“I rented a Toyota for the week. I noticed when travelling in the left lane that everyone moved over to the right to let me pass. Not a single foo slowed me down. With its current reputation, the Toyota hardly needs brakes.”

Comment entered by “charenton” on Mar 14, 2010 in response to Reuters story headlined “Investigation questions Prius driver’s story: report”

Quick, want to guess what the single piece brings more traffic to TTAC than any other? Thanks to an early Korean-spec test (don’t worry, further tests of the US-spec model are forthcoming) and the blessings of good Google rankings, our 2011 Hyundai Sonata review has been our single biggest source of traffic over the last several months. But getting a review out early isn’t the only reason so many folks are finding their way to TTAC by way of the Sonata: people are researching the car like crazy. Kelly Blue Book lists the Sonata as its number four most-researched vehicle, as does Edmunds.com, indicating that it’s poised to play with the perennial chart-toppers from Honda and Toyota. Meanwhile, Kia still has yet to make the jump to mainstream prominence, although its version of the Sonata  (still unfortunately named Optima) could be an important step in Korea’s bid to make inroads on the US market. Certainly its Peter Schreyer-designed lines won’t have anyone confusing the Optima with a decontented Sonata.

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Your risk of dying from your Toyota’s unintended acceleration (UA) is so low as to be all but nil next to the more general risk of dying in an automobile, according to an “Opinionator” column in the New York Times, by journalist Robert Wright.
Wright calculates that your chance of dying from unintended acceleration in a Toyota is 2.8 in a million. Meanwhile, the average American’s chance of dying in a car accident over the next to years is one in 5,244, writes Wright. “So driving one of these suspect Toyotas raises your chances of dying in a car crash over the next two years from .01907 percent (that’s 19 one-thousandths of one percent, when rounded off) to .01935 percent (also 19 one-thousandths of one percent). (Methodology described in the article.)

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A few days ago, James Sikes and his runaway Prius was all over news. Until we mentioned that something is fishy. Sikes’ driving skills were put in question. Stories about a wife swapping website emerged. Stories about bankruptcy. Stories about an unpaid lease on the Prius. And sundry other stories. Quickly, Sikes turned into Balloon Boy 2.0

Michael Fumento, director of the Independent Journalism Project, went on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox Business and said: “It appears that everybody on planet earth suspected that there was something horribly wrong with this picture – except for the national media. The real hoax wasn’t James Sikes, it was in fact our press.” Read More >

Over the daily Toyota runaway stories, it’s easy to forget the plight of GM and its children abroad. If you think that’s the idea, then you are a miserable conspiracy theorist, and you should stand in the corner. With that in mind, let’s check in with GM and its worldwide siblings to see how they are doing. Read More >

Reuters reports that Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas along with private attorneys filed the first U.S. consumer protection lawsuit against Toyota USA. The main charge is that Toyota has endangered the public by selling defective vehicles and engaged in deceptive business practices. From the 18 page suit filed Friday morning:

“Against this backdrop of fraud and concealment, Toyota has for decades touted its reputation for safety and reliability and knew that people bought its vehicles because of that reputation and yet purposefully chose to conceal and suppress the existence and nature of defects,”

The suit seeks to restrain Toyota “from continuing to endanger the public through the sale of defective vehicles and deceptive business practices.” Toyota said it has no immediate comment. Read More >

Based on my experience in the 1980s helping investigate unintended acceleration in the Audi 5000, I suspect that smart pedals cannot solve the problem. The trouble, unbelievable as it may seem, is that sudden acceleration is very often caused by drivers who press the gas pedal when they intend to press the brake.

Say what? UCLA professor emeritus of psychology Richard A. Schmidt seems to believe that something other than demonic possession is causing Toyotas to accelerate out of control. Research into the Audi 5000 debacle showed him that even experienced drivers can in fact screw up, and that absent any provable mechanical or electronic failure, the chances are good that most UA events are caused by driver error. And in one of the best op-eds yet penned on the Toyota unintended acceleration scandal [at the NY Times], he explains how anyone could accidentally drive a car of any make out of control.

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Two days ago, Ed Niedermeyer received a tip from an anonymous tipster that James Sikes, the guy who couldn’t stop his runaway Prius until a cop pulled up next to him and told him to, is, well, a bit exposed.

The tipster pointed out that a James Sikes had also started a business called Adultswinglife, LLC. A look at the phone numbers showed that Adult Swing Life LLC (619) 957-7355 shared the same phone number as the real estate business of Patty & Jim Sikes (619)-957-7355. We left it at that. Times are rough, and one needs to find extra streams of income.

