The IT Nerd

… And I have to admit, I’m wondering if this fix that Toyota has come up with will do the job. I’ve got a picture of what Toyota is doing to modify the “sticky” gas pedals here.  I also found a video of the actual process here. I have to admit that it doesn’t inspire confidence as this seems sort of like “ghetto engineering” rather than something that a major car company should be doing. But in Toyota’s defense, there are people who report that the fix actually makes the cars perform better.  I’ll let you know what I think when I get the car back tonight.

As an aside, I was going over my series of posts about the problems I’ve had with my Matrix and I noted this sentence from this post:

“The car would now rev to 6000 RPM and surge forward randomly. My wife almost rear ended a E class Mercedes Benz the first time it happened.”

That makes me think that the core issue is electronics rather than mechanical. Given that the Toyota Matrix along with the other cars that were recalled use a “drive by wire” system, that wouldn’t be a shock if that were the case. So one has to wonder if this is the last of this issue.

Of course, after I drop off the car I get the news that Toyota has recalled 437,000 Prius and other hybrid cars because of issues with the brakes that appear to be software related. Lovely. This is just another hit to their image.

Toyota really has some explaining to do. The explaining starts with the US Congress this week when Yoshimi Inaba who runs Toyota North America is in the hot seat. One wonders how he can explain all of this to a bunch of bloodthirsty regulators who are out to score political points in an election year, and still sell cars in North America.

UPDATE: Just when you think it couldn’t get worse for Toyota, it got worse. The US is now investigating steering problems with the 2009/2010 Toyota Corolla. A Corolla driver going by the name of  “Will Austin” posted a comment about this issue last year. Another recall perhaps?

UPDATE #2: I got the car back a couple of hours ago and I’ve driven it in the city and on the highway. The spring tension on the pedal has increased for sure. The pedal feel is much more linear and smooth too. Perhaps this will do something, although I still have my concerns. As an aside, I found a Toyota grocery bag inside my car and I got a free lunch from the dealership I went to. I guess that’s Toyota’s way of saying sorry. They could have of course just said that a whole lot faster with a lot more meaning than they did. It might mean more to Toyota owners.

This entry was posted on February 9, 2010 at 11:18 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Toyota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.