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Did ABC Stage Report on Toyota Acceleration?
WTAQ 1360 AM ^ | March 9th | Jerry Bader

Posted on 03/12/2010 6:03:29 PM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing

According to Toyota, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, ABC's report on potential acceleration problems shows the tachometer at 6,000 RPM when evidence of the vehicle shows it is in park. ABC has replaced the video (never a good sign). Further, this story involves a manipulation of the electronics in question. Toyota's counter offensive came on the same day an out of control Prius was stopped with help from police on a San Diego freeway.

Whether or not Toyota product has rapid acceleration problems is becoming the "Elvis sightings" equivalent of the automotive industry. As such, it could be a reputation, fairly or unfairly, that lingers with Toyota for a long time.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abcnews; automakers; biasmeanslayoffs; danrather; deceit; drivebymedia; fakebutaccurate; hoax; liberalmedia; staterunmedia; toyota; trysellingthetruth
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To: Richard Kimball

“A friend of mine wrecked her Toyota a couple of days ago. The accelerator stuck and she said she could not get the car in neutral.”

Where, what day, and what time?


61 posted on 03/13/2010 1:20:03 PM PST by Spike Knotts
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To: Richard Kimball

Sounds like your friend was freaked out. I can easily shift gears up and down in my Lexus and can shift into neutral just as easily. Your friend’s alleged complaint still doesn’t explain why no other countries are reporting this problem. You say you have an axe to grind against Toyota, so that make me think none of you complaints are true.


62 posted on 03/13/2010 2:27:00 PM PST by Kirkwood
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To: Kirkwood
so that make me think none of you complaints are true.

I'll cry myself to sleep tonight worrying about what you think.

63 posted on 03/13/2010 3:52:46 PM PST by Richard Kimball (We're all criminals. They just haven't figured out what some of us have done yet.)
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To: mdmathis6

Well, obviously. I was talking about examining the models in the showroom.


64 posted on 03/13/2010 9:31:57 PM PST by Erasmus (Lying fallow in preparation for planting season)
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To: RightOnline
"Some of you folks should be ashamed of yourselves."

Lots of knee jerk responses from younger, newer members. I happen to agree with your remarks..Toyota has a problem, irrespective of any outside influences.

Oh, and I am a member for the last 12 years,and pay monthly...

So save any troll remarks for those tempted. It used to be we had rational, thoughtful discussions. Now it seems our membership is content to shoot from the lip without checking things out.

65 posted on 03/13/2010 9:44:48 PM PST by drc43 (Finally , we fooled enough of you... now we can screw you totally!!!....Nancy Pelosi)
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To: Kirkwood; Richard Kimball

Evidently several drivers have complained, even during the acceleration event, that they couldn’t get the transmission into neutral. There are a couple of things I’d like to know about this.

First, were they unable to even move the shift lever to neutral, or did they mean that they moved it to the neutral position and the transmission remained in gear?

If the former, either they were panicking and therefore unable to exercise normal motor (muscular) control, or there exists on these models some kind of mechanical lockout on the shifter that happened to go haywire at precisely the wrong time.

IMHO, no such lockout would ever be designed into an automobile, so I regard the likelihood of being unable to move the lever to neutral by applying the standard motion to it, to be nil.

If they successfully moved the lever to neutral and the transmission remained in gear, it means the car had an electronically controlled transmission without a mechanical backup (”shift by wire”). If there was a computer glitch, it might max the accelerator (not the pedal, but the throttle) and also ignore the shifter at the same time; a bad kind of failure.

The only worse one would be if it also ignored the ignition switch, like the Colossus Project or the God Machine.


66 posted on 03/13/2010 9:45:02 PM PST by Erasmus (Lying fallow in preparation for planting season)
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To: Fresh Wind

Thanks for the link to the story. I have two observations:

1. The modification that Ford is talking about will idle the engine if the controller notices hard or perhaps prolonged application of the brake in the presence of high throttle
(Goodbye power-packing at the start line, I suppose).

They should be able to accomplish this in firmware which can be downloaded to the engine control unit. If they have to install anything mechanical, I’d be interested in hearing about it.

2. The spokeslady in the video clip said that Ford have given carte blanche to an outside testing organization to uncover any problems. So far, she maintains that no electronic (including software, one assumes) malfunctions have been discovered.

This may seem to be at odds with the recall and retrofit, but not exactly. It adds a layer of fail-safe, with the significant exception that if there really is an intermittent computer lockup, and the fail-safe is in the firmware, the fail-safe may itself fail.

I’m pretty sure they will be putting further realtime selfchecks into the firmware, as well as attempting to catch anomalous accelerator events and record them in EEPROM, just as they do with airbag deployments. These can be read back by a standard diagnostic readout device.


67 posted on 03/13/2010 10:06:52 PM PST by Erasmus (Lying fallow in preparation for planting season)
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To: Erasmus
(Goodbye power-packing at the start line, I suppose).

Not necessarily...get a car with launch control.

68 posted on 03/14/2010 6:07:49 AM PDT by Fresh Wind ("...a whip of political correctness strangles their voice"-Vaclav Klaus on GW skeptics)
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