Industry News
Toyota to rebut faulty electronics claims
8th March 2010
Toyota will on Monday hit back at one of its most high-profile critics by staging a technical demonstration intended to rebut his claim to have uncovered a potentially dangerous flaw in the carmaker’s onboard electronic control systems.
Toyota’s rebuttal of tests carried out by David Gilbert, associate professor of auto technology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, comes amid growing pressure on the Japanese company to back up its insistence that electronic defects had nothing to do with reported acceleration problems suffered by its cars.
Henry Waxman, chairman of one of two US congressional committees investigating Toyota, wrote last week to the company’s US sales chief to complain that it had offered no evidence it had “systematically investigated” the possibility that electronic problems might be responsible.
Prof Gilbert told a congressional committee last month that he had found a possible flaw in the electronic controls of a Toyota Avalon. He said he had been able to cause unintended acceleration without triggering diagnostic problem codes in the onboard computer.
He has acknowledged that his work was sponsored by five law firms involved in lawsuits against Toyota.
The carmaker said it would show his claim was unsound through a joint demonstration by its own engineers and independent experts including Chris Gerdes, director of the Stanford University’s Center for Automotive Research.
“This presentation will show that the sequence and nature of manipulated faults in the Gilbert demonstration are completely unrealistic under real-world conditions and can easily be reproduced on a wide range of vehicles made by other manufacturers,” the carmaker said.
Toyota insists it has found “no evidence of a failure” of the electronic throttle control systems in its vehicles or of the fixes made to them during its recall of more than 8m cars.
However, claims of recurring problems on repaired cars have added to the flow of bad news dogging the carmaker.
US safety officials said last week they had received more than 60 complaints from Toyota customers, who reported experiencing unintended acceleration even though their cars had been repaired by dealers.
Toyota said on Friday it had moved quickly to evaluate the cars in question and interview their owners after they complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Mr Waxman’s letter last week to Jim Lentz, the Toyota US sales boss, highlighted doubts about the carmaker’s electronics. The Democratic chairman of the House energy committee has consistently asked why Toyota appeared to be so certain that problems with unintended acceleration are not related to electronic malfunctions.
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