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Toyota Pedal Issue Highlights Move To Electronics
cyclocommuter writes with an excerpt from a brief WSJ story on increasing electronic control of car components: "The gas pedal system used Toyota Motor Co.'s recall crisis was born from a movement in the auto industry to rely more on electronics to carry out a vehicle's most critical functions. The intricacy of such systems, which replace hoses and hydraulic fluid with computer chips and electrical sensors, has been a focus as Toyota struggled to find the cause for sudden acceleration of vehicles that led the company to halt sales of eight models this week."
At least in one case, the brakes failed, the accelerator stuck, and the person didn't know how to turn the car off because it was a rental and used a push-button ignition. Also, they couldn't put it into neutral because it had a push-button shifter as well. People really should learn about the car before they drive it, but this is a monumental fuck-up on the part of Toyota. I think that we can do the push-button stuff CORRECTLY, but this isn't the way to do it.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I design computer hardware and software and I always tell people:
But No On Believes Me...
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
Summary is stupid because there's no hoses and hydraulics in any car throttle system I've seen; if it's not electronic, it's a very simple and reliable steel cable.
Story is stupid because as it admits, the electronics had nothing to do with the problem; the failure was mechanical. The exact same thing could have happened to a cable-operated system.
By all accounts I can find, the issue with the Toyota's sticky gas pedal is a MECHANICAL one - not some electrical bug.
-Bill
According to AutoBlog, the problem with these Toyotas is a mechanical part in the drive by wire pedal assembly (and so it's not really an issue with the car being drive by wire). The pivot point that the pedal rotates on has a bushing that is apparently wearing out and causing the pedal stick. I'm a little skeptical as it seems much more plausible that it would be an electrical (or software) gremlin, but that's apparently what they're blaming it on.
There is still no excuse for Toyota not coding the ECU to cut throttle when it senses that the driver has BOTH the throttle and the brakes on simultaneously. All drive by wire VW/Audis are setup this way.
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GM uses electronic gas pedals for quite some time at least in its Delphi platform. For instance, Opel Vectra C and derivatives, Astra G/H and derivatives, ... Never any problems with them so far for several years. Automatic transmission from Aisin-Warner, a Toyota daughter company, on the other hand is causing many problems, at least in Germany. Whatever is going on in Toyota, it is not about quality.
Title: "Electronics parts = Toyota woes"
Article: "condensation from heaters caused increased friction in the gas pedal, making it stick in some cases, making the problem a mechanical one and not an issue of electronics."
So electronics had nothing to do with it at all. And their suggestion that the complexity of electronics made this issue harder to diagnose isn't backed up at all.
It doesn't matter to me if the issue is electronic or mechanical, I want a mechanical peddle pair and a mechanical key switch. I want to be able to kill the machine if I have to, and not rely on the electronics to behave appropriately when malfunctioning. How many press down to turn off power systems have you encountered that failed to turn off after a crash? I've certainly encountered my share of them.
This is really a case of technology moving too fast for its own good.
The fundamental concept behind Japan's quality is kaizen. This is the constant improvement on existing techniques and technology. By starting with what works, it is simpler to build in very small steps without losing any quality along the way.
However, due to perceived pressures from non-Japanese automakers, companies like Toyota have begun bold initiatives to modernize their cars. The typical automotive embedded system is fairly simple (relatively speaking, of course). There are only a few inputs and only a few outputs and the systems are usually isolated from each other. However, as more features become desired, more interaction between isolated systems becomes a reality. The gas pedal used to only manage the amount of fuel fed to the injection valves. Nowadays it works in tandem with the brake system and suspension to manage tire slippage and traction control.
In this case, Toyota implemented a very complex system without a series of solid intermediate steps. The result is catastrophic failure when unforeseen interactions suddenly arise. If they were slowly adding features, they could immediately pinpoint the problematic interaction. However because they did it all at once they don't have any idea where the problem lies.
It makes me want to buy an American car.
This kind of stuff is par for the course if you own a Chrysler. Last year my PT Cruiser decided to get stuck with the throttle about 1/3rd down. It was really fun to park that way (a terrifying sort of fun). Chryslers are famous for bursting into flames, having brakes fail for no reason (which is what the emergency brake is for), and numerous other problems that normal people would consider to be a safety hazard.
