11 ms·

Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?

59 points by gth158a 16y ago

eli 16y ago
Yeah, but 18 months is a long time to wait to see if you need to do a recall on a potentially deadly product.
blhack 16y ago
I'm sure that this is a common phrase, but one of my friends gave this advice to me: "Their perception is your reality." He was talking about management, and maintaining a good image to your employees, but the phrase applies to everything. People's perception was that Toyota had some terrible electrical problems, and the news media, being a for-profit endeavor, ran with it. So Toyota's perceived problems became reality, and we needed to devote 10 months of the brightest engineering minds in the world to change that. Unfortunately, that's how things work.
- kiujhygthujk 16y ago
  Alternatively they could just have type "Audi accelerate problem" into Google.
- kscaldef 16y ago
  "So Toyota's perceived problems became reality, and we needed to devote 10 months of the brightest engineering minds in the world to change that." Sadly, that's not how it works. People will forever remember that Toyota had horrible safety problems, and not that they were actually exonerated in the end.
  - idoh 16y ago
    Indeed. I still won't touch an Audi even decades after the 60 Minutes episode, even though it turned out to be false. Logically I know but logic only goes so far.
    - dspeyer 16y ago
      So the moral is: don't read/watch the mainstream press at all.
damoncali 16y ago
The interesting part of this is that NASA did a study. I used to work for NASA as a contractor. I never met anyone with automotive engineering experience. Not that there weren't any, but wouldn't it make more sense to hire an automotive engineering consulting company to do a study? Come to think of it, I wonder who NASA hired to do the study. I bet dollars to donuts it wasn't government (NASA) employees. But people (and therefore politicians) see NASA and think smart. It just shows you how political this whole mess was.
- Retric 16y ago
  I think some of the people working on all those rovers keep up with automotive technology. Also, when it comes to the specific systems involved they know more about sensors, robotics, and real time systems than just about any organization on the planet. PS: NASA engineers were contracted to conduct research into whether electronic systems or electromagnetic interference played a role in incidents of unintended acceleration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHTSA-NASA_Study_of_Unintended_Acceleration_in_Toyota_Vehicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHTSA-NASA_Study_of_Unintended_...
  - damoncali 16y ago
    Well, those rovers don't have engines. But the interference makes a lot of sense. Radiation/interference is a major issue for space electronics. Interesting side note: The Hubble Space Telescope used a basically stock (totally stock?) intel 486 in its computer - mainly, I'm told, because they came out of the box with remarkable radiation resistance. I was a mechanical guy, however, so don't quote me on that.
- krschultz 16y ago
  NASA does have a large continent of forensic engineers which is actually more relevent to the discussion than automotive engineers. Though so does the NTSB, so honestly I'd rather see a study done by the NTSB. An automotive engineer will know how automotive companies usually design braking and acceleration systems. They can tell you if Toyota did something out of the ordinary compared to the industry standard. Assuming they didn't, the automotive engineer is no more qualified to go deeper than that than any other mechanical engineer. So bringing in a forensic engineer who knows how to deconstruct accidents is probably far more relevent than bringing in an automotive engineer who knows how to create a braking system by stiching together vendor components.
JSig 16y ago
>> So who won in this debacle? The author does not mention the advantages that would come to GM as a result of this recall. Since the gov is an owner of GM, you could argue there was a potential conflict of interest here. See this ->>> "GM isn't wasting any time taking advantage of Toyota's weakened position after its massive recall and sales stoppage. The General has just announced new incentives for current Toyota customers. In a phone call to Inside Line, a GM official said the new offer consists of zero percent financing for 60 months on most Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models. Cash buyers get $1,000 toward a down payment and lease customers can get a waiver of three payments up to $1,000. To qualify for the incentives, customers must show proof that they own or lease a Toyota. This is starting to get interesting. " http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2010/01/toyota-recall-update-2-gm-goes-on-the-attack.html http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2010/01/toyota-reca...
- baguasquirrel 16y ago
  I remember also reading a piece in Stratfor about how the American leadership was disappointed with Japanese diplomacy. This sort of boring stuff is actually important in real-world policy enforcement. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JziQfDNP0AkJ:www.stratfor.com/analysis/20091109_us_japan_managing_alliance+obama+japan+site:stratfor.com&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JziQfDN... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t5XDNqPU0PUJ:www.stratfor.com/analysis/20091105_japan_us_new_stage_relations+site:stratfor.com+obama+Hatoyama&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t5XDNqP...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- krschultz 16y ago
