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…)

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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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…)

On September 19, 2008, William Hippsley, 74, was behind the wheel in the parking lot of a shopping center in Brigg, South Humberside, UK. Outside, his wife Brenda, 69, helped him park his car. Suddenly, Hippsley’s car shot forward, dragged his wife 130ft across the parking lot – and killed her.

The car was a Toyota Prius. (Read More…)

As an American citizen, it is tough on my part to pay tax dollars to an entity that can turn around and use those tax dollars to get my fellow American citizens to not do business with me. The government owns 60% of General Motors, and these American tax dollars are funding business activity for one company, with the express goal of negatively impacting another company

Paul Atkinson, President of Toyota’s National Dealer Council, manages to capture the central problem with government intervention in industry without resorting to the hyperbole that so often accompanies such lines of criticism [via Radio WAOI]. Examples?

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Draw your own conclusions. [ABC San Diego via Jalopnik]

Further in the Toyota caper, there are new reports of sudden acceleration – in Toyota sales.

Toyota buyers seem to have a big case of the bashing fatigue. And they are coming back in droves. Toyota said (via The Nikkei [sub]) that “its new cars sales in North America jumped around 50 percent from a year earlier in the first week of March due to recently introduced sales incentives.” (Read More…)

Among the many unanswered questions as to what Prius owner James Sikes actually did or didn’t do to try to bring his runaway car to a stop, one claim of his definitely smells.  He says he received a recall letter from Toyota, and when he took it in to the dealer, he was told his car was not on the recall lists. Ouch! (Read More…)

An article in this week’s Advertising Age and Automotive News (they’re sister publications) investigates why the family in the new hit sitcom ‘Modern Family’ “still drives Toyota product.” The author found it “jarring” that the family “chatted happily while traveling in, of all things, a Toyota.” The answer: Toyota paid for product placement, the contract runs through the end of the season, and many of the episodes have already been shot.
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