When it comes to mountains of data like the NHTSA vehicle complaint data base, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure(trove).  Yes, there are limitations. But the remarkable degree of similarity of the UA rate between most badge engineered cars, and GM’s consistently low UA ratings speak of statistical relevance to some of us. One of those is David Lapidus, (TTAC handle: David42), whose data diving and Excel skills vastly overshadow mine.

In the last data dive, I used numbers from Edmunds to come up with a UA complaint rate for 117 cars from MY 2005-2010, excluding the flurry of complaints filed with NHTSA after the Toyota mat recall 0f 9/29/09. But those are cumulative, over the five years. David has taken it to the next level, to the individual model year. We may come back to the whole list another time, but initially we decided to focus on the Toyota Camry, since its large volume of sales and UA complaints would inherently increase the statistical accuracy of the numbers. And although this data dive may not solve the UA puzzle, it does raise serious questions about the most recent recalls and the Congressional barbecue of Toyota. (Read More…)

[Note: This piece first ran in May 2007. It seems particularly relevant again in light of the current Toyota unintended acceleration (UA) situation. But please note that the circumstance that caused the Audi UA may, or may not be very different, depending on the circumstances. In the early eighties, electronic gas pedals and complex engine controls and other interfaces such as with ABS/brakes were still on the horizon. Nevertheless, the rules of physics have not been repealed. And an unknown percentage of Toyota UA events undoubtedly are the result of pedal misapplication. Audi’s near collapse in the American market after this incident remains a painful lesson in the power of the media, the slowness of the NHTSA, and the critical PR choices manufacturers make in the wake of a crisis like this. PN]

When I first heard about the Audi “sudden unintended acceleration” segment on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 1986, I knew instantly that they were blowing smoke. Literally. (Read More…)

Just as Paul Niedermeyer, Edmunds, Consumer Reports or anybody else who has the time to download and analyze 103.1 Mbytes worth of customer complaints to NHTSA, Toyota is pouring over the data. However, their attempts are being thoroughly frustrated.

According to The Nikkei [sub], Toyota found out that oftentimes complaints submitted to the NHTSA “either are unverifiable or lack vehicle-owner information required to facilitate follow-up.” In other words, a lot of the complaints look like they are bogus. Even if they are real, their validity cannot be ascertained.

And herein lies the rub: (Read More…)

Legions of Toyota owners have brought their automobiles to their dealers to have their carpets zip-tied and their pedals shimmied. But did that end the customer complaints? You guessed it: It did not. The NHTSA has already received 10 complaints that the fixes were for naught and that cars still have a mind of their own. Understandably, do-nothing-NHSTSA, having received congressional tongue lashings about lackadaisical attitudes, is on it like sonic. (Read More…)

Here’s TTAC’s and the web’s only complete guide to Toyota’s gas pedals (so far), with tear downs, pictures, analysis, explanation, the shim fix, and commentary, all consolidated into one portal:

Part 1: Exclusive: TTAC Takes Apart Both Toyota Gas Pedals: Tear down of both the recalled CTS pedal assembly and the non-recalled Denso pedal assembly. Note: Assumptions and conclusions in this initial tear down lack the more complete understanding of the importance of the friction arm aspect of the CTS unit.

Part 2: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Explained – With Exclusive Photos: Describes Toyota’s proposed fix for the recalled CTS gas pedal assembly, with detailed photos and graphics. Explains the significance of the friction arm assembly and its limitations.

Part 3: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Simulated – Friction Reduced, By Too Much?: TTAC simulates the fix prescribed by Toyota for the recalled CTS pedal assembly, and notes how the fix changes the degree of friction, and the possible unintended result. With detailed pictures

Part 4: Why Toyota Must Replace Flawed CTS Gas Pedal With Superior Denso Pedal: Detailed analysis with pictures of the two pedal assemblies, an explanation as to why the Denso design is superior, and a call for having all CTS pedals replaced with the Denso pedal.

Part 5: TTAC Does The Toyota Pedal Shim Fix:  Stop Gap Solution At Best: Toyota’s solution is carried out here with detailed pictures, the whole Toyota document detailing the fix, and our commentary.

Part 6: Toyota Floor Mat/Gas pedal Recall Includes Computer Reflash And Trimming Of Gas Pedals: Info on the details of the floor mat/gas pedal interference recall.

