Will Akio Toyoda Testify on Brakes?
As you may know, there are a slew of hearings scheduled next week to try to understand the Toyota brake problems. The head of Toyota (and grandson of the company founder) caused a bit of a stir yesterday when he tried to correct the mistaken impression that he would testify personally.
Akio Toyoda told a press conference Wednesday morning that he would not travel from Tokyo to Washington, D.C., to answer questions from a Congressional panel on car safety. No, this is not as bad as when General Motors sicked detectives on Ralph Nader, but Toyota is getting there.
“I trust that our officials in the U.S. will amply answer the questions,” Toyoda said.
Rather than have a guy bearing the company name testify, Toyota was sending Yoshimi Inaba, President of Toyota North America and–rather significantly–someone who was away from the company for two of the years in which Toyota was not responding to its own brake problems. In addition, Inaba’s background with the company is also primarily in sales, not engineering. In other words, rather than have Toyoda testify, the company was sending a guy who, just six months after he assumed a position of authority, agreed to recall millions of cars.
At the same press conference yesterday, Toyoda said he might consider testifying personally if he was invited.
But after persistent questioning, Mr. Toyoda said he “would consider” appearing before Congress if he receives a formal invitation, which none of the committees have issued.
So, in an unsurprising move, the House Reform Committee has now done just that, invite Toyoda to testify publicly.
Dear Mr. Toyoda:
As you know, there is widespread public concern regarding reports of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota motor vehicles. Toyota has recalled millions of its vehicles and even halted production. In addition, there are reports that this problem may have been the direct cause of serious injury and even death.
There appears to be growing public confusion regarding which vehicles may be affected and how people should respond. In short, the public is unsure as to what exactly the problem is, whether it is safe to drive their cars, or what they should do about it.
To help clarify this situation, I am inviting you to testify at a hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at 10 a.m. in room 2154 Rayburn House Office Building.
[snip]
Sincerely,
Edolphus Towns
Chairman
It’ll be hard for Toyoda to decline this invitation and save face. So it’ll be interesting to see how serious Toyoda is about not testifying under oath to the US Congress.
Update: Toyoda accepts.
We are pleased Mr. Toyoda accepted the invitation to testify before the Committee. We believe his testimony will be helpful in understanding the actions Toyota is taking to ensure the safety of American drivers.
After he watched the Bush administration snub congress and basically ignore subpoenas for eight years, why should Toyoda consider it losing face if he doesn’t appear in front of congress?
Maybe he has more face to lose by sitting there and being treated like a piece of garbage by yahoos like Sessions, Shelby, and other neo-confederates in the GOP who will try making as much political hay as they can by trashing him and his foreign car company.
I hope he gives the whole circus the finger.
Um, a few things.
1) Companies have much less ability to blow off Congressional committees than the Executive branch, thanks to separation of powers.
2) This is House Oversight, not Senate Finance.
3) Several of the yahoos you describe have an incentive to help Toyota here.
NO, Matt, Toyoda NEEDS to show up, mere face demands that, and then to behave with the decorum and social grace, in social venues, that the people of Japan have long been noted for.
Should he do so, with honesty foremost in his words, then, any arrogance or condescension on the part of others will be immediately obvious to everybody in the world, except for some Americans, who regard such behavior as “cute”.
Congress deferred to Bush, most abjectly, because they wanted to, not because the histrionics impressed.
DW
Actually, I think the desire to get Toyoda himself is completely for political show; if Congress is really intent on examining the root problems, Toyoda himself is likely not the right guy to question. Most all of these issues have their genesis before he took charge of the company and are outside his area of expertise as his background is in sales/marketing, not engineering and quality control.
Agreed, however, let Toyoda have the presence of mind, and person, to allow everyone else to see this kabuki for what it is, bmaz.
The die has been cast, however poorly or maliciously, and Toyoda is but a bit player, yet he might show the lack of talent and serious intent on the part of the “stars”.
I agree completely, however, with ALL that you say.
DW
I’m not sure I buy that. Toyoda is definitely MORE appropriate than Inaba, who wasn’t even at the company when much of this was going down, and whose background is skewed even more to sales. Plus, this is not just a problem with US cars.
In any case, there’s a much greater likelihood that if there was a corporate coverup (and it looks more and more like there is) of a consistent problem, Toyoda would know it than Inaba.
Plausible deniability is practically an art-form,
And “truth” infinitely “elastic” …
I’m just an old curmudgeon, Marcy, though I still get all atingle with hope-iness in spite of all my doubtful proclivities.
As your “more and more”, seems the likely truth (no ” applied), all my tingles are, as they say, hoping against “hope” that it may actually be sought AND discovered.
To truth … and … to justice.
(I’m vibrating like one of those tools used to coax wet concrete into the smallest nooks and crannies.)
