Toyota held a press conference today at its Torrance headquarters to prove why an experiment discussed during a Congressional inquiry does little to implicate its cars in unintended acceleration accidents.
The issue at hand was an experiment conducted by Professor David Gilbert from Southern Illinois University. He testified to Congress that he had devised an experiment that produced an intentional short in Toyota's electronic throttle control system that would induce full throttle acceleration. More importantly, the experiment could be conducted without tripping any fault codes in the car's electronic control unit.
Well, according to Toyota, Professor Gilbert's experiment has no real world relevance. Its experts, as well as engineers Toyota hired to look into the situation, contend that the experiment involves far too many steps for it to simply happen by chance. Toyota also notes that the experiment produces the same result on virtually any car with an electronic throttle pedal, whether it's made by Toyota or not. Click through for a video of their demonstration.
As you can see, this BMW 3 Series suffered the same fate as Toyota's Avalon, the car used in Gilbert's original test. A Subaru and a Ford reacted similarly under the same conditions. Actually, this wasn't all that surprising after the Toyota officials explained how it was done.
Here's the most simplified explanation we can muster. There are two redundant wires that send throttle input signals to the engine control computer. They run to the computer separately, but Professor Gilbert first linked them with a 200 ohm resistor.
He then introduced a outside signal by splicing a hot wire, adding a switch and connecting it to the throttle control wires. When he flipped the switch, a signal was sent through the throttle control wires even though the pedal wasn't depressed. That's what's happening in the video above when the engineer makes the final connection.
Now, none of this addresses the possibility that there's a problem with Toyota's software, but it does show how overly simplified the whole issue has become. There are no doubt still plenty of members of Congress who remember the testimony but won't ever see why it's irrelevant. Plenty more to come on this story for sure.
redliner says:
03:06 PM, 03/ 8/10
The "professor" just wanted his 15 min of fame. In the real world this is very improbable.
dg0472 says:
03:53 PM, 03/ 8/10
Hope for Toyota's sake that Dr. Gilbert can't prove this just wasn't the same thing he did. Still, it seems to answer the important question of can Toyota's system diagnose a short on the fly. Seems it can even though it seems to not use the same strategy to do so that anyone else does.
brn says:
04:03 PM, 03/ 8/10
It wouldn't surprise me at all if this was exactly what Dr Gilbert did. The ABC report didn't get into specifics and I couldn't find anything (before today) on the internet that did either. That lead me to believe that Dr Gilbert didn't want us to know the specifics, as it's a highly improbable situation.
I'm all for Toyota getting it's comeuppance, but ABC/Gilbert wanted nothing more than to get ratings through deception. It should rightfully bite them in the ass.
e90_m3 says:
04:03 PM, 03/ 8/10
Exponent >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Southern Illinois University
Did I also mention Stanford?
shoe34 says:
04:53 PM, 03/ 8/10
ABC better be ready for a suit of its own. This smells like rocket motors to me, or at the very least, sounds like lost revenue from Toyota pulling ads from the network.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/11/us/gm-suspends-ads-on-nbc-news-despite-apology-for-truck-report.html?pagewanted=1
aurakr says:
05:55 PM, 03/ 8/10
Very interesting. However, from what I have heard about Exponent, the company Toyota hired to test its software, they are basically guns for hire. I don't trust them anymore than I trust Consumer Reports, which is none. It is a shame, but big money is at stake. If, in the future, it turns out that Toyota does have problems, I think that Exponent should be held liable as well.
By the way, the latest Toyota saga is that the CHP had to help stop a runaway Prius, near La Posta on Interstate 8 east. The Prius was going 94 mph and the CHP had to give instructions on how to slow down the car. I guess they were able to get it down to 50 mph or so, and then the driver shut off the motor.
ne1butu2 says:
06:07 PM, 03/ 8/10
ABC was completely irresponsible to air an apparently flawed, misleading and incomplete test. I heard nowhere in the broadcast that professor say that this is something that is likely to happen on its own without any rigging of any sort. What I heard him explain is that it is possible for a car to accelerate without it showing as a fault in the computer. This would suggest yet another flaw, rather than to explain if and how these UA incidents actually happen. I smell something stinky. And it's called creative editing.
brn says:
06:27 PM, 03/ 8/10
aurakr: "the company Toyota hired to test its software, they are basically guns for hire. "
I don't doubt that either. This whole subtopic needs to disappear. It detracts from more meaningful concerns.
cwc1 says:
06:33 PM, 03/ 8/10
It's reminiscent of the 60 Minutes fakery of the Audi 5000 all over again.
