Government investigation: No evidence Toyota electronic throttles malfunctioned

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/08/us-toyota-usa-idUSTRE7165SY20110208

by m_myers • 15 years ago

54 42 15 years ago

This doesn't mean that Toyota was in the right all along. I still think they got a bad rap for what happened, but apparently I'm in the minority.

More context:

The probe by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA engineers found that the only causes of the unwanted acceleration were the previously identified sticking accelerator pedals and loose floormats that could jam the pedals.

jameskilton• 15 years ago

Exactly. This unintended acceleration was complete media hype from the beginning, which snow-balled out of control after a report of I think 2 times where condensation caused the gas pedal to stick open for a short period of time. Whether this was a hidden or subconscious effort to discredit a non-US car company probably can't ever be proven but the damage is done.

But that's ok. American's historically have the worst memory of anyone on this planet. In a year no-one is even going to remember this fiasco, much less care.

Semiapies• 15 years ago

Going by Toyota sales, Americans have already forgotten (or simply dismissed) the hype.

kjhgfdfgh• 15 years ago

So a foreign car gets blamed when old people stand on the gas instead of the brake - and a bunch of lawyers and politicians jump on the bandwagon.

That couldn't have been forseen - it hasn't happened for a generation.

sunchild• 15 years ago

I was in Japan when this controversy was on the front page of every American paper. The people in Nagoya were talking about what puppets of their news Americans are. It's not as if Japanese people are any different. Local people weren't even slightly worried about it. They knew they could ride it out. They knew the claims were total bullshit. It was a transparent effort by the media to drive consumers to the failing American brands. In the end, it failed to persuade Americans to buy mediocrity.

yason2• 15 years ago

The floormats are pretty obvious and that has happened before. Given that, how hard is it then, if your car doesn't stop accelerating, to simply push the clutch down or switch to neutral, depending on your type of transmission?

cperciva• 15 years ago

Lots of people have done exactly what you suggest -- but the news media don't report on near-miss vehicular incidents.

lutorm2• 15 years ago

My VW will cut the gas if you are pushing on both gas and brake at the same time. That also seems like a reasonable prioritization.

Bud2• 15 years ago

1. It can be fairly hard in a panic situation where something bizarre, previously never experienced, and very loud is occurring which also happens to cause you to travel 100 mph.

2. Many drivers really don't have a handle on, and have never actually used, neutral. Many have no clue that you can safely pop into neutral at any speed, too. You're failing to take these facts into account.

brc4• 15 years ago

Or stand hard on the brakes. Most cars maximum braking power easily exceeds their maximum engine power by a case of 3x. If you don't believe me, see how fast you can deccelerate your car from 60-0 mph. I bet it is a lot faster than you get get from 0-60. This is particularly so when the car is in top gear and thus the gearing has reduced the torque available to the wheels. All cars are capable of being stopped by their own brakes even at wide open throttle. You just have to stand on them hard and ignore the straining engine noise.

The Toyota story was a complete beat up, and incidentally not the first where a totally innocent car has been improperly accused of design problems relating to both incorrect usage and media hype, coupled with greedy lawyers.

eli• 15 years ago

And note that they didn't pay a fine for having unsafe cars. They paid a fine because they illegally concealed accident and problem reports from regulators. Even if it turns out that none of these crashes were Toyota's fault, that's pretty inexcusable behavior.

mrcharles3• 15 years ago

Anyone else kind of scared by the fact that there's 280000 [0] lines of code in a car? I mean, I know there's computers in there, and that they are necessary nowadays, but that seems like an awful lot of code to handle some lights and engine timings.

[0] http://detnews.com/article/20110208/AUTO01/102080381/Feds-cl...

archangel_one• 15 years ago

It's possible that quite a lot of those lines of code might support mostly unnecessary UI-type stuff, eg. the interfaces that let you configure how long the lights remain on for after you remove the key which Top Gear take such pleasure in criticising. But yeah, it is kind of scary. I'm not really sure I want my car to be "smarter" - keeping it simple seems good. But I guess it is a credit to the industry that AFAIK there haven't been any software disasters that have led to brakes failing and people being killed or similar.

brc4• 15 years ago

While you're right in that computers control all that integration, you're wrong about being integrated within the car. The 'body' computer (which handles door lights, stereo controls, instrumentation, etc etc) is a completely separate system to the engine management system. One thing most people don't realise is that there isn't one 'central' computer for a car. Rather there are separate computers for each control system - one for the engine, transmission, body, ABS, airbags, suspension (in some cases) - etc etc etc. It's done like this both for separate points of failure and mixing and matching across different model ranges.