But I ain’t holding my breath …
DW
Incidentally, here’s the report Toyota had done to check the problems.
I’ve done just a very quick review but it appears that:
1) Toyota asked a general engineering company, not an auto-specific engineering company to do these test
2) The company did not check the code, and does not appear to have had software engineers involved
3) The company checked random cars, not ones alleged to have exhibited this defect
4) The company appears not to have compared how the accelerator communicated with the engine w/how the brakes did (that is, the problem may be that the message from the brake cannot override the message from the accelerator)
That, plus the fact that they’re pointing to a study contracted in December 2009–years and years after they first had this problem–says Toyota has been working very hard to not find the cause of this problem.
Yeah, I think that is a fair reading. I also think the fact that they are whipping out an evaluation/report ginned up on the fly within the last 60 days or so, coupled with the factors Marcy mentioned AND the conspicuous absence of any inclusion of previous in house efforts at diagnosis is very telling.
That didn’t go unnoticed. (I think it’s not going to help them much at all.)
Yeah, about right.
Ah, Deflection! Deflection! Dissemble and Deny!
Corporate behavior at its “best” for the higher-up, quality and consequence be damned.
Perhaps Toyota and Congress deserve each other, after all?
NOT an impressive move, by any decent consideration, no matter how clever the calculation, PJ.
What was it skdadl said? “Too clever by half!”
DW
Jeebus.
The report is a transparent whitewash. My car got pulled by Honda for a potential problem last year, and they did FAR more rigorous testing than what this company has done. And even I, a non-engineer, can map out several areas where they very specifically are NOT testing things that are potential causes for this problem.
Can’t you just picture a trial attorney who knows what he is doing, someone like Boies for instance, examining Toyota and Exponent execs on the provenance of this pile of crap?
I can, and it is brutal.
Yeah, as I just said to mr. ew, if I–someone pretty good at sniffing bullshit in a document, and he–someone who has worked in mech eng and software and electronics on a car–can find gaping holes in this report, it means when the first decent trial attorney gets someone who HAS worked on ECMs to look at it, it’ll be a very lucrative field day.
Beyond the fact that this report, done years after Toyota first identified the problem, would only lead a decent trial attorney to say, “give me your internal reports–you know, the ones actually testing stuff that was likely to go wrong.”
There’s something much much stinkier going on here and it may be very big and very ugly.
That was about the reaction I had, also.
I mean, jeebus, expecting that buying six or eight random new cars is going to give you a good picture of what’s going on, but not actually buying back and disassembling some of the ones with problems?
(I’m wondering, if hot chips are the problem, would there be more of them in hot-summer areas? Because that ought to increase the thermal stress involved.)
Yeah, again, when Honda checked my car, they pulled existing cars from all over the Midwest. Each car they pulled likely cost them at least $1500 (even before the engineering firm got involved, but it gave them an entire history of the use of the car. And they did that for hundreds of cars.
8 fucking cars, and likely cherry-picked to boot. Note that one of the cars is a Japanese assembled 2007 Camry. How many Camrys in the US were Japanese assembled at that late date?
The problem is that this has been advertised as honest concern on the part of Congress, and amazingly, that lead-balloon, always gets off the ground.
The cheerleaders, in the media, manning the lines, give the patina of truth to the defying of rational gravity, and ONLY “disaster” will bring it ALL crashing to the ground.
Even then, we’ll be told, and many will “believe” that hard as it is, this “stellar” effort is in keeping with and preserving the best of all possible worlds.
DW
Will Akio Toyoda testify?
He tried to put the brakes on that, but like his cars, it wouldn’t stop.
Toyota is acting like Detroit approached safety. It’s hard to fathom, given past excellence of the product line. Contrast Toyota’s attitude to the brake/software issue vs Subaru, I believe, several years ago, that had an engineering team on a jet the same day the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety notified them of a rupture in the brake fluid reservoir during crash tests. They came, they saw, they acted. They didn’t hide or prevaricate.
Yes. Some corporations (or the people who manage them) DO behave reasonably and rationally better than others.
Subaru showed how it should be done.
May their example be emulated more often … from now on?
DW
You’re assuming they have had that quality.
As I have said repeatedly, Toyota’s service managers have commented on the fact that their chips make them as hard to fix now as American cars (and the America cars are, in part, harder to fix bc there are more models and more Diesels).
Toyota has had internal data for at least two years that they have chip problems.
If anyone ever understood Kabuki Theatre, I would have thought it would be Mr. Toyoda. Apparently he doesn’t understand how our system of governance works. Yes, I’m cynical.
Toyoda did apologize publically to consumers. When, if ever, has any other auto CEO done that?
Tons of them. Ever heard of Lee Iaccoca? Or, more recently Bill Ford? Or even more recently, Rick Wagoner? There is nothing new here.
well I’ll be damned. So he did.
Inaba is not who I had in mind; Shinichi Sasaki, the longtime head of global quality control is who I would “invite”.
Yeah, agree. But if they get Toyoda rather than Inaba, they at least have someone who CAN’T have been given plausible deniability of an earlier cover-up. I think Inaba could honestly say under oath there was no earlier cover-up that he knew of. If there was one, I doubt Toyoda could do that.
You have anticipated my concerns.
You are so fast on your feet and with your facts and considerations EW, that awesome isn’t even close.
(Twiddles thumbs, in corner)
Why would anyone that is a citizen of another nation, feel the need to grovel to Congress? He can tell them all to blow it out their *sses. This is nothing more than the continuation of the Big 3 bailout. Does Toyota have problems that needed recalls? Yes. Has it been by any industry standards, bigger than anything the Big 3 have had to do? No. These are corporations, and they are global. To be told by a foreign government that you “have to” do something is ludicrous. Toyota is already doing the legal and proper thing by recalling and fixing. Congress should concentrate on jobs and healthcare instead of doing the Mr Baseball Steroids 2010 impersonation. I’m sure it’s just convenient that all this is happening not even a year after two of the big 3 were virtually bankrupt.
Holy shit.
The cars they tested aren’t the cars they recalled.
Well, well, well.
The thot plickens.
A pattern appears to be emerging.
Geez, EW, I hope somebody (somewhere) is reading what you and bmaz are saying …
Besides those of us here …
In another update from the land of important: American Julia Mancuso has taken the Silver in the women’s super-combined. Lindsey Vonn, leading after the downhill portion of the event, was on pace to take either the gold or silver, but clipped a gate on the lower portion of the slalom course and crashed (she is fine and was not hurt). Vonn could have played it safe on the slalom run and still gotten the silver or bronze, but was skiing flat out and on the edge for the gold; she is one impressive chick.
Was Lindsey Vonn doing her impression of a Toyota Camry ?
*ducks and runs*
Seriously, Marcy … and I’m sure that Mr. EW knows this as well, Toyota has been going downhill for years, WRT quality control. The most recent Toyota Sienna has given lots of mechanical troubles and the Corolla and Camry have had trouble as well.
What I detest is the thought of Congress making this a big deal for Toyoda to show up, cry and apologize, while no actual criminal intent is uncovered. Sorry for the bad eengleesh, but we are celebrating our Curling victory over the Swedes …
Maybe. But it’ll be hard not to find any criminal intent here. It’s that bad.
And aren’t you guys supposed to be the best at curling?
We’re best at:
1. Hockey – and really, is there any point in going further ? *g*
2. Slurping Suds.
3. Maple Syrup.
4. Curling
5. Lacrosse … *g*
After a quick read of the exponent report (and there is not that much there)
a few questions come to mind:
Are there other reports of similar, perhaps more involved work done on this or similar topics?
Will these reports be made available to the appropriate regulatory agencies (which may include the House of Wheel in case of discrepancy or obfuscatory behavior)?
Why do the words software and firmware appear to be missing from this document? After all are they not necessary to provide the “intelligent” functionality in “Electronic Throttle Control System With Intelligence”
see: Acronyms and Abbreviations on page v of the Exponent report.
Bowman and Brooke LLP, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. are hereby referred to the Online Slang Dictionary link:
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/juju
Where can be found:
Definition of juju:
2.
“* the “magic” of a given plant, liquid or object.
It will either help or hinder health, well being etc.; i.e. the juju can be “good” or “bad.” It is up to a shaman to know what juju to use when.
Windows 1998 upgrades are full of bad Juju.
by Ed, New York, NY, USA, Mar 31 1999 (Edit definition)”
If this is the juju they are bringing perhaps a new shaman is needed.
Readers may supply their own comments regarding the serendipitously found reference to Microsoft software in this circumstance.
Yup. They stay as far as they can from studying what goes on in the Engine Control Module–where all that “intelligent” stuff would happen. They do nothing more than study the signals going into it, and don’t even attempt to figure out what happens to a signal within it.
And of course, the tests they did are all basic tests, the basic stuff a manufacturer would do as a base minimum. They don’t do a single thing that might replicate the problem.
2002 seems to be when the switch to ETCS-i (‘accelerate by wire’) was made
with some previous use on a more limited basis.
The executive summary states “This report summarizes some of the testing that has been performed. Exponent’s testing and analysis is ongoing.”
What are they doing with the eight ECMs listed as purchased on page A6?
Information request:
I was unable to use Acrobat search functions on this document.
Have not had that problem in the past.
Do not have that difficulty with other documents ( checked after the exponent attempts).