Today was the start of the congressional hearings into Toyota’s numerous recalls involving brake issues and “unintended acceleration” issues. One of the things that came out of today’s hearings was this fact:
NHTSA officials told investigators that the agency doesn’t employ any electrical engineers or software engineers.
All together now. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Why is this an issue? Here’s why:
Software controls the vehicle, the operation of its engine, the mapping of the transmission shift points, the interactions among the components of the powertrain, the traction control system … the list could go on for pages and pages.
And the software that controls the “drive-by-wire” accelerators of Toyota and Lexus vehicles is one potential culprit in the tangled collection of issues, allegations, and recalls of many of those vehicles for so-called “sudden acceleration” problems.
The NHTSA’s mission is to “save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.”
If it cannot properly analyze those systems, or even understand at a deep-code level how they work, then the agency is useless at overseeing the entire “Safety” part of its mandate.
I totally agree with the fact that if you can’t properly investigate and or evaluate a car that has a potential problem, then there’s no reason for your agency to exist. So if it turns out that Toyota’s issues are all software related (as I suspect that they are), then Toyota isn’t the only one who should be sued out of existence. The NHTSA should join them on that list.
Oh if that isn’t enough, The CEO of Toyota USA admitted that the recalls may not solve all the issues. Not only that, their rush to grow led to these issues according to Akio Toyoda who is the grandson of the founder of Toyota. Charming. If Toyota was trying to regain my confidence in their products, then that admission didn’t help in that department.
Toyoda is slated to be in front of congress tomorrow. All I have to say is good luck to him because he’s guaranteed to get roasted.
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This entry was posted on February 23, 2010 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Toyota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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NHTSA Has No Software Engineers To Analyze Toyota Car Computers…. That Can’t Be Good
Today was the start of the congressional hearings into Toyota’s numerous recalls involving brake issues and “unintended acceleration” issues. One of the things that came out of today’s hearings was this fact:
NHTSA officials told investigators that the agency doesn’t employ any electrical engineers or software engineers.
All together now. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Why is this an issue? Here’s why:
Software controls the vehicle, the operation of its engine, the mapping of the transmission shift points, the interactions among the components of the powertrain, the traction control system … the list could go on for pages and pages.
And the software that controls the “drive-by-wire” accelerators of Toyota and Lexus vehicles is one potential culprit in the tangled collection of issues, allegations, and recalls of many of those vehicles for so-called “sudden acceleration” problems.
The NHTSA’s mission is to “save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.”
If it cannot properly analyze those systems, or even understand at a deep-code level how they work, then the agency is useless at overseeing the entire “Safety” part of its mandate.
I totally agree with the fact that if you can’t properly investigate and or evaluate a car that has a potential problem, then there’s no reason for your agency to exist. So if it turns out that Toyota’s issues are all software related (as I suspect that they are), then Toyota isn’t the only one who should be sued out of existence. The NHTSA should join them on that list.
Oh if that isn’t enough, The CEO of Toyota USA admitted that the recalls may not solve all the issues. Not only that, their rush to grow led to these issues according to Akio Toyoda who is the grandson of the founder of Toyota. Charming. If Toyota was trying to regain my confidence in their products, then that admission didn’t help in that department.
Toyoda is slated to be in front of congress tomorrow. All I have to say is good luck to him because he’s guaranteed to get roasted.
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This entry was posted on February 23, 2010 at 7:35 pm 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.