When my car got stuck, sure it was a little surprising at first, hard to slow down for the turn I already committed myself to (stood with my full weight on the brake) but after that I put it in neutral (it is an automatic, they have an N position) and when the motor started revving like crazy I just turned off my engine (careful to only click once so the steering wheel lock isn't activated), flipped on my hazard lights and coasted to a place where I could pull over conveniently.
What I don't understand is how I can figure this out, but a CHP officer kills his family in a 100mph crash from the same sort of problem? Yes, he got going that fast, without ever thinking about just turning the damn thing off. California's finest indeed, it's sad because the CHP are held up as experts in driving and safety.
If people aren't able to deduce what they are supposed to do in an emergency on their own in a timely matter, then we must make safety training mandatory for all drivers. It should go into what to do if your brakes don't work, accellerator gets stuck, car catches on fire, car rolls over and you're trapped, and the thousand other things that can happen to you in a car. And there should be a test, it should be a hard test, and you should get an insurance discount if you score over 90%. And you get the opportunity to retake it once a year, but your best score is good forever.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Back in my day, cars had a 3rd pedal on the floor called the clutch. If your throttle got stuck you could hit the clutch pedal and cut the power to the transmission.
The latest defect in Toyota cars is quickly developing into the scandal of the 21st century. The problem started when customers of Toyota vehicles began experiencing sudden unexplained acceleration; these incidents began appearing in 2002. Over time, Toyota management claimed that the problem is the floor mat. So, the management issued a recall to replace all the floor mats.
Then, after further studying the problem, the management claimed that the throttle's pedal sometimes becomes stuck due to weather conditions. This new claim lead to the massive global recall of many vehicles sold over the past 3 years.
However, none of these explanations for the sudden acceleration has been satisfactory. Independent investigations leading to an explosion of lawsuits have determined that the problem is the electronic throttle control (ETC) — the so-called drive-by-wire mechanism that links the pedal via some cables to the fuel controller. According to a report by "Businessweek" and another report by the "Wall Street Journal", Toyota is now the defendant in 3 separate class-action lawsuits. The plaintiffs claim that the ETC is defective.
According to a report by the "New York Times" (NYT), "a few years ago, the company sent out a technical bulletin saying some cars accelerate on their own between 38 and 42 mph, and it reprogrammed the electronics with new software codes".
The NYT notes, "John Heywood, director of the Sloan Automotive Lab at MIT, said because Toyota is the only automaker having this problem, it could be something specific to its design, such as the location and integration of the electronics relay sensor."
Further, the Toyota ETC lacks an important safety mechanism: if the customer presses both the throttle pedal and the brake pedal, then the ETC should give priority to the brake. The Toyota ETC gives priority to the throttle. How can Toyota engineers commit such a gross design mistake? Common sense tells us that the brake should receive priority.
According to a report just issued by the "Wall Street Journal", the engineers at Toyota have developed an improved pedal that supposedly fixes the problem causing Toyota cars to accelerate out of control. American regulators have approved the fix, and Toyota will send it to dealers by February 8. This fix allows the dealers to resume selling the 8 models of vehicles affected by the recall.
However, a new angle to the problem recently surfaced, according to a report just issued by the "New York Times" on its blog. CTS, which manufactures the throttle pedal for Toyota, claims that "the slow-return pedal phenomenon, which may occur in extreme environmental conditions, should absolutely not be linked with any sudden, unintended acceleration incidents". In other words, though the pedal is defective, the defect did not cause the unintended acceleration. CTS claims that it did not manufacture the pedals in older Toyota vehicles that exhibited the same acceleration problem.
If CTS is telling the truth, then the actual problem may be the electronic throttle control, the so-called drive-by-wire system.