  Is the floor mat really a Toyota specific problem? What is so damn awful about their floor mats that you end up in an accident? I had a Ford and I put in rubber floor mats on top of the OEM carpet ones. No problem upon installation, but overtime they slipped up behind my pedals and I had problems with braking/acceleration. I stopped, got out, pull the floor mat back 3", and everything was fine. Now if I feel the floor mat creeping up I just pull it back. If you took 3 seconds to open your door and look at the mat behind the pedals it was an obvious problem. I've had the exact same problem with the rubber floor mats on a Mazda 6, Subaru Forester, and Ford Explorer. The solution everytime is the same, pull the floor mat back into its proper position. It really isn't that hard. So Toyota gets blamed for something that can happen to anyone, anytime, using any car and any floor mat. Why is that? (On the other hand, Toyotas are far from perfect, on my girlfriends Toyota the sun visor is so far out of position in order to lower it you need to rotate the rearview mirror out of its way about 2". How did that pass QA?)
  - sunchild 16y ago
    The floor mat replacement was a red herring. I've used aftermarket mats in cars without proper pins, and it's a matter of using your brain to not get them tangled up in the accelerator (which is actually hard to do). Stupid people do stupid things, and the stupid media celebrates stupidity for the sake of stupid viewers.
  - Malus 16y ago
    My '09 Toyota Corolla has hooks that keep the floor mats in place. The only way to jam the mat underneath the brake pedal would be to do it deliberately.
    - damoncali 16y ago
      as does my '03 4Runner.
  - 16y ago
karanr 16y ago
My biggest gripe with this is that when the truth finally comes out, it gets no attention. The perceptions that changed rapidly from "toyota = safety" to "toyota = death" will be slow to switch back. It will take years, although Toyota has done a good job marketing themselves since the incident.
rgrieselhuber 16y ago
Still getting caught up on all of this, but there was a problem with sticky gas pedals?
trustfundbaby 16y ago
> Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned? How completely unreliable our media can be when it comes to anything not having to do with Jersey Shore or American Idol? Forgive the snark, but the idea that a company lost all that money, sustained such damage to their brand and image built over so many years simply because of a media that failed to do their jobs makes my blood boil.
- sudont 16y ago
  And to think we scoffed at the Japanese conspiracy of an American media hit job against Toyota.
  - ENOTTY 16y ago
    I would hesitate to call it a conspiracy, which ascribes some true malice to the media. I think it's probably more of institutional bias towards the sensational and a catering to people's beliefs out of desire for more viewers.
- adolph 16y ago
  Don't forget the government role--even if the media simply reported what Secretary LaHood said the coverage would have been over the top.
- kiujhygthujk 16y ago
  I wonder how much pull Toyota has with the Japanese media? (ie how much ad time they buy). ANA is the launch customer for the 787, a few stories about safety concerns could end up with an 18month delay while the Japanese space agency does a study. This would also hit Toyota's rivals (Mitsubish and Fuji) who are building parts for the 787.
  - sunchild 16y ago
    It's not their style. Toyota got to where they are today by patiently building up an organization that beats their competition. They play fair and square, even when their enemies don't. I was recently at the Toyota museum in Nagoya. Toyota was originally founded to bring pride back to post-war Japan, and I think that principle is still at work in the company today.
gth158a 16y ago
The events that led Toyota to recall 10 million vehicles may go down in industrial history as the biggest mountain of a crisis ever made out of the smallest molehill of a technical glitch. We now have verifiable facts, rather than conclusions drawn by the media based on assumptions, innuendo and fear.
- gth158a 16y ago
  Here's a list of relevant articles: + The Washington Post editorial - "NHTSA Report Clears up Mystery - and Hysteria - on Toyota Cars" + Harvard Business Review - "Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?" + Bloomberg BusinessWeek - "Toyota: The Media Owe You an Apology" + Automotive News "One Year Later: Let's Get Beyond Toyota Speed Scare" + Fortune "The Safety Police Go after Toyota Again"
beefman 16y ago
Also from NASA this week: No evidence your neighbor is a Communist.
scott_meyer 16y ago
So, from the executive summary, it appears that NASA looked at the throttle system and was unable to find a systematic explanation for it being stuck open. A stuck throttle, by itself, is quite awkward but if you have a working brake override system, an awkward lurch will be as bad as it gets. But regardless of what NASA did or did not find, there were real accidents involving throttles which were stuck open for minutes at a time with the engine completely overpowering the brakes. Recall that in the 100mph LA crash which set off the investigation the brakes were completely destroyed. That is a real design flaw, an error of commission by Toyota. Other cars, for example VWs, have a brake override and the drivers manual documents an accelerator "double-tap" protocol for giving the accelerator priority, say when starting on a steep hill. Furthermore, in the week after the recall, the president of Toyota announced that Toyota throttle systems would henceforth include a brake override. Here's their official press release making good on that promise: http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota-extends-brake-override-154194.aspx http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota-extends-brake-over... So I can't develop too much sympathy for Toyota. They made a basic design mistake in a safety critical system, and then refused to acknowledge the problem. That mistake and their mishandling of it cost them a ton of money and that is exactly as it should be.

