Report: Throttle, Not Floor Mats, Behind Toyota Problems

Los Angeles - The world's largest automobile manufacturer and California's largest newspaper are squaring off over the reason why hundreds of Toyota and Lexus vehicles have suddenly accelerated uncontrollably.

The Los Angeles Times on Saturday again reported that the onboard computers and electrical controls, installed in most vehicles built by Toyota since 2002, may cause throttles to race out of control, causing runaway cars and trucks.

But the automaker, whose U.S. headquarters is in Torrance, insists the problem with 4.26 million cars and trucks is floor mats that the company says can jam under gas pedals. An off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and three family members were killed last summer near San Diego in a runaway Lexus, prompting public scrutiny.

The Times says the problem is much more serious than jammed carpeting, and notes that thousands of federal traffic safety incident reports show sudden acceleration reports shot up almost immediately after Toyota began installing "drive-by-wire" system that use sensors, microprocessors and electric motors to connect the driver's foot to the engine, instead of the traditional steel cable.

The Times says electronic-only throttles are susceptible to electronic interference that can trick an engine into thinking the driver has floored the ignition pedal, and that power braking on Toyota and Lexus vehicles diminishes if an engine is racing at high speed.

"With the electronic throttle, the driver is not really in control of the engine," Antony Anderson, a UK-based electrical engineering consultant told The Times. "You are telling the computer, will you please move the throttle to a certain level and the computer decides if it will obey."

Toyota disagrees.

"Six times in the past six years NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) has undertaken an exhaustive review of allegations of unintended acceleration on Toyota and Lexus vehicles," Toyota said in a statement earlier this month. "Six times the agency closed the investigation without finding any electronic engine control system malfunction to be the cause of unintended acceleration."

The auto maker insists an embarrassing gas pedal design flaw makes motorists vulnerable to being trapped open by floor mats, forcing the costly recall of 4.26 million cars and pickup trucks announced Wednesday to fix the problem.

Although Toyota said it knows of no electronic defects that would cause a vehicle to surge out of control, The Times reported, it has issued at least three technical service bulletins to its dealers warning of problems with the new electronic throttles in the 2002 and 2003 Camry.

"These incidents are coming in left and right where you can't blame the floor mats," Sean Keane, president of the consulting firm Safety Research and Strategies, told The Times. "So, they (Toyota) are chipping away at a problem that is widespread and complicated without having to unravel a root cause that could be very expensive."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has eight investigations of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles since 2003, prompted by defect petitions from motorists and its own examination of complaints. But the agency has tested electronic throttle systems only twice in those probes, its records show.

A NHTSA laboratory test in Massachusetts found that a Toyota throttle exhibited unusual behavior when researchers applied a magnetic field to the device's sensitive electronics. Engine speed surged by 1,000 revolutions per minute, according to a 2008 report by the agency's Vehicle Research and Test Center.

And independent experts say that the number of complaints actually filed is only a tiny fractions of all potential problems, since most people don't bother filing a report.

Critics also say NHTSA hasn't kept pace with technological changes. The auto industry has undergone a technological revolution in the last decade, and today about 25 percent of a vehicle's price reflects its electronics content, The Times reported.

Nonetheless, NHTSA has adopted few, if any standards for designing or testing vehicle electronics, industry officials told The Times. The agency's two-page safety standard for accelerators was adopted in 1973.

"Manufacturers' standards are far above the regulatory standards," TRW Automotive Holdings Corp.'s Ian Harvey told The Times. "You wouldn't want somebody to make a cellphone call and the air bag goes off. That potentially could happen if you didn't make the proper precautions."

Toyota announced Wednesday that it had developed a series of fixes to prevent floor mats from causing sudden acceleration. In 4.26 million vehicles in the U.S. and Canada, Toyota said it would cut off a segment of the accelerator pedal and then later install a newly designed pedal.

It also said it will add a so-called smart pedal, software that cuts engine power any time both the accelerator pedal and brake pedal are depressed at the same time.

Such software has already been adopted as a safety feature by a number of automakers, including Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, BMW, Nissan and Chrysler, the companies told The Times.