't see the sense in buying a foreign product when there are acceptable products made by companies headquartered in the US.

 

[FinanceDude]

I didn't buy a Chrysler, but I did buy a 2008 Dodge, during the brief period it was owned by Americans. The reason I bought the car was I had one as a company car and worked it mercilessly. I knew I was going to be leaving the job soon and used the time as an extended test drive. It kept running without a problem. I can honestly say I've been pleased with the performance of the car I purchased. It has been in the shop for warranty work two times in the two years I've owned it. Once for leaking fog lights and once for a cracked piece of trim. That is far less than the GM I owned and about the same as the Ford I own. It is not that I don't like foreign cars, I just don't see the sense in buying a foreign product when there are acceptable products made by companies headquartered in the US.

Maybe their quality is getting better. I had a 95 Eagle Vision (nightmare), a 1999 Dodge Grand Caravan (nightmare), and a 2004 Chrysler Town and Country (ending up suing Chrysler because the vehicle was in the shop 44 days in the first two years I owned it)...........

 

[Walt34]

I didn't buy a Chrysler, but I did buy a 2008 Dodge,.... It is not that I don't like foreign cars, I just don't see the sense in buying a foreign product when there are acceptable products made by companies headquartered in the US.

That was my thought too.

Everybody makes a lemon once in a while, even Rolls Royce. The two '03 GM vehicles we have have been peaches so far. At seven years the truck needed one windshield wiper circuit board and the Buick had two minor electrical issues fixed under warranty.

Neither has any squeaks or rattles, which in the case of the pickup I think is particularly impressive.

 

[Texas Proud]

I didn't buy a Chrysler, but I did buy a 2008 Dodge, during the brief period it was owned by Americans. The reason I bought the car was I had one as a company car and worked it mercilessly. I knew I was going to be leaving the job soon and used the time as an extended test drive. It kept running without a problem. I can honestly say I've been pleased with the performance of the car I purchased. It has been in the shop for warranty work two times in the two years I've owned it. Once for leaking fog lights and once for a cracked piece of trim. That is far less than the GM I owned and about the same as the Ford I own. It is not that I don't like foreign cars, I just don't see the sense in buying a foreign product when there are acceptable products made by companies headquartered in the US.

Same thing... Dodge and Chrysler...

My sister owed a number of them... and all were POS... interesting thing now is she has a Lexus... but might be old enough to not be involved..

But to tell a story... she had a Volare... and it broke down all the time... the engine blew up on it and my BIL was going to replace the engine... when someone STOLE the car.... we told my sister to put in a claim to the insurance... she took her time... and a week later.... THEY BROUGHT THE CAR BACK!!!... dropped it off on her driveway... now tell me, how bad does a car have to be when a crook doesn't even want it... we were suprised they took the time to bring it back...

 

[TooFrugal]

silicone breast implants do not appear to cause breast cancers or any identifiable systemic disease.

The link between stuck accelerators, crashes and Toyotas is pretty specific. People that get pains in their joints don't always know the cause. Maybe it is from implants, maybe it is their diet, maybe they type too much. Maybe it is a combination of 100 different things. Vague illnesses are pretty hard to pinpoint an exact cause.

But people who have cars accelerating suddenly know that they can't stop their cars despite their best efforts and they know what make and model of car they are driving.

 

[Westernskies]

But people who have cars accelerating suddenly know that they can't stop their cars despite their best efforts...

 

[TooFrugal]

The "put it in neutral answer" has been widely publicized now due to the recalls, but even a trained highway patrol officer didn't think to do it when his car went out of control and he and his passengers all died from the sudden acceleration problem.

If putting a car in neutral solved all of the safety issues, then there would be no need for cars to be recalled or sales to be suspended.

 

[WhoDaresWins]

I have a 2001 Toyota Land Cruiser that has been absolutely reliable with few repairs. However this current situation will give me pause before I purchase another Toyota. Honda is looking better to me, too. Had an Accord station wagon(dubbed the "Mom-mobile by my son) in the '90's that I really liked.

 

[ls99]

Eh, when in panic mode might as well jam it into park.

It is destructive to the parking pawl in the tranny. Still, the car will no longer provide propulsion and will slow down.

Cheaper to fix car and tranny (assuming you ever want to drive THAT car again) as opposed attempting re-assembly of the body(s) and/or resurrection. Less painful as well.

Edit add: when under high stress it is much easier to jam the gearshift lever to on end or the other, than trying to figure out where neutral is.

Worst case you'll be in low gear with full throttle, that will still result in manageable speed.

 

[ERD50]

The "put it in neutral answer" has been widely publicized now due to the recalls, but even a trained highway patrol officer didn't think to do it when his car went out of control and he and his passengers all died from the sudden acceleration problem.

If putting a car in neutral solved all of the safety issues, then there would be no need for cars to be recalled or sales to be suspended.

I have not read anything definitive on this - on those cars involved in these accidents, was it possible to downshift and/or put it in Neutral or Park? Or did the whole computer control system over-ride such 'silly' mistakes? After all, you might want to protect somebody from inadvertently shifting into Neutral at highway speeds and blowing their engine by accident.

Most cars require you to have your foot on the brake to take it out of Park. It's tough to imagine a situation where you would want to over-ride that - but I suppose it could happen. And our van auto-locks the doors once you hit 15 mph, maybe you suddenly need to get out quick (an electrical fire that makes the locks non-functional)? All sorts of examples where the car takes control of operations - good 99.999% of the time, but.....


