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Jim Lentz is testifying before the House Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee as we speak.
Waxman just played a statement saying Lentz made saying they were confident they had solved the unintended accleration problem. He then asked Lentz if he still stood by his statement. Lentz said yes, as he defines sudden unintended acceleration. But then he defined “unintended acceleration” as when a driver takes her foot OFF the accelerator and the car doesn’t decelerate. Totally different thing.
Waxman: Exponent’s exam has been criticized. You have something more from Japan that you haven’t given us?
Lentz: They are confident the testing has been done in Japan.
Now Michael Burggess is trying to help out Lentz by asking what NHTSA has found. Of course, Waxman has already revealed that NHTSA has no one with the electronic or software expertise to test such things.
Even though last panel said Toyota had been able to replicate what auto tech prof, David Gilbert, had found, Lentz claims Toyota hasn’t been able to replicate it.
Also, in the last panel, Rep Steve Buyer tried to claim that the safety and tech experts had been bought off by trial lawyers. But the prof in question has been paid $1800 thus far, and received $4000 in equipment. Meanwhile, Lentz just testified that Exponent, the sham consulting firm that is doing their study (with just 6 cars), has no limit on billable hours.
Lentz then admitted they’ve been testing this in Japan (though he didn’t admit that they haven’t given this paperwork to Congress). Testing that we’ve done in Japan, we continue to test the ETCS in Japan, as well as what Exponent is doing.
Lentz also announced that Toyota will expand its brake overrides installed to seven cars. Tacoma, Venza and Sequoia are being added; Camry, Avalon and Lexus ES 350, IS 350 and IS 250. He said the others are not technically feasible. He later said that for these seven models, they could just reflash the chip (which is a 15- to 30-minute fix). Apparently, the others are no able to be reflashed. Note, too, those are generally the cheaper cars. So basically Toyota is deciding that for these cheaper cars and trucks (though also the Tundra!), they’re unwilling to pay to pull out the chip and replace it.
Stupak is pointing out that Toyota is not fixing 70% of the case. Says Lentz is defining “sudden acceleration as Toyota wants to define it.”
Lentz just said there is “pedal misapplication.”
Stupak: Do you have any analysis that sticky pedals can cause sudden unintended acceleration.”
Lentz redefines it again, Stupak then quotes Toyota’s lawyer saying differently.
Stupak: “70% we don’t have an answer for, is that fair to say?”
Lentz: “That’s fair to say.”
Lentz “There’s the possibility through mechanical, or human, or some other type of problem” Like maybe electronic?!?!? Or software?!?!?!
Toyota defect and recall decisions have been made in Japan in past.
Credit to Joe Barton (who was his typical horses ass in the last panel): He’s kicking Lentz’ ass. Barton: “You probably can solve this problem if you really try to.”
Barton: I have confidence in your engineering department you can solve this if your legal department will let them solve it.
Dingell now asking a bunch of qusetions Lentz can’t answer.After each, says, “Please submit that for the record.”
Now some answers: Japan was responsible for recalls before now.
Dingell asks Lentz whether he thinks Govt ownership of GM has made them treat Toyota unfairly. Letnz says no, govt has treated Toyota fairly.
Dingell asks whether Toyota has studied electromagnetic interference.
Lentz: Exponent has not tested electromagnetic yet.
Dingelll: How many models did Exponent test?
Lentz: if you look at ETCS system, system is very similar. Throttle may be different size.
Dingell: I’m just a poor Polish lawyer from Detroit. Can you answer yes or no.
What percentage have EDRs.
Lentz asks to look at his notes. Dingell says, please submit that for the record. Lentz winces.
Dingell is getting at the one prototype tool that Toyota has to test EDRs.
Dingell: Are you responsible for these matters? You don’t seem to have the answers that I am questing. Asks about manufacturing and safety.
Lentz: Not responsible for manufacturing, defect decisions made in Japan.
Lentz says of Toyota manufacturing employees sitting behind him that they are hard-working Americans. (Bobby Rush commends him on their diversity. Which means they served their PR purpose.)
Markey says it’s not acceptable that Toyota was not sharing defect problems across nations.
Lentz: “ETCS has bene looked at in the past as they develop the product.” Suggesting they haven’t done studies since?
Lentz: We are confident it’s not an electronic problem.
Markey: But you are only at the beginning of the process.
Lentz: Not first time we looked at ETCS, first time Exponent has looked at it.
DeGette: Not first time you looked at ECTS. You provided a lot of documents, Has Toyota provided all docs?
Lentz: I can’t say whether it’s a test or the development cycle.
DeGette: Have we recieved all the documents about testing.I know Buyer would want to ask you: How much money to Exponent to produce that report. Over $1800?
