Associated Press | Toyota is rebutting Southern Illinois University Professor David Gilbert’s claims that the electronics of its cars and trucks are to blame for unwanted acceleration problems that have led to more than 8 million recalled vehicles.
Toyota is presenting researchers Monday who question Gilbert’s findings, after he recreated unintended acceleration in a Toyota vehicle by manipulating its electronics. Gilbert told a congressional hearing Feb. 23 that he recreated sudden
acceleration in a Toyota Tundra by short-circuiting the electronics
behind the gas pedal — without triggering any trouble codes in the
truck’s computer.
“We do not believe that electronics are at the root of this issue,” Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman, said during a demonstration at the automaker’s North American headquarters in Torrance, Calif.
Toyota says faulty gas pedals and floor mats, not electronics, are the cause. It is fixing millions of vehicles to correct those problems. But some drivers have reported continued problems in vehicles that have already been supposedly fixed.
Federal safety regulators are investigating complaints over Toyota’s repairs. Michels said the automaker is also reviewing the complaints, and that some were the result of bad repairs or other factors.
Gilbert told Congress he made a “startling discovery” that showed the electronic throttle control system could have a problem without producing a trouble code. The code sends the computer into a failsafe mode that allows the brake to override the gas.
House lawmakers seized on the testimony as evidence Toyota engineers missed a potential problem with the electronics that could have caused the unwanted acceleration.
According to Exponent, Gilbert connected sensor wires from the pedal of a 2010 Toyota Avalon to an engineered circuit, revving the engine without using the pedal. Gilbert demonstrated the method in an ABC News story last month.
Exponent said it reproduced the test on the same model year Avalon and a 2007 Camry and was able to rev the engine. But it concluded the electronic throttle system would have to be tampered with significantly to create the right conditions.
“Dr. Gilbert’s scenario amounts to connecting the accelerator pedal sensors to an engineered circuit that would be highly unlikely to occur naturally, and that can only be contrived in a laboratory,” an Exponent report said.
For example, Exponent said, Gilbert stripped wires in Toyota gas pedal systems of their insulation and used circuits to connect wires that were too far apart to touch each other.
Exponent said it also revved the engine of some Toyota competitors’ cars using the same technique, including a Subaru Outback and a Ford Fusion. The automaker stressed its tests did not show any flaws with those models or its own cars.
Toyota’s event Monday is part of a broad campaign by the world’s biggest automaker to discredit critics, repair its damaged reputation and begin restoring trust in its vehicles.
On Friday, a congressional committee questioned Toyota’s efforts to find the causes of the problems. It also questioned whether the company had sufficiently investigated the issue of electronic defects.
Toyota executives also will address recall issues at its annual suppliers meeting in Kentucky on Tuesday.
To prevent misguided policy and unwarranted fear, Toyota should provide $10M accidental insurance at no cost to owner of Toyota or Lexus made between 2003-present.
Go after the Professor Toyota. Egg in your faces when the truth comes out that it is the electronics. Toyota’s ETC should throw codes if there it unintended acceleration without input from the pedal and the throttle is WOT. Many people’s theory is that the ETC systems are failing. This is from people with real world experience with these systems. Toyota’s have a high failure rate already with throttle bodies going back to their 90’s.
Funny, Toyota screams they know the cause but their head of North American operations refused to state to Congress that what they were doing to repair Toyota’s will fix the problems. Is anyone talking to anyone else at Toyota? The company once known for excellence is now known for how not to run a crisis. The reality is, Toyota really doesn’t know what is causing the problem. They want to blame the pedal because they can divert blame to a subcontractor. All their increasingly public stance denying an electronic cause is doing is making it worse for them in the end.
Toyota should just admit their software flaw in design and engineering. Quit the blame game and fess up.
Now the hope is to turn this into an academic dispute rather than a problem solving attempt. I didn’t know that Stanford had academics on their staff that were for sale.
Why does Toyota refuse to provide “black box” data after these accidents?
What are they hiding?
I saw Prof. Gilbert on the news. He made a point of saying that he rigged the car’s electronics to cause sudden acceleration. And he never contended that the car could do what he’d done all by itself.
His whole point was that when sudden acceleration happens, the ‘black box’ does not record it as an anomoly.
Toyota is setting up and knocking down a straw man here. They’re not addressing the real issue: are we sure that these cars aren’t suddenly accelerating because of electronic flaws? Toyota ought to admit the truth: they don’t know.
While I am not convinced that the professor is correct, at this point I have more faith in his conclusions than in Toyota’s. Seems as though Toyota is doing a modern version of Ralph Nader and GM.
I do not own a Toyota, never have. but now I’m getting nervous about the Toyota’s on the road and if the one coming up behind me just might be the one to suffer from the acceleration issue.
“According to Exponent, Gilbert connected sensor wires from the pedal of a 2010 Toyota Avalon to an engineered circuit, revving the engine without using the pedal. Gilbert demonstrated the method in an ABC News story last month.” —First off, this does not simulate real world conditions. As a technician, I know how to manipulate anything I want to in a vehicle. These guys sure are bright, I can do the same manipulation in EVERY drive-by-wire system. I can make your gas gauge read full at all times. I can make it so your fans never turn off. Through electronic manipulation, I can do anything, and so can most technicians. This is basic electronics here. When you manipulate a sensor through outside electronics you are by-passing the pedal. This is commonly seen in routine electrical diagnosis. Through basic knowledge of electronics, you can make any electronic device do whatever you want. Did Gilbert ever consider that his manipulation made the computer believe that it was the pedal being used? The pedal sensor is an input senor, not an output, and therefore manipulation of the senser is simple. This is nothing more than routine diagnosis and Ohms Law.
