A US government probe cleared Toyota Motor Corp’s electronics of causing unintended acceleration, a big victory for the world’s top automaker as it seeks to recover from the hit it took over runaway vehicle accidents.
The findings vindicated Toyota’s position that it had identified and fixed the only known safety problems with popular vehicles like the Camry by focusing on mechanical issues with accelerator pedals and the risk that floormats could trap the pedal in the open position.
“There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas,” US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement on Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
Toyota’s US-traded shares closed 4 percent higher, buoyed by the government findings and its smaller-than-expected decline in quarterly earnings as well as higher sales forecast.
The probe by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA engineers followed questions by some safety advocates and lawmakers about whether software-driven throttles and flaws with electronics control systems had also played a role in unintended acceleration complaints.
Investigators concluded that most reports of runaway acceleration could be explained by driver error.
“What mostly likely happened was pedal misapplication. The driver stepped on the gas instead of the brake, or in addition to the brake,” said Ronald Medford, deputy administrator at the traffic safety agency.
Steve St Angelo, a Toyota executive tasked with shoring up quality after last year’s recalls, said the automaker hoped the study would “put to rest unsupported speculation” about the safety of Toyota’s electronics.
“We believe this rigorous scientific analysis by some of America’s foremost engineers should further reinforce confidence in the safety of Toyota and Lexus vehicles,” he said in a statement.
LaHood, who had touched off a panic a year ago by urging Toyota owners with concerns to stop driving them, offered a blanket endorsement on Tuesday.
“We feel Toyota vehicles are safe to drive,” LaHood said, adding that he recommended to his daughter that she buy a Sienna minivan after she sought his opinion.
Although Toyota has cleared a major hurdle in its ongoing safety saga, analysts cautioned that it would still struggle to win back US consumers who have defected from the brand and its luxury counterpart Lexus.
“This is certainly going to help Toyota, but it doesn’t change the fact that they let these other issues through,” TrueCar.com analyst Jesse Toprak said. “They’re still going to face difficulties to bring people back to Toyota.”
Toyota has recalled nearly 16 million vehicles globally since September 2009, when it took the first in a series of measures to fix problems with sticky accelerator pedals and potentially dangerous floormats.
The massive recalls in 2009 and last year rocked Toyota to its foundations and saw president Akio Toyoda come to Washington a year ago to tell US lawmakers he was “deeply sorry.”
The automaker has also paid nearly US$50 million in penalties to the US over the timeliness of its recalls, including the floor mat and “sticky pedal” cases.
US safety regulators said they would consider imposing requirements for all vehicles to have brake override systems that automatically counteract any instances of unintended acceleration.
They also said they would consider researching pedal design and placement.
Toyota has said it would install the brake override feature on new vehicles.
US officials had been looking into 89 deaths that may be associated with sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles. A handful of fatalities have been definitively linked to the problem by authorities.
Although the electronic throttle investigation turned up no flaws, Toyota still faces significant risks from scores of civil lawsuits stemming from the recalls.
Those cases in federal and state courts, which may turn on the timing of company disclosures to regulators of already established defects, have an estimated potential liability of up to US$10 billion.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained