TOYOTA'S CORPORATE HANDBOOK: Chapter 1: LIE

This is the first in a series about TOYOTA'S CORPORATE HANDBOOK.

Stay tuned and check back because TOYOTA'S CORPORATE HANDBOOK will be updated as other examples are found.


TOYOTA'S CORPORATE HANDBOOK seems universal.

Please note the chapters don't necessarily occur in a predictable order.

Sudden Unintended Acceleration Events – Prius Gen 3, 2011 Model In Uk

Started by GreenJuice, May 02 2014

 

 

UPDATE:

So the car went in for its ‘diagnostic check’ today. It was always going to have been an interesting day. I just didn’t realise HOW interesting it was going to turn out!

 

Background:
I spent the last week trying the reproduce the SUA with no success. I even found an old spare car mat and doubled up on the existing mat (secured with cable ties) for a few days just to test out Grumpy’s experience, as he is the only person who has posted an experience like mine.

 

I also tested out all several situations of shifting from Drive to Neutral to see if I could get the yellow triangle and alarm to come on. Tried it while accelerating briskly, while accelerating in Cruise Control and also with ‘Resume’ on C.C. Same result each time – the car just ‘pips’ once, no alarm and no yellow triangle.

 

Today, I prepared the car as I always do before a service. I emptied it of all contents; checked the mat again and took a reading on the trip meter, before driving it to Jemca.

 

At the Garage:
I decided my best strategy was to focus on the problem with the yellow triangle & alarm, which I said happened when I shifted from Drive to Neutral. Then, when asked why I was doing that, I *first* explained that I was an experienced Prius driver who really believes in these cars, but I had experienced some unexpected events and then went on to describe the SUA; including the fact that one of them was experienced by another driver, so not just me. I could sense that this was not going down well....

End of the day:
So I get a call that the car is ready for collection…..

 

The good news:

a ) they have taken the opportunity to fix the recent recall issue.

b ) all diagnostic checks are clear and they cannot find any problem with the car. (I think we all expected this!)


The bad news:

c ) they tell me that when they found the car, one side of the drivers mat had come off its clip and the whole mat was found rotated and slipped under the accelerator!

You all know from my previous postings how aware I was that the mat is always to be blamed first. The journey to the garage was 4.6 miles. I had checked the mat obsessively over the last 2 weeks *and* before I left the house. There was *no way* I  would have left the mat in a position like that, let alone without realising it!

 

d ) they tell me that they took the car for a good test drive and nothing happened. I checked the reading on the trip meter when I got home. The round trip was 9.2 miles. That test drive would have been less than the measurement error of 0.1 miles!

 

e ) they then tell me that I should not have shifted the car from Drive to Neutral. They say a ‘senior engineer’ has looked into this and you ‘always’ get an alarm and yellow triangle if you shift to Neutral when driving! They then 'advised' me not to do this again.  I said I had been testing this extensively over the previous weeks and then explained what I found normally happens when you do. The service rep said, ‘well I hear you say one thing, by my senior engineer is telling me something else’.


Summary:

 

So there you have it. Good news is that I can now reassure my mother-in-law that the car has been *fully* tested and there is *nothing* wrong with it (she was a passenger for two of these events, one with me driving, the other when my wife was driving)!

 

Sad news is that (going in with *absolutely* no intention if picking a fight, and actually asking for help) I now realise what it feels like to come up against Corporate Toyota! They certainly DO NOT want to know!

Sadly, it is not entirely unexpected when you look at the trouble that owners had in convincing franchised dealers and Toyota that their new Auris HSDs were draining the 12V batteries in 48 hours.

You have a ScanGauge that should be able to read at least part of any DTC thrown?

OTOH if the car is behaving in a way that the engineers had not anticipated then it is possible that there will not be DTC to point directly at an SUA problem.



 
http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/topic/158898-sudden-unintended-acceleration-events-prius-gen-3-2011-model-in-uk/page-2


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:



The Toyota documents she reviewed proved so troubling that Benjamison turned the documents – many marked "secret" and "confidential" – over to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA). Benjaminson went public because lives were at stake and "the corporate PR megaphone has completely drowned out the victims."

 

Many of the emails and documents showed that Toyota knew about its sudden acceleration problems despite its protests that it had "done extensive testing on this system, and we have never found a malfunction that caused unintended acceleration."

 

One exchange between Toyota executives went like this:

An email written by Hiroshi Hagiwara, a Toyota vice president in Washington, D.C., and sent to executives in Japan a month before the [U.S. Congressional] hearings hints at the turmoil beneath the surface. Hagiwara and Chris Tinto, a V.P. for technical and regulatory affairs and safety, had been talking about the U.S. investigation and an earlier one in Europe that also involved unintended acceleration (UA).

"Tinto is extremely pessimistic," Hawiwara wrote, "and is saying (public hearings, someone will go to jail, I can't completely take care of the pedal problem, etc.)." Tinto's primary concern (according to Hagiwara): "For NHTSA, we said that our investigations in Europe found that the pedal return is a little slow at a slightly open position, and that there were no accidents, but this is not true. Last year's situation in Europe (many reports of sticking pedals and accidents, and a TI TS0-161 was filed on October 1, 2009) was not reported to NHTSA." That failure", Tinto said, "may be a violation of the TREAD ACT" – the federal law that requires car manufacturers that conduct recalls in foreign countries to report these to U.S. regulators.

Still speaking of Tinto, who worked for NHTSA in the 1990s before he was hired away by Toyota, Hagiwara continued: "He appears to question how Toyota has grasped and handled the overall UA problem (mat, accelerator pedal, ECU [electronic control unit], and electronic throttle systems, etc.)."

– David Hechler, Is Toyota Telling The Truth About Sudden Acceleration? (emphasis supplied)

The executives also cautioned each other about leaving a paper trail, advising to "as much as possible only send materials that would not be controversial if disclosed" and that it was "best… to discuss things orally."

 

The secret documents also revealed Toyota's efforts to "destroy" its critics, like professor David Gilbert.

Behind the scenes, Toyota played hardball with critics. A public relations manager named Masami Doi had spelled out the approach in a December email. "There are at most around 10 people who are the sources of negative tone communications. If they can be suppressed, I think we will be able to manage it somehow. Like you said, let's go with an intention of destroying each individual person's ability to oppose us, one by one…."
– David Hechler, Is Toyota Telling The Truth About Sudden Acceleration (emphasis supplied)

Throughout the sudden acceleration time line, one thing has been consistent: Toyota has consistently misled safety experts and the public about the nature and severity of the Toyota sudden acceleration problem. When given the opportunity to come forward with information, Toyota has chosen lie after lie after lie. There's much more in Hechler's article and it's well worth the read.

 

 

 

The saddest result of TOYOTA's deceit is contained in this comment:


Angela Sirnik says:

March 17, 2013 at 12:53 pm

Sorry to say, this information is all true. Toyota has told lies after lie. My husband Stanley Walter Sirnik, a veteran and a Sargent in the United States Marines served his country three years in Vietnam. He later died in a sudden accelerated Toyota 4 runner in 1992.
Toyota knew of this problem then.

 

 

FROM:  Toyota has chosen lie after lie after lie

 

 

From: Reports Of More Toyota Sudden Acceleration Issues Punches Holes In Floor Mat Theory