Part 7: Toyota Recall  Creates Unintended Accelerator Consequences: As predicted in Part 4 (above), the CTS shim fix reduces the carefully designed amount of friction required for comfortable and smooth pedal action to the point where pedal action may now be jerky and potentially unsafe.

(Thanks to you-know-who-you-are for access to these parts and info)

[Update 3: This post is now officially obsolete, having been supplanted by the much more accurate update here]

[Update 2: In a new post, I have noted that 53% of Toyota UA complaints were filed after the mat advisory was issued on 9/29/09. The number used her are not adjusted for that. As soon as they are available, I will redo this spreadsheet, using more accurate sales stats]

[Update ans Disclaimer: As I noted below, this spreadsheet will be updated when I can access actual sales stats from our source, Morgan and Co. on Monday for the years (’05-’10) covered. That will very likely change the rankings somewhat. The Lincoln may actually be #2. But this is not about which car is #1 or #2; it’s about finding patterns in certain makes, and within makes. It’s an attempt to see if these statistics can shed light on a complex and opaque issue. As an example, why the Toyota Yaris is so low in reported incidents. It’s more about these patterns and discrepancies, than about singling out the car with the highest rate, so please don’t take the current exact rankings as the final word. It’s a work in progress. The fact that the complaints are not tabulated by individual MY also limits this substantially, as running changes in a given car during the five year period will change things significantly. So this data dive is fundamentally flawed; take it as such. But nevertheless, it’s still a huge step over the raw data that Edmunds put out, which doesn’t begin to account for the number of any given cars sold.]

Numbers and statistics are largely useless without context. Edmunds.com took a first good step in going through NHTSA’s data base and reporting the number of UA events reported per make, brand and vehicle. But what was obviously missing was the correlation to the number of cars on the road in relation to those numbers. We’ve taken the next (tedious) step, and the results are most interesting indeed. They’re certainly not completely conclusive, but we’re not finished yet. The full list of 95 cars follows, as well as our methodology, a stab at some analysis, and more questions to still be answered. (Read More…)

Before Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood even took the stand before the House Energy Committee, the Washington Post [via TheCarConnection] reported that:

NHTSA officials told investigators that the agency doesn’t employ any electrical engineers or software engineers.

Down on the Potomac, zingers like that go over like an ounce of catnip in a phone booth full of rowdy toms. And sure enough, the question came up at LaHood’s testimony. In fact, it came up twice. And it was the closest thing to a real “gotcha” moment in a long day of testimony.

(Read More…)

After a big buildup by expert witnesses, and Toyota’s Jim Lentz’s evasion of any evidence that his firm’s cars are afflicted with an untraceable electronic gremlin, the House Energy Committe turned its attention to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Because LaHood’s department falls under the congress’s oversight (and carries the government’s ultimate responsibility for the safety of American motorists), LaHood might well have been the main focus of the committee’s investigation. And indeed his last-in-line billing appears to make him the event’s headliner. Or at least it would have if his testimony didn’t make the previous several hours of Ahab-ing largely unnecessary, and possibly even highly embarrassing.
(Read More…)

State Farm has been a thorn in Toyota’s side since congress geared up to investigate its recall problems. First, the insurance firm disclosed that it had warned the NHTSA of the prevalence of unintended acceleration (UA) in Toyota models back in 2007, then this past weekend, it clarified that it had actually warned the NHTSA of problems back in 2004. All this has added to the perception that Toyota somehow bought the NHTSA’s cooperation in concealing its UA problem, a perception that is accelerating tensions leading up to Akio Toyoda’s capitol hill testimony. Ironically, Toyota took measures to fight its image as a lobbyist-happy Washington manipulator by… hiring more lobbyists. Unfortunately for Toyota, the Legal Times blog reports that one of its recently-hired K-street reinforcements (Quinn Gillespie) had something of a conflict of interest that QG spokesfolks describe as:

another, long-standing client of the firm was in a position adverse to Toyota in connection with certain matters relating to the company’s recall of some of its vehicle lines

A quick look at QG’s client list reveals only one likely candidate: State Farm Insurance. As a result of the conflict, Quinn Gillespie has terminated its deal with Toyota. According to regulatory filings, Toyota paid QG $30,000 for six weeks of work, during which time it lobbied on “issues related to the vehicle recall, as well as proposed reform of the financial regulatory system.”

Akio Toyoda is spending the weekend in Japan, being prepped for his appearance in front of the modern day version of the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition, better known as a Congressional Hearing.