A few hours later, an anonymous poster that went by the name “CincyJazzy” posted on the CBS news website that Sikes “is caught in 2 attempts to defraud his insurance company out of $60K, Just lost his house, and was fired for ‘unethical behavior’, in the middle of bankruptcy, and now this.” No reaction from CBS.

Then, nothing. Until ... Read More >

The former GM-Toyota joint-venture known as New United Motor Manufacturing Inc (NUMMI) in Fremont, CA is a big plant. Its nearly 5,000 employees  can churn out over 400,000 compact cars and pickups in a year when operating at full capacity, which of course it hasn’t been for some time. With GM leaving the joint venture during bankruptcy, and Toyota currently winding down the remaining operations, those 4,700-ish employees and their 5.3m square foot plant need work. Local media call their outlook “gloomy,” noting that semiconducter workers will be first in line for the few new manufacturing jobs in the area, with a solar panel firm. But, in keeping with the green revival theme, an electric vehicle startup called Aurica says it’s in negotiations to take over NUMMI, where it says it will build unspecified EVs, in a venture that currently has an “undisclosed” finance plan. Are we buying this? Let’s look at some numbers.

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Volkswagen’s range of BlueMotion cars are their flagship “Look at us! We’re bluegreen!” vehicles. They employ techniques like a remapped engine, longer gear ratios and better aerodynamics to wring the last bit of mpg out of an ICU. The Blue Oval of Ford has the EcoBoost systems which are engines with a turbocharger or direct injection. That’s said to give power and torque on par with larger engine sizes, resulting in better fuel consumption and lower emissions. Daimler has its Bluetec, a slightly disgusting technology that requires overpriced urea to be added to your Benz – urea, as the name indicates, originally was a by-product of urine. (Now why didn’t the hyperkilometering AutoBild think of THAT?) Anyway, Hyundai wants in on the act. Read More >

Volkswagen and its freshly hitched 20 percent bride Suzuki will have a sit-down next week to “flesh out their joint projects by welding together a number of ideas,” reports The Nikkei [sub] from an earnings briefing in Wolfsburg.

The Nikkei guesses that Volkswagen will provide hybrid and electric-vehicle technologies to Suzuki. In turn they are interested in know-how on manufacturing subcompacts at low cost. As far as distribution goes, the two will most likely compare notes on China, where VW is strong, and on India, where Suzuki rules the roost. Read More >

While Toyota has recall troubles in one of their largest markets, elsewhere in the world, another carmaker has serious recall troubles in one of their biggest markets. We usually don’t comment on each and every recall everywhere, but this one warrants mention: Brazil’s Justice Ministry has fined Fiat’s Brazilian subsidiary 3 million Reais (about $1.7 million) for failing to comply with four recall orders. Fiat had been asked to recall Stilo models to fix a wheel problem that may (note the key word “may”) have caused 8 deaths since 2004, says Business Week. No recall followed. Read More >

Anyone who follows the auto industry with any regularity will know that comparing Toyota and Chrysler by any measure is laughable. For mainstream media types, who flit from frenzy to frenzy, all the negative press about Toyota might have left some believing that it’s the worst-off automaker in America. Luckily CNN Money is on-hand to set the record straight, with a piece titled “Forget Toyota. Chrysler’s got the most problems.” It’s a standard litany of TTACian criticism: declining sales, fleet and incentive dependence, no new product, flatlining consideration, and general suckitude. All of which helps make a solid month of media frenzy over sticky accelerators look kind of silly,  especially considering that Chrysler’s stunning underperformance comes courtesy of the American and Canadian taxpayers.

The House Oversight Committee has obtained a 2006 memo from the “All Toyota Labor Union” (ATU) which alleges quality declines due to “a fall in the number of experienced staff in favor of contract workers, longer working hours and an aggressive pursuit of cost cuts” according to Automotive News [sub]. The letter was originally addressed to then-Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe, and was written during a Japanese criminal investigation of Toyota, in which the automaker was eventually cleared of all charges. In the letter, the 20-member ATU (curiously, only two members of the union work for Toyota Motor Company proper) demanded

a seven-point action plan from management including an explanation of the criminal probe, a review of the length of vehicle development period and a review of cost reduction methodologies

Remember when Akio Toyoda, coming back from the U.S.A. went to Beijing in a hurry? China is an important growth market for Toyota. Toyota had been doing well in China, last year they sold 709,000 units, about the same as GM China if you don’t count the Wuling vans. Suddenly, Toyota is falling from grace in the Middle Kingdom. For the first time in years, Toyota dropped off the top 10 list of the best-selling cars in the Chinese market last month, reports Gasgoo, citing data released by China Passenger Car Association. Read More >