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NASA Summoned To Fix Prius Problems

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the tang-is-not-always-the-answer dept.

coondoggie writes "If you want to solve a major engineering mystery, why not bring in some of the world's best engineers? The US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today said it was doing just that by bringing in NASA engineers with expertise in areas such as computer controlled electronic systems, electromagnetic interference, and software integrity to help tackle the issue of unintended vehicle acceleration in Toyotas. The NHTSA review of the electronic throttle control systems in Toyotas is to be completed by late summer." We're really in trouble when NASA has no choice but to call Bruce Willis.

10 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. So... by Anachragnome · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, this is an admission that sticking pedals and faulty floormats had nothing to do with the problem, and that the recalls to fix pedal and floormat "problems" were simply a smokescreen to hide the actual cause of the problem (albeit, unknown cause)?

    1. Re:So... by jwietelmann · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This doesn't hurt Toyota; if anything it helps them. Nobody is buying the sticky-pedal, caught-in-the-floormat explanation anyway, so how could this do anything but help restore confidence in Toyota? You get NASA to say that the electronics could use some better shielding, everyone assumes that EMI was the problem, and you get right back to selling Prius'.

      What's really wrong? I don't know (I'm sort of 50/50 between it being a software race condition or driver error). But one would think that EMI wouldn't result in several cases of the exact same system failure.

    2. Re:So... by Anachragnome · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And all the employees of the US-located Toyota factories might get to keep their jobs.

      It annoys the shit out of me when people fail to take into account that many foreign companies actually produce their products HERE in the US.

      Why? Two reasons, really. It is cheaper to sell cars that don't need to be shipped half way around the world (a cost that is usually passed onto the consumer), and because we Americans whined and sniveled about foreign entities putting our citizens out of work. In short, they did what we wanted them to do.

      Now it is time to help them out and POSSIBLY SAVE LIVES. I cannot think of a more noble reason to get NASA involved, or ANY agency for that matter.

  2. Realigning NASA mission to automotive by nathanielinbrazil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The budget cuts at NASA apparently keep them earthbound and working on earth crawlers

  3. Re:Floor Mats by c++0xFF · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's other theories, too, that NASA could help with. Such as current spikes or other hardware problems.

    In reality, NASA may be a perfect choice given their experience with designing fault-tolerant systems. That means everything from protecting the system from the environment to software validation. The control systems in a car have become very complex, approaching that of airplanes and rockets. I think NASA is a good choice, although I might have gone with an aerospace company instead, such as Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, EADS, etc.

  4. Re:Floor Mats by HarvardAce · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Otherwise, it's just another set of computer scientists looking over a few million lines of code they didn't write, trying to find a defect that has supposedly manifest itself less than a few hundred times out of million of cars and probably billions of miles driven.

    You're confusing "electronic" with "software." One possible theory is that interference (internal or external) is causing signals between parts to become corrupted. My understanding (having RTFA) is that they are focusing on the electrical engineering aspects of it. I would imagine that NASA, needing to design and test equipment in the harsh environment of space, is pretty darn good at exactly that.

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  5. Re:a public relations stunt by confused+one · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I said this earlier:

    If NASA does find a problem then Toyota can spin it as it being so subtle that it took the resources of NASA to find it. They can then use this, with PR spin, and an agreement to contract with NASA for "consulting" as a win.

    If NASA finds nothing, then Toyota is off the hook wrt the drive by wire system, again a win.

  6. Re:What If by moogied · · Score: 5, Interesting
    No its not that simple.

    CAN Protocol(the de-facto automotive protocol) contains error checking. So if a node in the system sends out 00000001 but the "sun spot" turns it to 01000001, it finds that error. So unless it changes that to a 01000001, while also changing the parity bit(or whatever they use for error checking) to 0 as well(as compared to 1), WHILE ALSO somehow disabling the entire safety section of code that reduces the throttle input when brakes are applied... then I seriously doubt it.

    Everyone involved in this knows the above facts, what they have to do is prove the above facts. The reason they called in NASA is because they lack the right type of experts, NASA does not. Case closed.

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  7. This will be interesting. by seebs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd really like to see how the computer in the car manages to consistently only enter this mysterious state when the driver is 60 or older (or maybe in the late 50s). Because normally, if you have a ton of examples of something failing, all of which involve people of an age famed for acquired inattentiveness or confusion, and which look just like many other reported and documented cases of elderly folks getting confused and hitting the gas pedal thinking it's the brakes, you'd not assume it was the computer.

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  8. Re:Queue joke... by Glendale2x · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That said, why is it in these stories of runaway acceleration, that nobody slaps the thing into neutral and hits the brakes? The stories always read like "I was powerless to stop my deathcar!" but drivers have lots of options in situations like that. You can even just turn the car off and hope you haven't picked up a vacuum leak.

    I hear that these cars are "too smart" to let you shift while driving. I drive a stick (my preference) so I have no idea if that's accurate or not, but I did sit in a Prius at an auto show once and there's nothing mechanical about the drive/park/reverse selector. It merely indicates to the computer what you would like to do.

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