Lavish cash on the hood of Japanese cars may help their U.S. sales (or soften the fall in Toyota’s case). The largess also “will put pressure on earnings,” says The Nikkei [sub].
Toyota, Nissan, Honda raised sales incentives in February to an average of 2,221 dollars per vehicle, up 11 percent from January. (Read More…)
Workers at the former Toyota-GM joint venture NUMMI have approved a severance offer from Toyota. Union officials won’t reveal the exact amount involved, and while the Detroit Free Press reports that workers will make a “minimum” of $21,175, the San Jose Mercury says the deal “gives an average severance package of $54,000.” Could it be that some union brothers are more equal than others? What the Freep leaves out is that $21,175 minimum applies to 300 of NUMMI’s 4,700 workers who are already on disability leave. Workers with over 25 years of experience will receive $68,500.
Gawker reports that Toyota Motor Sales has sent a letter to ABC News President David Westin, requesting that Brian Ross’s report on unintended acceleration in Toyotas be retracted. Gawker had previously uncovered Ross’s deceptive video editing, and Toyota’s complaint built on allegations first raised by the website. Ross’s reliance on Professor David Gilbert and Sean Kane of the Safety Research & Strategies also received a withering attack from Toyota General Counsel Christopher Reynolds. Kane and Gilbert’s financial relationship with several law firms pursuing suits against Toyota was revealed during congressional hearings, and Gilbert’s research has been insistently refuted by Toyota, none of which was mentioned in the ABC report.
Toyota is a customer centric company. It now considers a recall that will please the vociferous crowd that thinks something is wrong with Toyota’s engine computer. Reuters reports that Toyota is discussing with NHTSA whether and how they should fix nearly 1.2 million Corolla and Matrix models. They are at risk of unintended stoppage. They might stall out because of flaws in their computer. (Read More…)
Last week, Harrison Police Capt. Anthony Marraccini said he had no indication of driver error, after a 56 year old house keeper had driven her employer’s Prius into a wall. Wall and car were totaled. Airbags deployed, housekeeper was unharmed. Now, Marracini isn’t so sure anymore.
Yesterday, six Toyota technicians and two NHTSA inspectors descended on Harrison, NY, to inspect the Prius, which had been kept in a Harrison police impound. According to CNN, “two independent inspectors from a forensic technology company, hired by the Police Department, also were aiding the investigation.” There was no shortage of experts. Presence of congressional aides was not reported.
Toyota successfully downloaded data from the vehicle. After receiving their findings (which have not been made public), Capt. Anthony Marraccini said driver error “was a possibility,” the New York Post reports. (Read More…)
Volkswagen may be much closer to its goal of surpassing Toyota as the world’s largest automaker. In an exclusive interview with The Nikkei [sub], Akio Toyoda said, Toyota will make its top priority the quality, not the number of the cars it makes.
So far, VW wanted to subjugate Toyota by 2018. But Toyota has decided to go slow. Said Toyoda-san: (Read More…)
How could the whole Toyota iQ-rebadging situation get any more embarrassing for Aston-Martin? The answer is staring you in the face. The Aston Cygnet is rapidly becoming one for the history books [via Autocar.co.uk]
Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda is a regular Japanese guy: Shy in public, but blogging on his computer every day. Using the handle “Morizou,” he blogs about his love for sports cars and auto racing on Gazoo.com, which he founded in 1998, if Todayonline has it right. Akio Toyoda is also an avid racer. His appearances at the 24 Hours Nürburgring endurance race in a Lexus LFA are legend. He is chickening out! (Read More…)
All eyes are on Harrison, NY, today. Technicians from Toyota and NHTSA will head to the NYC burbs and pour over a 2005 Toyota Prius that crashed into a stone wall in the tony bedroom town of Harrison. Its driver claimed the hybrid had sped up on its own. Toyota will read out the data recorded in the Prius computer. According to the Associated Press, Toyota techs will “use equipment to determine how many times the driver hit the brakes and gas. It used the same tools earlier this week to cast doubt on a California driver who claimed his Prius sped to 94 mph before a patrol officer helped him stop it.” (Read More…)
The biggest storyline right now for America’s bailed-out automakers is how little they’ve been able to capitalize on Toyota’s stumbles. While Ford and Hyundai made hefty sales gains last month, both GM and Chrysler’s performances were distinctly unimproved by Toyota’s woes. And now that Toyota is launching major incentive packages to recover lost sales momentum, Detroit has no remaining incentive to not revert to the bad old practices of incentive dependence. With GM and Ford diving into the zero-percent war, Global Insight’s George Magliano tells Automotive News [sub]:
Incentives are going to be here into the third quarter. We’re not going to wean consumers off incentives any time soon. We’re stuck with it. They’re all jockeying for position… After clunkers everybody backed off incentives. Now they’re going to the whip again
From Jim Sikes (he only wants a new car), and Orange County ( no idea what they really want), to class action lawyers (they want billions), everybody wants to cash in on Toyota. Chinese Zhejiang Province’s doesn’t want to stand behind. Their commerce bureau and consumer protection committee called on Toyota to compensate drivers for costs stemming from its recall of faulty vehicles, reports The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)
Jim Sikes’ Prius high-speed dash to fame or infamy is a media hype-fest, with wild swings in sentiment from Toyota bashing to Sikes trashing. The rush to judgment is innately human, and Sikes certainly makes an easy target. But in the process, very little effort has been made to analyze what actually happened, or what might have actually happened, on the basis of the facts rather than Jim Sikes’ financial history and sexual proclivities. (Read More…)
The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, piggy-backing on analysis started by Overlawyered’s Ted Frank, tracked down all the available ages of reported incidents of unintended acceleration in Toyotas and graphed them. The results speak volumes, as does Frank’s assessment that:
These “electronic defects” apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).
McArdle’s graph of incidents by location (parking, freeway, etc) after the jump.
(Read More…)
Toyota sales back home in Japan have yet to show a sign of suffering (they were up 49.9 percent in February while the Japanese market rose 35.1 percent.) However, Toyota’s reputation is taking a hit in the Land of the Rising Sun, says The Nikkei [sub]. Depends on how you look at it: 40 percent of Japanese consumers in a recent survey said Toyota’s troubles have undermined their confidence. 58.4 percent said the issues have not changed their opinion of Toyota, 1.4 percent said they now hold the firm in higher regard. (Read More…)
“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”
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