The mass media knows how gullible too many people are, as are they themselves.
roadburner says:
06:46 PM, 03/ 8/10
ABC also juiced up the story on the hack doctor by inserting a shot of the car's tachometer indicating a rapid increase in rpm. The only problem is the tach was shot in a parked car and the rpm increase was caused by the photographer flooring the gas pedal.
CBS/Audi
NBC/GM Trucks
ABC/Toyota
The networks' motto must be: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story".
hokiehigh says:
06:54 PM, 03/ 8/10
ABC and Prof. Gilbert are ridiculous, with these kind of hacking, I can turn a PSP into a garage door opener.
baccus49 says:
09:33 PM, 03/ 8/10
Toyota and others knew they were having issues and attempted to hide it. All Car Companies should have came forward with a full disclosures of what car were dangerous. Instead of waiting for a huge media blitz and tons of public pressure. I never seen so many car companies GM - NISSAN - TOYOTA - HYUNDAI having recalls all at the same time. I had no idea my car was affected until I looked on http://www.carpedalrecall.com and found I had a bad Anti Lock control unit on my 2008 Pontiac G8 , my co workers Ford Truck had a recall also. So be careful
f1ndler says:
11:55 PM, 03/ 8/10
When this nonsense is going to stop? The whole American car industry ware spending tax payer's money to build the worst cars on a market and still manage to be forgiven by the US government and now, Toyota is a scape goat just because it is the main competitor for the national auto industry. This is pathetic!!! And the worst thing is that most of the nation believes in that BS.
notabigdeal says:
10:47 AM, 03/ 9/10
I don't watch news on the TV anymore....its not news its just another show....barly anything they put on CNN, ABC, FOX, or any other retarded TV stunt is news for news sake.... the newspaper seems slightly better (they have to be short which in turn forces the facts...). I honestly think the chance of this happening isn't high nomatter what (like being struck like lightning) I guess i can be scary but so is getting hit by a truck (i got hit once...broken bones central but i'm alive...). this POS news needs to go away i'm sick of it..
wytman says:
09:49 PM, 03/ 9/10
The primary problem is a game is being played. ABC simply wants to grandstand and show Toyota is hiding facts or lying or worse. But there are other credible sources who are doing work to look at these SUA issues that are concluding at least that floor mats and pedal shims cannot possibly explain it all. I don't buy that all of this is fixed by a shim and a floor mat change. I've had a floor mat depress a gas pedal ... it doesn't really result in SUA - and it's rapidly and easily fixed. There are eported cases where the gas pedal in Toyota's was not being effected by floor mats, and yet the engines were found at WOT (wide open throttle). And this "shim" thing just doesn't make any sense. The drawing Toyota released showing how the shim allegedly fixes the problem reveals nothing. I am a mechanical engineer, I have a friend who has a masters degree in mechanical engineering, and none of us can tell what the heck Toyota claims the shim does.
On the electrical side - a phenomena called ESD - electro-static discharge can play all kinds of havoc with electronics. ESD is extremely random and unpredictable in the real world. But I can personally attest to events on product designs I've worked on where we had done our own ESD testing, and thought we had no fault designs - but then still ended up with returned product which later we determined had a flaw related to ESD protection. We fixed the flaw, and problem disappeared. I don't know that an ESD event would or would not result in a stuck pedal - but ESD can make strange things - like false signals happen. Often, if the event didn't outright kill the electronics, it may require a hard reset (power off, reboot) to force operation to return to normal. ESD can cause incorrect switch closure and potentiometers are considered a classical point of entry for ESD events into electronics. I am not clear on it, but from what I can tell, the Toyota pedal uses a potentiometer. If so, with all the plastic around it on the pedal - this could be a problem for creation of a static charge build up, and maybe ESD results. This is clearly speculative.