Re: Norm Silver | March 8, 2010 3:36 PM | Now the hope is to turn this into an academic dispute rather than a problem solving attempt. I didn’t know that Stanford had academics on their staff that were for sale.
Norm, call me cynical, but I never met a person who couldn’t be bought. The reward doesn’t have to be money or even something material, it may be as fleeting as ‘fifteen minutes of fame.’
Don’t go head to head with the Japanese on technology issues. They’ll kick the US butt.
All of the posts by “qingyang” are spam. Why is this person permitted to keep on posting?
Toyota has no credibility in my opinion;
They have worked to prevent any government intervention into these failures..
Clear Libility.. by not preventing harm to the buyers of these rockets on wheels.
The many events that have risen over the past 8 years reveal … a real fear by owners of brand new cars that seem to have a mind of there own…. Death traps,
Note: If a man who was an officer of the law who was unable to regain control of his car and lost the fight to regain control…. it is clear something is not right…. Come clean TOYOTA …find the real facts …..
Time to reset the argument and allow a complete and full disclosure of every document owned by Toyota or lose your right to sell your mindless rockets as a family car suitable to be on our roads ….
You people are missing the big picture: Here is a Liberal Progressive college professor paid by the taxpayers, being flown in to testify before a bunch of Liberals also paid by the tax payers, to testify against a corporation of hard working people who have no one representing them.
It’s another part of Obama’s anti-work agenda and you’re footing the bill. I wonder if Dr. Gilbert has ever worked a real job in his life. Here’s how you balance the IL budget: stop all funding for these Liberal training camps calling themselves “Universities”. I should not be paying for your childrens’ indoctrination.
I’m an electronics test engineering in the automotive industry. The testing Professor Gilbert was demonstrating is ’supposed’ to be common practice for every device that is going to be installed in a vehicle. If you read his testimony, he is not just going after Toyota but is warning that ANY device that does not properly detect faults could be subject to unwanted conditions as a result of failed sensors, etc… If you examine a 0-5V sensor input to a device. The software typically sets limits at 0.5 to 4.5V as normal operating conditions. Above or below those software limits should trigger a short either high or low. This should also work in connection to how the sensor is used in the application.
If a sensor is inputting 4.0V to the ECM (which is acceptable) but none of the other pieces to the system are registering what they should when that sensor is at 4.0V, there should be an algorithm that tells the ECM there is a problem. Then you should see a fault code display and the vehicle (depening on the severity of the potential failure identified) should decide if the engine must be derated or if it’s safe to continue driving. For instance, if your radio system has a failure that doesn’t affect normal driving conditions, then you would expect to be frustrated that the radio doesn’t work, but you wouldn’t expect your vehicle to shut down. In the case of the acceleration failure, you would expect the vehicle to shut down because this presents a dangerous driving condition. The resistive load may seem as ‘unrealistic’ to people unfamiliar with electronics testing. However, this is a simulation used in the automotive industry to purposely inject a possible failure mode into the system and verify that the system behaves as expected should this failure occur in the real world conditions. Nobody denies that hacking into the wiring seems non-realistic, however if you do not have a bad sensor to replace the good one with, you have to use resistive loads to simulate a bad sensor. The shorts are real and a real automotive standard required by every OEM to test. If other vehicles have the same failure modes then those OEMs must look into those potential failures as well.
They also should be performing this while the vehicles are on a dyno because my suspicion is that the vehicle being in park might override an identification of potential faults because you can accelerate all you want but you won’t go anywhere unless the vehicle is in drive (meaning the condition they’ve created might not matter when parked)?
As Patrick Swayze said in the movie Roadhouse, “Opinions vary”. In my opinion, your opinion has no credibility. Why should it? “Rockets on wheels”? “mindless rockets”? Where on earth do you come up with this krap? Karl Rove? Are you a Ford/GM/Chrylser “worker” (translation – union slug)
Dave is not a liberal. he’s worked hard all his life and is
a straight shooter
To the technician saying he can do the same thing as Gilbert:
No one is disputing that. And I don’t doubt that you can change anything in these cars. As a technician though, you should know that a short can happen ANYWHERE on a car and cause these issues. You also should know that a malfunction in sensors can happen ANYWHERE in a vehicle and cause things to happen. All Gilbert did was prove that sudden acceleration does happen on the ECM and NO diagnostic information is recorded.
Don’t throw your technician badge around without giving the full story here. How many times a year do you have to fix broken wires and/or dirty ground connections? How high is the chance that this could just be a bad connection due to paint spill over or not fully cleaned up connection during manufacturing? Pretty high…
Tea Partay dont open your mouth, you sound completely ignorant. I am one of Gilbert’s former students and the reason he began his research ON HIS OWN was because he himself and his son both drive a Toyota. Gilbert is an honest hard worker who has many years of experience both teaching and working in the field. He is only doing what he feels right. Toyota has a very strong relationship with SIU and their automotive program. People need to stop blowing what Gilbert and his research has shown out of proportion.
Hey very nice blog!!