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Automotive News & Views Toyota in decline in 2009?
3653 messages, Last post on Nov 30, 2009 at 2:33 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: berri (Nov 09, 2009 5:44 pm) It was melted onto the gas pedal by the heat of the fire. To answer the other point this was probably why the idiot at Toyota issued the ill-advised press release. He/she was immediately smacked down by the NHTSA and Toyota execs. STFU, stupid....or something to that effect. As to the other reports of Unintended Acceleration there are many reports and they've been investigated all through this decade. The NHTSA has never been able to find anything other than All Weather floor mats as the cause...except driver error or outright lying ( fictitious report ). Neither has any crash scene investigator nor has any insurance company or any other indpendent impartial organization found any cause other than the occasional improperly placed All Weather mat. What does that tell you? |
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Replying to: berri (Nov 09, 2009 6:14 pm) |
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Replying to: iluvmysephia1 (Nov 09, 2009 6:27 pm) See the two prior posts. Not only were they able to identify that the All Weather mats were there but they also could identify the Part No of the mats. The mats belonged in the hybrid SUV not the ES350. This dealer is in a world of hurts from just about everybody on the planet. He might as well have rolled a bowling ball into the driver's footwell. |
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it's the evidence of the burnt mat fused to the accelerator pedal that is the real problem here. Not Toyota floorpan design or maybe not even pedal design. Although both of those may be re-designed as a result of this investigation, the fault is the dealer for stacking mats. And a mat from the wrong rig no less. Did they find the car's OEM mat under the hybrid SUV mat, too? |
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Replying to: gagrice (Nov 08, 2009 6:50 pm) The rev limiter will protect the engine. I tried it today in two different vehicles, an 08 Highlander 4WD at 65 mph in traffic and an 07 Prius at 55 mph in traffic. Shifting to N is immediate and immediately disconnects the wheels from the throttle input. |
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Can you pose any reason why a driver with experience could not have shifted the lever into neutral during the length of time involved? The floor mat wouldn't have physically kept the lever from shifting... would it?
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Replying to: imidazol97 (Nov 10, 2009 4:01 am) The vehicle is on the highway doing highway speeds of 65-80 mph. The driver suddenly realizes that he's going too fast and lets off the pedal. The pedal is caught in the mat so the car doesn't slow down, but he doesn't realize why the car is not slowing down. As any of us would do he applies the brakes. The car still doesn't slow down.???? As any of us would do he applies more brake pressure. ??? Still no let up and the car is up to 90+ mph. Now he really stands on the brakes while watching out for traffic all over the place zoom by as the car is up to 100 mph. This glazes over the rotors and makes the brakes useless and he realizes that he's got to get off the highway to get out of traffic so as not to endanger anyone. ^^^ All speculation though. What I did notice in my two personal trials is that while shifting into Neutral disconnects the wheels from the throttle there is no huge immediate slowdown. It's the same as taking a manual tranny out of gear and letting it coast freely. It is not at all like downshifting where there is a noticable hump as the engine brakes. The wheels and the vehicle are just free-spinning. From 65 mph I could see that it would take me a lonnnngggg time to come to a dead stop without the benefit of brakes. If the driver was upto 100+ mph in the ES350 and approaching a long downhile exit with glazed over rotors he has little or no stopping power. From my own short test If I discovered that I couldn't get the throttle to turn off I'd make sure based on this tragedy that I didn't use the brakes too hard too early thus rendering them ineffective. I'd get the car out of gear first to get the vehicle starting to slow down as much as possible...then apply the brakes.
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in their first year have totalled 45K so far, and I do see a few of these around. So it looks like Toyota had a good idea there, although I wonder if we were to pull up Highlander sales, would we see a 45K dip? http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/1160/15-cars-fueling- -the-auto-recovery/
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Replying to: kdhspyder (Nov 10, 2009 6:35 am)  Another serious question is if the shift lever doesn't allow shifting to neutral due to some failure or anomaly, what happens by shifting into 1? It would have slowed the car, if things are working correctly. The motor would still be revving as high as the limiters would allow and the power would greatly resist braking after the car slow into the range for that gear. I assume the trans would go into a lower gear as appropriate with the mapping for the transmission -- assuming the computer control is working correctly or working at all. Many questions. I still believe there's more to it than a floor mat causing full throttle. I want to hear the black box information. I've seen one post of what contents of the data would show. I can't believe it takes this long. On CSI it only takes a few minutes to analyze things!!! 
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