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Toyota recalls won't 'totally' fix sudden surges

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-02-24 09:15

LaHood, the transportation secretary, told the panel the US government knew the exact whereabouts of the car and would share the information with Toyota. "All of this has been a big wake-up call for Toyota," LaHood said.

Toyota has recalled some 8.5 million vehicles worldwide - more than 6 million in the United States - since last fall because of unintended acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius hybrid. It is also investigating steering concerns in Corollas. People with Toyotas have complained of their vehicles speeding out of control despite efforts to slow down, sometimes resulting in deadly crashes. The government has received complaints of 34 deaths linked to sudden acceleration of Toyota vehicles since 2000.

Congressional panels are asking whether computerized modern automotive electronics designed to make cars more efficient can sometimes make them less safe.

Lentz said that "two specific mechanical causes" were to blame for the sudden accelerations - misplaced floor mats and sticking accelerator pedals. He insisted electronic systems connected to the gas pedal and fuel line were not to blame, based on tests made by the company in the United States and Japan.

Lentz said that, while the company had not expressly ruled out an electronics malfunction, "We have not found a malfunction" in the electronics of any of the cars at issue. He cited "fail-safe mechanisms" in the cars that were designed to shut off or reduce engine power "in the event of a system failure."

But when pressed by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., on whether he could say with certainty that the fixes now being undertaken would completely eliminate the problems, Lentz hesitated a moment and then replied: "Not totally."

Still, he said chances of unintended accelerations would be "very, very slim" once the recalls were complete. Lentz also said Toyota was putting in new controls so brakes would override the gas pedal on almost all of its new vehicles and a majority of its vehicles already on the road.

House investigators who reviewed Toyota's customer call database found that 70 percent of the complaints of sudden acceleration were for vehicles that are not subject to the recalls over floor mats or sticky pedals,

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee investigating Toyota's recalls, said the company "misled the American public by saying that they and other independent sources had thoroughly analyzed the electronics systems and eliminated electronics as a possible cause of sudden unintended acceleration when, in fact, the only such review was a flawed study conducted by a company retained by Toyota's lawyers."

Tracking down an electrical problem can be far more difficult, expensive and time-consuming than finding a mechanical problem. Electrical problems can have more than one source, and they can come from inside or outside the car. Mechanical problems often leave clues such as physical damage, where electronic troubles can be hidden in software or leave no trace at all.

Stupak suggested a decade-old law intended to give federal regulators more tools to track vehicle safety defects needs to be strengthened.

Lentz told the committee his company had "not lived up to the high standards our customers and the public have come to expect from Toyota."

"Put simply, it has taken us too long to come to grips with a rare but serious set of safety issues, despite all of our good faith efforts," said the president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales USA. Inc.

Later, outside the briefing room, Lentz was asked by reporters whether anybody should be fired at Toyota.

"Right now I think the main focus is let's get the customers' cars fixed, let's figure out what went wrong. We are going to be a much more transparent company," he said. "We have to go back and regroup top-to-bottom."

He said Toyota had already completed fixes on 800,000 vehicles and that most customers seemed "extremely satisfied."

Meanwhile, more than 100 Toyota dealers lobbied members of Congress Tuesday, questioning the ability of the government to be impartial given its bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler that left it with a majority ownership stake in General Motors and a smaller stake in Chrysler.

"That's hard for me as a citizen to understand why my tax dollars are going in that direction," Paul Atkinson, a Houston-area Toyota dealer, said.

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