I've been around the long-haul trucking business for decades, and I hate to break it to you, but for well over 10 years now, big rigs have had electronic throttle position sensors, with a little bitty, not even particularly well-protected wire running from the pedal to the engine ECM. This is ever since Detroit Diesel came out with their electronically controlled engine in the '90s which was an amazing breakthrough in mileage and reliability. So basically every truck that we've bought or ran for over ten years has had an electronic throttle pedal, and there have been zero problems, except occasionally the TPS itself needs replaced (like every million miles or so). In this case it looks like Toyota fucked up, but that doesn't mean using electronic controls is a bad way to go, because clearly lots of things seem to be able to implement them properly, including airplanes.
'kill -9 car' works just fine!
Everything else is for n00bs.
How do you distinguish between the gas pedal being down due to being stuck versus the gas pedal being down due to someone stepping on it? In either case the sensor is going to report that the gas pedal is down. All the software intelligence in the world is going to have a hard time distinguishing between the identical inputs of PEDAL_DOWN and PEDAL_DOWN.
You could have more intelligent sensors, perhaps, but then that's no longer a software problem.
Un-necessarily complex, I spent 5 to 10 minutes reading the manual and could NOT figure out how to make it move.
I'm not joking, this was a fleet car for work and I simply couldn't make it move, at all. I'm a geek but it just didn't make any sense to me, engine was going but it wouldn't move.
Turns out they use a 'pedal based' handbrake (Americans might call it park brake?) I've never encountered this in 30 years previously, long story short I ended up speaking to the fleet management people and ended up with a Ford stationwagon ( "It just works" ) for the morning, didn't find out about the pedal and how it works until I got back from the trip. (FWIW I really did want to try the Prius too)
This is a worthless story trying to bash electronics for a mechanical failure, and even the story admits that the electronics are not the problem in this specific case. What a load of hogwash. The article doesn't even mention or link to the real source of the problem and it fails to provide additional sources of information for people who might be affected. Someone's got to kick timothy in the ass for getting this dribble posted on the front page. At least post a story about a real electronics's failure causing serious problems such as the O2 sensor issue that the poster above mentioned, now that's a scary situation.
Our New Car
I just bought a 2010 Toyota Camry LE 2.5L I4 6-speed Automatic with EX (Upgraded Radio) and QA (Aluminum Wheels) as a first car for my wife and I as we have just moved across the country to a new city. This was the choice after a lot of researching and test driving of other vehicles and then eliminating them based on real cost of ownership, fuel efficiency, components used, safety ratings, the quality of built, the comfort of the ride, and the headaches or having to deal with the specific sales people (Honda, I'm looking at you!).
Just to make it clear that I'm not a Toyota fan boy and I am not a car person at all since don't find cars "sexy" and I was perfectly happy with my old 1994 Chrysler. This new car is not the perfect vehicle for us, it was just the best in the class for the price. There are some deficiencies in the car, such as the trip computer not showing you fuel efficiency ratings, the quality of the construction in the plastic covering under the engine, cheap plywood backing covering the spare tire in the trunk, and louder than normal wind noise coming from the front roof support posts and root during 80 mpg highway driving speeds, a cup holder divider that comes out anytime you take a cup out of it, and probably a bunch of other issues that we'll find out after more than 4-weeks of owning it.
This recall does not really trouble us since it is mentioned that the issue is rare, it only happens in cars sued for a while already, there is a environmental and humidity aspect to the problem with regards to condensation, and the cause is a gradual wearing down of a bushing that causes additional friction preventing the accelerator pedal from returning back to the home position that happens overtime and is noticeable with a pedal that starts becoming slow to return.
Our car was just manufactured in 2009-11 in Kentucky and I'll be checking the information below today on the weekend to see if our pedal is in the recall or not, most likely it it because it most likely has the CTS manufactured part. I'll call the dealer and arrange for a replacement in a few weeks while after they get a handle on all the people that are coming to them now. No rush on this. I've also instructed my wife on how to resolve this problem if it does occur to her when she's driving by hitting the breaks and shifting into neutral gear, then turning the ignition off when she's safely off the road.
Below is some real information about this recall.
Toyota.com - Latest News About Toyota's Safety Recall Campaign
you're off base here. Toyota shut themselves down until they had a fix in place and known good parts. Yes, the NHTSA did step in, as they should, but they did not shut down Toyota. In fact, they agreed that Toyota's plans were "acceptable" and left Toyota alone to implement them.