Lentz: Unlimited budget.
DeGette: Exponent report an interim report, still conducting tests.
Lentz: Going to make that public.
DeGette: My understanding that Hester, sitting right behind you, Toyota had replicated Gilbert’s test. Reproduce same conditions w/o triggering error code. In wee hours last night.
Lentz: I an relying on engineering people in Japan, who told me they have tested it extensively.
DeGette, In light of Hester’s report, do you want to change your testimony.
Lentz: We will provide that. I don’t know exactly how Gilbert has done this.
DeGette: You agree with Gilbert?
Lentz: Real world. Exponent was able to do on competitors vehicle. [In the wee hours of last night? Really? Interesting set of priorities, there, Toyota.]
Doyle: What’s the downside to testing what this gentleman has done?
Lentz: Not sure of his testing paradigm.My understanding is they were splicing wires together.
Oh for fucks sake. Lentz boasting about house calls his Dad gets. Ya think Dealer might be trying to schmooze Toyota marketing and sales?
Betty Sutton: When you say “we” are willing to take info from anyone with suggestions, who is the “we”? Asks about making safety.
Lentz: I am involved in quality from an antenna standpoint. [But everything gets sent to Japan]
Sutton: Who does the safety person who reports to NHTSA?
Lentz: Toyota Motor America.
Sutton: He’s responsible for safety decision in US?
Lentz: No, that’s made in Japan.
Sutton: So why are you here?
Committee invited him.
Schakowsky: Are you really saying no one in US knew about recall in Canada? Strains credulity. It’s really hard to imagine, that whether or not it was deliberately shared or not. Many Americans can see Canada from their house.
Bruce Braley suggests that Toyota had big financial ties to Accenture. Now looking for financial relationship with Exponent. Hopefully that means they’ll get a contract.
Buyer: USG went to Exponent to help us solve Space Shuttle Columbia.
Yeah, that’s a great example.
Lentz says they might be the independent review group. WOW. That would be a mistake.
Lentz now describing what Gilbert did. But he doesn’t get that what Gilbert showed is that there’s an error code failure. That’s not what Exponent did test.
Buyer just suggested that Exponent was testing thousands of vehicles. No. They’re testing 6.
Gonzales trying to make the hearing moral “Everyone is going to keep driving their Toyotas.” Based on President (who gets free Toyotas) saying he’ll keep driving Toyotas.
Rep McInerny complaining about Toyota shutting NUMMI factory in CA. It was GM abandoning NUMMI that was shutting this down. Lentz really should have said it wasn’t his job–sales–bc he’s playing into McInerny’s efforts to piggyback on Toyota’s bad PR.
Now Lentz boasting that workers didn’t laid off in downturn of 2008. Which is what UAW always gets beat up for–keeping workers on.
Stupak: Only independent analysis you have is Exponent.
Lentz: Yes.
Stupak: No independent ECS studies. W/Gilbert here, he’s come up with
Lentz keeps misstating what Gilbert did. He can’t really be this stupid about cars. I understand this stuff, and haven’t worked in the industry for my entire lifetime.
Now Stupak is naming a bunch of cars whose black boxes have disappeared. Asking where the results are.Including one person who asked Toyota for information off black box. It has been denied.
Stupak: NHTSA introduced standards in 2006 and you’re still developing a prototype? This information still needs to go to Japan?
Stupak: Where is the data from the black boxes stored? In Japan?
Lentz is filbustering
Toyota President: “We’ve stubbed our toe.”
Lentz admits that Exponent has not tested software yet.
(Ah it took a while to get that out, huh?)
LaHood will start testifying at 5:30.
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looks to me like toyota has made a deaths-and-injuries vs cost-of-repairs cost-benefit analysis and decided costs-of-repairs was to be the deciding factor.
that’s not an unreasonable approach to safety issues, but did toyota really have to mislead its customers and govt officials to the extent it has?
no one but toyota knows the reasoning behind their decision and hence how sound or fair to customers it was.
furthermore, it would not surprise me to learn that toyota has done some polling in the u.s. and discovered minimal disaffection among their customers.
I would be gobsmacked, and it would be intentional mismanagement, if NHTSA lacked resources to analyze automotive ECM’s. They have been staples of automotive design for nearly two decades. Future innovations depend on them for everything from mileage rates to pollution control to records of vehicle location and subsystem actions that are analyzed post-crash. It would be like saying a short while ago that NHTSA had no one with expertise in ABS technology or, longer ago, no one with expertise in gas tank fires.
lentz says fixing a brake override problem is not feasible for some models.
would that be not technically or not financially feasible?
i thought brake override of engine power was a safety “standard” all manufacturers adhered to.
