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Toyota U.S. sales halt deals blow to image, earnings

15 Comments

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15 Comments
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Wonder if the design engineer got fired.

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Interesting thing this is only on Toyoto vehicles that are made in North America & already Ford is running into the same problem with some of their trucks. I am a manual car/truck driver so do not know the flaws on some of the different automatic transmisions---likw the drives can be different. So feel better that with a car/truck/m/c I am with manual shifting & the advantage of a CLUTCH is so easy to use if something went wrong PLUS basically m/cs are without back-up systems.

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Yeah, there's a good reason that planes using drive by wire have a backup wire and a backup for that backup. Cars don't, good luck!

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I can't figure out the problem as to why it's serious [...] the pedal can get wedged into the side of the floor mat when fully depressed.

The problem with the floor mat is separated of the current recall, which has -based on the reports of Toyota- to do with the accelerator pedal wearing out and getting stuck.

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Move over Toyota, Here comes Ford to take market share!!!

I would rather bet on Volkswagen ...

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Move over Toyota, Here comes Ford to take market share!!!

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Thanks wanderlust and lostrune2 .... sounds like an electronic govenor of some sort ...

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Some engineers think it's the condensation forming on the drive-by-wire electromechanical gas pedal system which makes the gas pedal slow to rise back up, keeping the car accelerating longer than intended by the driver. (Condensation such as when blasting the hot heater air on an ice cold car interior.)

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It's not just the gas pedal, it's the engine management computer and the electronic input from the pedal that causes unintended acceleration. Mechanical and physical aspects of the pedal seem to be more of a smoke screen to hide the real problem...

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I can't figure out the problem as to why it's serious. Looking at the photos of the problem, it shows that the pedal can get wedged into the side of the floor mat when fully depressed. Why not just get rid of the floor mat and have Toyota replace it with a newly designed one? Am I missing something here? They plan to shorten the gas pedal instead. Japanese logic or what? My experience with Japan has it that they generally do it the hard way. Refer to Google's images search engine section or just go to http://www.autoblog.com/2009/11/19/report-toyota-may-shorten-gas-pedals-to-fix-unintended-accele/ for the illustration.

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The accelerator linkage is not a mechanical connection (cable) as it was in the old days; it is an electronic component (variable resistor). Bdiego correctly points out that the rush to make parts cheaper causes an increase in the rate of defects.

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I for one, am cheering their problems. I had the misfortune of working at Toyota a few years ago and it was an awful experience. It was bad enough that they were lazy and uncooperative, they also badmouthed other auto makers relentlessly.

What goes around comes around, eh Toyota?

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You mess it up by trying to cut costs by cutting corners. This is why they've managed to make perfectly good gas petals since the end of WWII but mess it up in the 21st century.

Ever notice how many goods get worse over time? It's not a coincidence they're also getting cheaper and made by people from the third world these days. Toyota has only showed that even a first world country can make these mistakes.

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Time for Toyota to boot the U.S. management.

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The mystery here is how exactly do you mess up on the design of a gas pedal. It's not exactly new, cutting edge technology. An exploding hybrid engine I could understand, but a sticky gas pedal? Then after you mess up, how does the problem drag on for 3 years without getting fixed?

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