Are you crazy!?!?
I tried that once and the skin on my arse has never been the same.
'kill -9 engine'
I don't therefore I'm not.
'kill -9 engine' is not enough.
you forgot about kinetic energy (0.5 * m*v^2).
One might try 'kill -9 -1' but I wonder what will happen with the Universe.
Man pages are somewhat ambiguous about its effect.
There are two sensors in every Toyota accelerator position sensor.
This article (happened in Australia - linked related articles contain more information): http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/16/2773868.htm
describes a problem with a Ford Territory getting stuck with the cruise control actively trying to keep the vehicle at 100km/hr.
A couple of things to answer the 'this guy was idiot, I'm so clever it wouldn't have happened to me' crowd:
1. He couldn't turn off the ignition as the car won't let you do that if the car is moving.
2. He couldn't shift to neutral because the car wouldn't let him push the shift release button. (It was an automatic, so no clutch pedal.)
3. Pushing the brake wasn't helping enough to stop the car. (In the end it worked, but he had to jump on it with both feet all his adrenaline fuelled strength while pulling as hard as he could on the handbrake.)
4. The accelerator pedal only worked to speed him up, It wasn't a pedal 'sticking to the mat' issue, as the car was holding itself exactly to the speed of the cruise control.
5. The car was going too fast to just ram into a barrier or tree, etc.
6. The guy called Ford Australia (on his mobile phone), who couldn't help him and put him on hold. So then he called the police who, to their credit, cleared the road ahead and kept him calm enough to eventually get the car to stop. The total ordeal lasted 50 minutes.
7. The recording of the police call was released and played on the news and it was pretty obvious that both the guy and the police were doing everything to get the car to stop. This was not a situation where a quick two second phone call to a know-it-all Slashdotter would have solved the problem.
Anyway, I can't believe this news didn't make Slashdot when it happened a couple of months ago, as it contains considerably more information than the usual fare on this topic.
Talking out of my ass here but I gather that the 3 second delay is to prevent accidental shut-off of the engine due to bumping into the button etc. The solution is to do away with the 3 second delay and have a hinged transparent plastic cover over the ignition button, ala those found on fighter jet joysticks. To press the button, you have to manually lift the plastic cover, preventing accidental presses. Simple solution for an unnecessary problem.
This may well be speculative crap, but at least based on the anecdotal incidents I keep hearing about, this sounds like an ECM problem.
First Toyota blamed floor mats. That immediately causes consumers to think that the problem was the fault of idiot drivers, not Toyota itself. The typical person's reaction would rightfully be something along the lines of "duh, if you stack floormats under the accelerator, it's going to stick...this is not Toyota's fault".
Now Toyota blames the pedal. And the pedal manufacturer. Again a simple system that people understand...that can be labeled as obviously defective and replaced with something theoretically not defective, bringing about peace of mind.
Finally Toyota is going to "go the extra mile" and update the ECMs to cause pressing the brake to cut the throttle. I imagine this is an algorithmic (code) change to the ECM, not just new calibrations. Apparently Toyota uses a proprietary ECM that is not very "hackable". That is, it's very closed in comparison to items like those in GMs and VW/Audis where there are cottage industries of tinkerers who have decompiled the code, modified calibrations for performance and economy, and even modified the algorithms themselves. (You don't see things like VAGCOM or EFILive for Toyotas.)
Point being, if they update the ECM and it is all proprietary stuff and there's no easy way to diff it (or an adequate number of eyes to catch the difference) they can fix the problem and scapegoat the pedal manufacturer. And potentially leave a lot of dangerous vehicles on the road to save face.
The biggest hole I can find in this idea is where I'm getting my data. Random reports from people, a lot of whom seem to claim their vehicles accelerated from a stop. And of course it's all stuff reported by the popular news media. And of course a lot of folks who rear-ended someone in their Toyota are going to suggest anything other than their own actions being the cause.