59 points by gth158a 16y ago

eli 16y ago

Yeah, but 18 months is a long time to wait to see if you need to do a recall on a potentially deadly product.

I'm sure that this is a common phrase, but one of my friends gave this advice to me: "Their perception is your reality." He was talking about management, and maintaining a good image to your employees, but the phrase applies to everything. People's perception was that Toyota had some terrible electrical problems, and the news media, being a for-profit endeavor, ran with it. So Toyota's perceived problems became reality, and we needed to devote 10 months of the brightest engineering minds in the world to change that. Unfortunately, that's how things work.

kiujhygthujk 16y ago
Alternatively they could just have type "Audi accelerate problem" into Google.
kscaldef 16y ago
"So Toyota's perceived problems became reality, and we needed to devote 10 months of the brightest engineering minds in the world to change that." Sadly, that's not how it works. People will forever remember that Toyota had horrible safety problems, and not that they were actually exonerated in the end.
- idoh 16y ago
  Indeed. I still won't touch an Audi even decades after the 60 Minutes episode, even though it turned out to be false. Logically I know but logic only goes so far.
  - dspeyer 16y ago
    So the moral is: don't read/watch the mainstream press at all.

damoncali 16y ago

The interesting part of this is that NASA did a study. I used to work for NASA as a contractor. I never met anyone with automotive engineering experience. Not that there weren't any, but wouldn't it make more sense to hire an automotive engineering consulting company to do a study? Come to think of it, I wonder who NASA hired to do the study. I bet dollars to donuts it wasn't government (NASA) employees. But people (and therefore politicians) see NASA and think smart. It just shows you how political this whole mess was.

Retric 16y ago
I think some of the people working on all those rovers keep up with automotive technology. Also, when it comes to the specific systems involved they know more about sensors, robotics, and real time systems than just about any organization on the planet. PS: NASA engineers were contracted to conduct research into whether electronic systems or electromagnetic interference played a role in incidents of unintended acceleration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHTSA-NASA_Study_of_Unintended_Acceleration_in_Toyota_Vehicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHTSA-NASA_Study_of_Unintended_...
- damoncali 16y ago
  Well, those rovers don't have engines. But the interference makes a lot of sense. Radiation/interference is a major issue for space electronics. Interesting side note: The Hubble Space Telescope used a basically stock (totally stock?) intel 486 in its computer - mainly, I'm told, because they came out of the box with remarkable radiation resistance. I was a mechanical guy, however, so don't quote me on that.
krschultz 16y ago
NASA does have a large continent of forensic engineers which is actually more relevent to the discussion than automotive engineers. Though so does the NTSB, so honestly I'd rather see a study done by the NTSB. An automotive engineer will know how automotive companies usually design braking and acceleration systems. They can tell you if Toyota did something out of the ordinary compared to the industry standard. Assuming they didn't, the automotive engineer is no more qualified to go deeper than that than any other mechanical engineer. So bringing in a forensic engineer who knows how to deconstruct accidents is probably far more relevent than bringing in an automotive engineer who knows how to create a braking system by stiching together vendor components.

JSig 16y ago

>> So who won in this debacle? The author does not mention the advantages that would come to GM as a result of this recall. Since the gov is an owner of GM, you could argue there was a potential conflict of interest here. See this ->>> "GM isn't wasting any time taking advantage of Toyota's weakened position after its massive recall and sales stoppage. The General has just announced new incentives for current Toyota customers. In a phone call to Inside Line, a GM official said the new offer consists of zero percent financing for 60 months on most Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models. Cash buyers get $1,000 toward a down payment and lease customers can get a waiver of three payments up to $1,000. To qualify for the incentives, customers must show proof that they own or lease a Toyota. This is starting to get interesting. " http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2010/01/toyota-recall-update-2-gm-goes-on-the-attack.html http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2010/01/toyota-reca...

baguasquirrel 16y ago
I remember also reading a piece in Stratfor about how the American leadership was disappointed with Japanese diplomacy. This sort of boring stuff is actually important in real-world policy enforcement. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JziQfDNP0AkJ:www.stratfor.com/analysis/20091109_us_japan_managing_alliance+obama+japan+site:stratfor.com&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JziQfDN... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t5XDNqPU0PUJ:www.stratfor.com/analysis/20091105_japan_us_new_stage_relations+site:stratfor.com+obama+Hatoyama&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t5XDNqP...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