-ERD50

 

[TromboneAl]

The link between stuck accelerators, crashes and Toyotas is pretty specific. People that get pains in their joints don't always know the cause. Maybe it is from implants, maybe it is their diet, maybe they type too much. Maybe it is a combination of 100 different things. Vague illnesses are pretty hard to pinpoint an exact cause.

But people who have cars accelerating suddenly know that they can't stop their cars despite their best efforts and they know what make and model of car they are driving.

Yes, you're probably right. It does happen with other cars. It seems to happen more with Toyotas, but there are more Toyotas out there. Someone with a Dodge whose floor mat gets stuck might throw out the floor mat, and forget about it, while someone with a Toyota will say "Wow, here's that Toyota problem" and report it. The accelerations happen so infrequently that it's hard to study rigorously.

I'm just wary of trial by anecdotes and trial by media, and brought up the boobie story to illustrate how unreliable that is. And because of the forum requirement that every thread mention breasts.

Also, even if Toyota knew that it wasn't their fault, they might, from a PR standpoint, pretend to fix it. In today's world, they can't just say "Hey folks, it's not our fault. Switch into neutral and get a life!"

 

[FIREd]

Now that it has been made so public, I wonder how many people will try to blame their reckless driving on that problem, "I tried to stop, officer, but my car sped up all of a sudden!"...

 

[travelover]

Having w*rked in the industry and realizing how extremely complex cars are now, I think it is just a matter of time for any company before they get smacked with a major problem. Toyota has been especially good at quality control and seeing them twist in the wind underscores how thin the ice is for us all.

 

[misanman]

Tundra Hits House

A couple of months ago my BIL was going to move his Tundra in the driveway. It suddenly accelerated and hit the corner of the house, damaging both the truck and the house. I think he's still pretty loyal and prefers to believe that it was an ice scraper on the floor that must have interfered with the accelerator pedal. Of course there's no way to know for sure, but it sure seems suspicious given all the publicity about the "problem".

 

[SarahW]

Buy American! "May the Best Car Win!"

 

[Nords]

The "put it in neutral answer" has been widely publicized now due to the recalls, but even a trained highway patrol officer didn't think to do it when his car went out of control and he and his passengers all died from the sudden acceleration problem.

IIRC, he was in a model of vehicle that he'd never driven before, I suspect he had quite a bit of noise going on around him, and no doubt he was busy trying to dodge traffic while reaching down to grab the pedal.

If he was driving a car with a paddle shifter that he'd never really used before, I bet he was grabbing all over looking for the stick shift or the automatic transmission.

"Trained" is a relative word. I was a pretty hotshot officer of the deck on my first submarine, and could find every periscope button & knob in the dark without conscious thought. When I went to my second boat, everything had been moved around or changed just enough to make me a half-step slower. It took months to catch up with the "minor" differences and I still had flashbacks.

 

[Telly]

The "throttle-by-wire" system that is in most later-model cars and trucks is a major departure from the previous art.

When I started driving, the gas pedal was connected to a series of metal linkages that went through the firewall to the carburetor's butterfly.

Then they got rid of the linkages, and the pedal instead pulled a steel wire that was in the center of a cable. The cable's sheath was a tight spirally-wound steel wire. The sheath was then encased in a plastic jacket for protection and to keep out moisture.

In both of these methods, the driver was always in direct control of the amount of air entering the carb, and when they later went to fuel injection, you were still in control of the butterfly in the fuel injection throttle body.

We have a 2010, not a Toyota, an American-designed and built that is built over in Uncle Mick's new territory. It has throttle-by-wire. I took a quick look at it a few minutes ago, hanging upside-down to try to see the accelerator pedal assembly. Not much to see... a plastic pedal on a plastic arm, that goes into a small plastic box that has an internal return spring, and has a connector on top for a sensor, looks like 3 wires. Probably a potentiometer. That's all there is to it.

So with throttle-by-wire, the engine control computer reads the gas pedal sensor to see the present position of the pedal. Then the computer (along with doing all sorts of other engine functions), controls a servo motor that actually opens/closes the throttle body's butterfly.

If the pedal sensor gives out the wrong position, the computer will take it as fact, it has no way of knowing differently. If the servo motor decides on it's own that it wants to join the 24 Hours of LeMans, I wouldn't think the computer would richen the injector pulse widths if the pedal is not in a strong acceleration position, but I may be wrong there.

Or, the software could go bonkers and the computer commands the servo to open wide, and it also increases the injectors duty cycle because it thinks its supposed to accelerate. That would be the scariest. An insane cpu is unlikely to read a press on the brake pedal as a "do not accelerate". If Toyota's "no acceleration while braking" fix for some of their cars is all software, and not a redundant separate system like many Cruise Controls have, then it's not a solid fix.

Don't even get me started on the "Start/Stop" button that some cars have today. I don't see me buying something like that. I want a key switch that enables or kills power to ignition, injectors, and fuel pump. And I want a transmission setup that if I decide to put it into Neutral at 70 MPH, it does it. So far, DW & I still have that. But some people don't now.

In an earlier thread on Toyota's issue, Leonidas kindly posted info that he dug up on the California Hwy. Patrolmans disaster. It had a Start/Stop button, and we weren't sure if the Lexus would or would not perform a shift to neutral if the throttle was wide open.

Could you imagine an airplane's avionics package that would not let a pilot dis-engage the automated program to fly the plane manually? Because the pilot "might" do something unwise? A baaaad idea.