Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?

> 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.

>> 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-reca...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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-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.

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

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

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