But being a software developer, the more I hear about this, the more it stinks of software. An ECM has too many variables to simulate all possible conditions, so you must rely on the algorithms to work correctly. My gut says there's a tiny hole in there somewhere, where most users will never encounter it.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Here's another link. This one contains some of the actual conversation between the police and the driver (sorry about the Flash and advertisement before the actual story):
http://www.smh.com.au/national/cruise-control-terror-for-freeway-driver-20091215-ktxn.html
Regardless of which is given priority... I'll bet those cars are real fun to drive on glare ice, where you may need to be constantly nursing both the brake AND the throttle, to maintain traction and control direction.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They did a test on 3 separate cars, Toyota Camry, Infiniti G37, and Roush Stage 3 Mustang to see the effective stopping power brakes at 70 mph and 100 mph, and each with no throttle and each with full throttle.
Only the Roush Mustang 3 had any real issue of slowing down with full throttle - but only at 100mph. It did stop eventually, but took 903 feet (vs about 320 feet with no throttle).
In the 100mph full throttle tests, the Camry stopped within 88 feet (vs no throttle), the Infinti within 6 feet (The Infiniti has a system that as soon as brakes get tapped the throttle closes, hence such close numbers)
So yes, for 99% of the cars on road, your brakes will overcome your engine easily.
I'd rather shift into neutral and blow the engine than blow myself all over another vehicle or a guard rail at 100 mph... Brakes don't work as well when you're at wide open throttle. Don't be an idiot. A blown engine is easy to replace; in fact, I bet Toyota would give you a free one if you experienced this problem. They'd rather pay for an engine than pay death benefits to your family.
Bottom line, don't try to be a hero. Let the engine blow if it's gonna, put it in neutral, brake to a stop, and turn off the ignition.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
According to this article, NHTSA did shutdown Toyota.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/business/01toyota.html?pagewanted=3&hp
"Last week, the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said in an interview with a Chicago radio station that Toyota had halted production of recalled vehicles "because we asked them to."
Indeed, Toyota had to be told by regulators to shut down production and suspend sales of the cars and trucks in the latest recall until it had the parts necessary to fix them."
I'm also a software developer, and an owner of a Camry 2009. I suspect a software or computer glitch is the root cause. I've experienced unintended acceleration in my Camry twice while I was cruising on a flat straight road going about 38MPH. Both my feet were completely motionless both times it happened. While my right foot was steady on the accelerator, the car just sped up (by about 1 to 2MPH/second) for about 2.5 seconds. I was like WTF was that!?!?! So far, I've only had it happen a few times, but I know it wasn't caused by the fricking floor mat. Last year when I heard Toyota blame it on the floor mat I got so upset because, based on my experience, I knew it wasn't caused by the floor mat. I don't know why Toyota is so reluctant to audit their computer hardware/software. Toyota should be forced to release all the code that is in any way/shape/form connected to the throttle and accelerator pedal for public scrutiny. It will cost them essentially nothing to post the code on their website, so there is no reason not to do this. Since buggy code could jeopardize the safety of the public, the code should be publicly available. Read my post from last year about this here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1430048&cid=29976746&art_pos=18 My guess is that is probably some stupid divide by zero or integer overflow glitch.
Brake fade is what happens when the brakes get overheated, they become less effective.
However, what happens when the engine is at wide open throttle is the same thing that happens when the engine is off: you lose vacuum assist. You'll have enough for maybe 2 pumps of the pedal and that's it. Once your vacuum assist is gone, you're relying 100% on the pressure of your foot on the brake via the hydraulic system to stop the car. If you've ever tried to use the brake pedal when coasting with the engine off, you know how hard that is.
So if you are ever in a "unintended acceleration" situation, push the brake down as hard as you can and do NOT let it back up. You will probably destroy your brakes in the process but that's better than the alternative.
The whole move to electronics is somewhat disconcerting. Computer software will always have bugs, and modern cars have computer software that controls the throttle, and the transmission shifter. Always make sure you know how to shift into neutral in a panic. On my car, it's easy: just push down the clutch pedal.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Two big caveats with that test --- first is that the brakes were in good condition to start with, second is that the driver immediately applied full panic braking effort. What about a car with 30K miles on the brakes. What about the situation where you're driving down a busy freeway at 80mph, is your first reaction going to be to apply panic braking? No, you'll be afraid of being rear-ended...