I suspect that’s correct: Toyota is taking a page from Ford’s Pinto book, rather than J&J’s Tylenol book. Odds are the problems spread across their entire line-up in every global market. If so, this is a bet-the-company problem.
As bmaz suggested in another thread, this is a defensive, divide-delay-and-conquer strategy. The less well-to-do buy Toyota’s cheaper cars. The calculation of monetary loss from lost life or limb yields lower cost, which are lower still when strung out via an annuity rather than a lump sum payment. Given the demises of once great auto names over the last decade, I wouldn’t recommend anyone take anything less than cash on the barrel from anyone in the industry. Unpaid claims are unsecured in bankruptcy, with only a modest priority.
i just hate the smell of lawyers engaged in a cover-up – it’s a disgusting stench whether torture lawyers or toyota lawyers, gov’t lawyers or corporate lawyers.
yuck!
BTW, the person who says they can reproduce the problem is Mr. David W. Gilbert, Associate Professor of Automotive Technology at Southern Illinois University’s Division of Automotive Technology.
I think his emphasis on “feasible” is the key. A casual Congresscritter or their staffer might assume that it means “practicable” from an engineering or repair perspective. Lentz almost certainly means it from an accounting/financial perspective, especially if the fix can be implemented by changing out a computer chip with corrected s/w. On cheaper models, that may meaning replacing the entire ECM, much more expensive than replacing or reprogramming a chip.
Audi had a somewhat similar problem a few years ago with prematurely broken timing belts in its A4. When the timing belt and tensioning system fails early – before its scheduled, out-of-warranty replacement – valve timing is shot to hell, the engine misfires at high rpm’s, and you lose the whole valve train and/or engine. Not a happy event at highway speeds and very expensive to fix. A “quiet” informal dealer repair program was initiated after several lawsuits. I suspect lots of people gave up and tossed the car or paid $4-5K to fix it themselves.
Safety and warranty regulation of big auto is an unending game of cat and cat. At least since Bush II, if not longer, the government has defanged its regulator and turned it into a game of cat and mouse.
That argument about not taking anything but cash would apply equally well to a settlement with an insurer. We all know how well that industry has been handling itself of late.
Isn’t that “unintended inacceleration?”
earl of huntingdon
“safety and warranty regulation of big auto is an unending game of cat and mouse…”
amen.
and would it were not so.
… or “unexpected non-deceleration”, but certainly not what he said.
Not at lower speeds, either. (Happened to me at about 35mph. Fortunately in light traffic and in the right lane. They replaced all the valves.)
and earlofhuntingdon @7.
Engines with valves are either interference engines or non-interference engines. The interference type is defined by the valves and the pistons will occupy the same space (:() if the timing chain or belt fails. The non interference type will not run- but also not self destruct- in case of timing belt or chain failure.
Some manufacturers use the more durable and reliable chain on interference engines, and belts on the non interference types; others make a different decision.
Mine was an older car, and had somewhere around 120,000 miles at the time. It was an actual timing chain, IIRC. (Just for laughs – it was a ’71 Corona, 4-speed.)
Has anybody been able to determine whether the SA is happening in the electric motor, the gas engine, or both?
I bet no sudden acceleration events were experienced in that vehicle.
No. but it did run pretty reliably. (Actually, it could, and did, do freeways, but it was slow in accelerating in its last years.)
I have the feeling that Lentz is either totally clueless about what the engineers are actually finding (possibly intentionally on the part of his superiors), or he had instructions to not say anything more than he had to. Those answers were the answers of someone who is trying very very hard to avoid giving Congress anything to work with.
Toyota’s willingness to overlook defects that killed people in order to maximize profits is not unusual corporate behavior. It’s typical and that’s a major reason why free markets produce products that kill people.
Can we finally put that foul Milton Friedman canard to rest?
Friedman was a foul and greedy narcissistic idiot.
I bought my first Toyota Corolla (used) after VW stopped making the “squareback.” I forget if I had more than one Corolla wagon, but eventually replaced the Corolla(s) with a used Camry, which was a very nice upgrade. But in 2004, I switched to a Ford Focus wagon– which is probably about the time Toyota was starting to cut corners on its quality control (unbeknownst to me.) Now, I’m glad that I switched.
Bob in AZ
Did Toyota ‘Go Galt’?
There are are few other that are due a debunking.
This makes me quite sad. I had a Toyota Corolla-Tercel (made for six months as an in-between the Corolla and Tercel hence the name.)
I got over 250,000 miles on it before someone hit me and totaled the car.
My parents owned a Camry for 25 years. It is now my son’s car.
My parents bought a new Camry 9 months ago and are in a state of total frustration because of all of this. My son is giving the old Camry, that he bought from them, back to them because he wants them alive and driving a safe vehicle.