Most of the things Top Gear loves to hate can actually be programmed out of your car if you can get a control system that interfaces with it. Things like warning chimes, reminders, etc are generally market-regulation specific, and can easily be switched off as an option within the computer if you have the right gear. One pet hate of mine is auto-locking doors, and in many cars you can turn this off. There is essentially zero chance of me getting carjacked, so it's definitely more trouble thant is worth.

CoachRufus87• 15 years ago

Though it's slightly unsettling, you have to figure that with the millions of cars on the road, that code must be pretty solid considering that there aren't more car-software related incidents occurring.

Any idea what language they use in these vehicles?

thematt2• 15 years ago

I do this type of software development for a living, and you're absolutely right -- it's rock solid.

The embedded control units themselves are coded in a low-level C. The automotive manufacturers develop on top of that in more abstract engineering type languages.

It's fun software to development, given all the hardware integrations involved. Way more interesting than writing line-of-business applications.

brettnak• 15 years ago

Short answer: No.

After studying state estimation and control systems, I'm in no way surprised that there are this many lines of code in a system. I also am not scared of it.

This is how I think about it: Bugs in control systems code are often not visible until some super-weird edge case or some extreme condition is hit. In this case, it's probably too late for the software to really do anything to help you. If it does help, great, if it wasn't there, you'd be screwed anyway. Bugs that affect normal and slightly abnormal operations are very obvious. Essentially, I'm no more worried about the LOC count in my car than I am about a micro-fracture in a bolt that holds my brakes on.

mrcharles3• 15 years ago

And yet, something like a stress fracture can, within reason, be predicted using scientific models, where software bugs cannot. Or at least, their results cannot be predicted.

Joakal2• 15 years ago

Short answer: Yes.

The car industry is going more and more towards closed systems that your local mechanic can't repair without getting licensed and buying specialised readers to understand the car systems.

One possibility is that companies could make cars cheaper with poor quality code. This has higher maintenance costs and they get more from licensing/tools sold to repair. The consumer won't realise the extra burden until after purchase or reviews.

thematt2• 15 years ago

The fact that your local mechanic can't repair things like they used to is not necessarily because the manufacturer elected to write complicated code. It's the environmental regulations that play a huge part in necessitating the hardware (and sometimes software) technology. Much of the technology is needed to get the vehicle within compliance of emissions regulations. Such technology doesn't come cheap -- and is increasingly complex, which necessitates the need for specialized skills and tools to deal with. This is not the type of thing manufacturers can just choose to shortcut, at least not if they want to sell their vehicles in certain countries.

momotomo2• 15 years ago

No. Two perspectives on this - currently working alongside Process Control Engineers, and I'd trust these guys to do this kind of work. The mindset and level of detail is complete different from programming in non-critical fields. Our peer review process is comprehensive, and mandatory for all code changes, can be typical for 2+ weeks of dedicated review and analysis on small scopes of change.

Secondly, theres a _lot_ in an ECU. I recently installed a custom ECU into my streeter (Autronic SM4), and the volume of control you have (3D F/A ratio maps, 3D ignition timing, cold start control, knock sensing, fuzzy logic for wear compensation such as dirty injectors / plugs etc) is staggering. On top of this you have exception management (like limp home mode if you blow something up).

It's just like any other programmable logic controller. Additionally for cost savings they probably run the one codebase across a few different models, so not all of it would be executed code.

nickpinkston2• 15 years ago

Ever use the Megasquirt system? I put one together a while back, but never got to actually get it hooked up to the engine. How's the Autronic?

kristopher• 15 years ago

Most likely these some 280000 lines represent conditional statements that are drawn out to keep weird edge cases out of sight.

For instance Boeing used Ada [0] because it can quickly assert all of the conditionals at compile time.

[0] http://archive.adaic.com/projects/atwork/boeing.html

Government investigation: No evidence Toyota electronic throttles malfunctioned

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