krschultz 16y ago
Is the floor mat really a Toyota specific problem? What is so damn awful about their floor mats that you end up in an accident? I had a Ford and I put in rubber floor mats on top of the OEM carpet ones. No problem upon installation, but overtime they slipped up behind my pedals and I had problems with braking/acceleration. I stopped, got out, pull the floor mat back 3", and everything was fine. Now if I feel the floor mat creeping up I just pull it back. If you took 3 seconds to open your door and look at the mat behind the pedals it was an obvious problem. I've had the exact same problem with the rubber floor mats on a Mazda 6, Subaru Forester, and Ford Explorer. The solution everytime is the same, pull the floor mat back into its proper position. It really isn't that hard. So Toyota gets blamed for something that can happen to anyone, anytime, using any car and any floor mat. Why is that? (On the other hand, Toyotas are far from perfect, on my girlfriends Toyota the sun visor is so far out of position in order to lower it you need to rotate the rearview mirror out of its way about 2". How did that pass QA?)
- sunchild 16y ago
  The floor mat replacement was a red herring. I've used aftermarket mats in cars without proper pins, and it's a matter of using your brain to not get them tangled up in the accelerator (which is actually hard to do). Stupid people do stupid things, and the stupid media celebrates stupidity for the sake of stupid viewers.
- Malus 16y ago
  My '09 Toyota Corolla has hooks that keep the floor mats in place. The only way to jam the mat underneath the brake pedal would be to do it deliberately.
  - damoncali 16y ago
    as does my '03 4Runner.
- 16y ago

karanr 16y ago

My biggest gripe with this is that when the truth finally comes out, it gets no attention. The perceptions that changed rapidly from "toyota = safety" to "toyota = death" will be slow to switch back. It will take years, although Toyota has done a good job marketing themselves since the incident.

rgrieselhuber 16y ago

Still getting caught up on all of this, but there was a problem with sticky gas pedals?

trustfundbaby 16y ago

> Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned? How completely unreliable our media can be when it comes to anything not having to do with Jersey Shore or American Idol? Forgive the snark, but the idea that a company lost all that money, sustained such damage to their brand and image built over so many years simply because of a media that failed to do their jobs makes my blood boil.

sudont 16y ago
And to think we scoffed at the Japanese conspiracy of an American media hit job against Toyota.
- ENOTTY 16y ago
  I would hesitate to call it a conspiracy, which ascribes some true malice to the media. I think it's probably more of institutional bias towards the sensational and a catering to people's beliefs out of desire for more viewers.
adolph 16y ago
Don't forget the government role--even if the media simply reported what Secretary LaHood said the coverage would have been over the top.
kiujhygthujk 16y ago
I wonder how much pull Toyota has with the Japanese media? (ie how much ad time they buy). ANA is the launch customer for the 787, a few stories about safety concerns could end up with an 18month delay while the Japanese space agency does a study. This would also hit Toyota's rivals (Mitsubish and Fuji) who are building parts for the 787.
- sunchild 16y ago
  It's not their style. Toyota got to where they are today by patiently building up an organization that beats their competition. They play fair and square, even when their enemies don't. I was recently at the Toyota museum in Nagoya. Toyota was originally founded to bring pride back to post-war Japan, and I think that principle is still at work in the company today.

gth158a 16y ago

The events that led Toyota to recall 10 million vehicles may go down in industrial history as the biggest mountain of a crisis ever made out of the smallest molehill of a technical glitch. We now have verifiable facts, rather than conclusions drawn by the media based on assumptions, innuendo and fear.

gth158a 16y ago
Here's a list of relevant articles: + The Washington Post editorial - "NHTSA Report Clears up Mystery - and Hysteria - on Toyota Cars" + Harvard Business Review - "Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?" + Bloomberg BusinessWeek - "Toyota: The Media Owe You an Apology" + Automotive News "One Year Later: Let's Get Beyond Toyota Speed Scare" + Fortune "The Safety Police Go after Toyota Again"

beefman 16y ago

Also from NASA this week: No evidence your neighbor is a Communist.

scott_meyer 16y ago

So, from the executive summary, it appears that NASA looked at the throttle system and was unable to find a systematic explanation for it being stuck open. A stuck throttle, by itself, is quite awkward but if you have a working brake override system, an awkward lurch will be as bad as it gets. But regardless of what NASA did or did not find, there were real accidents involving throttles which were stuck open for minutes at a time with the engine completely overpowering the brakes. Recall that in the 100mph LA crash which set off the investigation the brakes were completely destroyed. That is a real design flaw, an error of commission by Toyota. Other cars, for example VWs, have a brake override and the drivers manual documents an accelerator "double-tap" protocol for giving the accelerator priority, say when starting on a steep hill. Furthermore, in the week after the recall, the president of Toyota announced that Toyota throttle systems would henceforth include a brake override. Here's their official press release making good on that promise: http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota-extends-brake-override-154194.aspx http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota-extends-brake-over... So I can't develop too much sympathy for Toyota. They made a basic design mistake in a safety critical system, and then refused to acknowledge the problem. That mistake and their mishandling of it cost them a ton of money and that is exactly as it should be.