Toyota Recall Confusions

Many people are confused about what the Toyota recalls actually are and mixed the issues together. You really need to think rationally before banishing or supporting Toyota -

Recall 1 - Sudden Unintended Acceleration - this recall was initiated by the famous 911 call. Toyota's explanation is after-market carpet mat.

Recall 2 - Sudden Unintended Acceleration - this recall comes after people reported the problem with no such carpet mat. Toyota's explanation is sticky paddle, and offered a fix.

We need to understand that the incident rate is really low for this kind of problems. While Toyota owners should get their cars fixed ASAP, there is no reason to panic. It is not like that if you drive a Toyota, this thing is bound to happen.

People say that brake failed during sudden unintended acceleration. This is a perception. As a matter of fact, if you step on the brake firmly, the brake is there, but since the throttle is widely open, you may not feel the slow down that much. A lot of people may release the brake pedal and try again. That is the wrong thing to do. When the throttle is widely open, only the first 1 or 2 brake attempts are useful. Then the vacuum boost lost the vacuum reserve and the brake becomes ineffective. That's why the experts say that in SUA situation, shift the car to N, step on the brake firmly (don't pump), let the engine race in N, it is OK. The car will eventually stop. Don't turn off the engine or you will lose engine-assisted power brake.

Some one questioned that why Toyota does not have brake override (cancel the throttle input when braking). Well, brake override feature is not available on most cars these days. So it is not only Toyota. It may become standard after this though.

Some people may blame drive by wire technology. First of all, drive by wire is used by all cars now. So what problem Toyota has, other cars may have it too. Who knows. Second, drive by wire is so much safer than the traditional mechanical link. There are data other there to support this.

The Prius brake issue (not a recall yet) is a different one. This is caused by "Brake by Wire" technology. This has to be used for hybrid cars, since the braking needs to generate power for the battery. This is a new technology, not many automakers are using that, so it will have some issues here and there. Ford Fusion Hybrid's recall yesterday is another instance of this. As a matter of fact, Mercedes was trying to do brake by wire back in 2001 and got into so many issues, that it issued recall to its SL series cars. Interested people can read this http://www.aa1car.com/library/2004/bf110412.htm

So as you see, as the control system becomes more and more complex, it offers better safety overall, it also inevitably introduces some issues which are hard to debug. The engineers do rigorous testing before release the software, but it is impossible to test every kind of road situation. The recall system is there to address this issue.

My opinion on this, Toyota is not the only one has the problem, and not the last one to have the problems. Be cautious, but don't be panic.

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• 同意你關於HIGHLANDER上坡的說法 -3378- ♀ (383 bytes) () 02/07/2010 postreply 00:17:45