According to Reuters, and as suggested by TTAC,  Toyoda “is likely to undergo intense preparation. Toyota may hire lawyers to drill him with mock questions, one consultant said. A company source said it had not yet been decided whether Toyoda would speak in Japanese or English, but the company has already contacted some translation companies.”

The weekend drill was interrupted by the news that State Farm had informed the NHTSA as early as February 27, 2004, that the insurance company had five claims of unwanted acceleration in the 2002 Lexus ES 300 during the previous 12 months. Reuters broke the story, writing “the insurer said earlier this month it had contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in late 2007. However, prompted by the public interest in Toyota, the insurer reviewed its records again and has now found that it contacted safety regulators initially in 2004.” All hell broke loose … (Read More…)

With Congress already investigating a possible Toyota unintended acceleration cover-up, the NHTSA has decided that it should probably be getting a piece of the action, and has invoked its statutory power to request documents relating to when Toyota learned of the defects involved in its recent gas pedal recall and how it reacted to them. Federal law requires that manufacturers notify the NHTSA within five days of discovering a safety defect, reports the Wall Street Journal [sub]. The WSJ [sub] also notes that Toyota is offering to disclose new details about its crisis response task force (which reportedly includes “outside quality experts”), as the world’s largest automaker struggles to respond to a rash of recalls that has affected over 8m vehicles worldwide and will cost the company at least $2b. CEO Akio Toyoda will hold his third recall-related press conference in two weeks on Wednesday evening to disclose these details and more on the company’s plans to boost testing and transparency. According to yet another WSJ [sub] report, those measures are said to include less reliance on computer modeling in vehicle design, improved consumer feedback capabilities and more stringent testing of supplier-designed parts.

Click to enrage … we mean, enlarge

According to the MSM and many on-line pundits, the NHTSA has been drowning in customer complaints about Toyotas for years. Supposedly, the warnings were thrown in the wind.

Edmunds went through the pain of sifting through NHTSA’s complaint database from 2001 through Feb. 3, 2010 . After the counting was done, Edmunds came to a startling conclusion: The deluge of complaints is a myth, to put it charitably. “Fabrication” would be a better word. Amongst 20 brands, “Toyota ranks 17th among automakers in the overall number of complaints per vehicle sold,” says Edmunds. NHTSA’s own data shows: Only drivers of Mercedes Benz, Porsches and Smarts have less to kvetch than Toyota owners. (Read More…)

Yesterday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had a reassuring message for Toyota owners: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it.” He said it in front of cameras at a House of Representatives hearing, cameras rolling (or whatever cameras do these days.)

“LaHood’s explosive comment,” writes Reuters, “sent shares of battered Toyota Motor Corp plunging.” (Read More…)

Update: a portal to all of TTAC’s articles on the subject of Toyota gas pedals is here:

Toyota uses two different electronic gas pedal designs in its cars. The version built by CTS (lower) is the subject of a massive recall, and the 2.3 million units in affected Toyota cars are to be “fixed” by the insertion of a steel shim. This CTS design is also being modified for new Toyota production, currently suspended. To our knowledge, Toyotas built with the other design (by Denso, upper) are not subject to any recalls or NHTSA investigations,. We have spent the last two days tearing down both units, and familiarized ourselves with their designs, reviewed Toyota’s “shim fix”, and replicated the fix ourselves. Toyota’s planned fix will undoubtedly reduce the likelihood of sticky pedals in the short term, but after examining both units, we are convinced that the CTS unit is intrinsically a flawed design, and poses safety risks in the long term, even with the fix. The only right action for Toyota is to acknowledge the long history of problems with the CTS-type unit, and replace them all with the superior Denso or another pedal unit that lacks the intrinsic flaws of the CTS design.

(Read More…)

Toyota’s decision to halt sales of eight models in connection with the ongoing unintended acceleration debacle was made at the order of the NHTSA, reports the Detroit News. “Toyota was complying with the law,” NHTS reps tell DetN. “They consulted with the agency. We informed them of the obligations, and they complied.”According to the DetN, Toyota was legally required to halt sales when it announced its latest recall five days ago. Why didn’t Toyota halt sales then? NHTSA isn’t saying, only going as far as to say “at this point, you need to talk to Toyota about those decisions. We’ll be continuing to work with Toyota and having conversations.”