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OK, on Toyota being number 1...who cares. The pursuit and retention of the number 1 spot killed GM. The pursuit of the number 1 spot the last time around killed Toyota as they broke with their well established business practices in order to ensure that volume flowed from their factories. If you want examples, I'll post them. On top of that, the famous "Toyota Way" as defined in 2001 really isn't any different from "Six Sigma" or "ISO 9000".
If we want to get into the nuts and bolts of the Q1 sales success, a lot of that was buttressed by filling standing orders that had been held over from 2011, in particular to fleets. Toyota set several sales records, in particular on the Camry, in the first quarter, but this was simply fulfillment of standing orders that couldn't be met in 2011 do to the disruptions from the tsunami. We'll see what happens over the rest of the year and whether or not Toyota retains the crown. In all honesty, I don't think anyone considers it much of a "crown" these days.
On the whole acceleration thing, it has been so beaten to death around here. This is the last thread I posted all of the information in:
Check out my posts 37, 42, 45 and 47 for the technical aspects of what happened to the car the trooper died in, including links to the actual reports about the incident and what happened.
Just to round this out, Toyota was not found at fault in terms of a defect per se. What Toyota was ultimately found guilty of and fined for was that they covered up the issue despite knowing about it as far back as 2005. They were also fined for failing to issue recalls in the US for vehicles and issues that they did issue recalls for in Japan.
Toyota engineers brought the issue of the floormats getting entrapped on the accelerators to the attention of the company in 2005, but their reports were buried and they covered it up again when dealers and isolated incidents were occurring. There was an actual defect in one of the pedal designs used. This "different pedal" happened because Toyota broke with the single tight supplier sourcing of the "Toyota Way" in order to guarantee they could keep product flowing (after their lines were shut down at one point for two weeks do to an issue at a brake pad supplier). As they lost tight control of the engineering and QA processes at their suppliers, more issues started to creep in and quality decreased. When the issues were recognized, they were buried so as not to damage their reputation for quality and reliability while chasing the number 1 sales spot.
There is one D in Duh. Are you a 14 year old teenage girl or something?
I still call total bull**** on overpowering an engine with brakes.
ARe these the new toyotas with the brake override software included?
Just to clarify, you can be driving pin the gas at 50 mph, get up to about 65-70, hit the brakes all the way down to a complete stop in your car? I don't believe it.
Car and driver, why shouldn't I believe them, its not like the toyota ads on the same page as the article pay their bills or anything.
"callin bull@&*g" still doesnt make what you "think" as true.. reality is any car can be stopped by its brakes even at full throttle... Including 600+hp vipers or over 1000 whp awd gt-r's. Its a fact proven over and over.
There is one D in Duh. Are you a 14 year old teenage girl or something?
I still call total bull**** on overpowering an engine with brakes.
ARe these the new toyotas with the brake override software included?
Just to clarify, you can be driving pin the gas at 50 mph, get up to about 65-70, hit the brakes all the way down to a complete stop in your car? I don't believe it.
Car and driver, why shouldn't I believe them, its not like the toyota ads on the same page as the article pay their bills or anything.
Nice personal attack, start reading.
If you choose not to read the C&D review, a magazine that is most definitely Not a Toyota fan, I can't help you.
As for that "professional" that said shifting a car into neutral at speed is difficult, hard to see? You have to be kidding me.
Even the 500 HP Roush Mustang was able to stop form 100 mph, with the gas pedal to the floor, and the brakes mashed down.
Then we have this, which is probably why you didn't read it.
Quote:
This is your best option in an emergency. Neither the Camry’s nor the Infiniti’s automatic transmission showed any hesitancy to shift into neutral or park when accelerating at full tilt. (Automatics have a piece of hardware called a park pawl, which prevents the transmission from actually engaging park and locking the wheels at speed—it creates a disturbing grinding sound, but the car essentially coasts freely.) The Roush had a manual, so you’d simply depress the clutch. In either case, power is effectively kept from the wheels and the car will be able to brake with its usual undiminished vigor, engine racing or not.
Turn It Off
Switching off the ignition is a sure way to silence an engine, but it’s probably the least desirable action because it will also make the car more difficult to maneuver. It causes a loss of power-steering assist, plus it will cut off vacuum boost for the brakes. The new wrinkle here: the keyless, push-button start-and-stop systems in many vehicles. Owners need to be aware that these systems require a long press of the button to shut off power when the car is moving (so that an inadvertent touch of the button by the driver doesn’t kill the engine). Here, too, the Toyota was slightly behind the curve; the Infiniti’s engine shut down after a 2.5-second press of the button versus 3.3 seconds for the Camry. In an emergency, that would probably feel like an eternity. For some perspective, if a V-6 Camry’s throttle became stuck at 60 mph, the car would accelerate to nearly 80 mph before the engine would surrender.
Furthermore, short, frantic pressing of the Toyota’s start/stop button—the probable response in an emergency—does nothing, whereas the Infiniti kills the engine after three rapid-fire presses.
OK, on Toyota being number 1...who cares. The pursuit and retention of the number 1 spot killed GM. The pursuit of the number 1 spot the last time around killed Toyota as they broke with their well established business practices in order to ensure that volume flowed from their factories. If you want examples, I'll post them. On top of that, the famous "Toyota Way" as defined in 2001 really isn't any different from "Six Sigma" or "ISO 9000".
If we want to get into the nuts and bolts of the Q1 sales success, a lot of that was buttressed by filling standing orders that had been held over from 2011, in particular to fleets. Toyota set several sales records, in particular on the Camry, in the first quarter, but this was simply fulfillment of standing orders that couldn't be met in 2011 do to the disruptions from the tsunami. We'll see what happens over the rest of the year and whether or not Toyota retains the crown. In all honesty, I don't think anyone considers it much of a "crown" these days.
On the whole acceleration thing, it has been so beaten to death around here. This is the last thread I posted all of the information in:
Check out my posts 37, 42, 45 and 47 for the technical aspects of what happened to the car the trooper died in, including links to the actual reports about the incident and what happened.
Just to round this out, Toyota was not found at fault in terms of a defect per se. What Toyota was ultimately found guilty of and fined for was that they covered up the issue despite knowing about it as far back as 2005. They were also fined for failing to issue recalls in the US for vehicles and issues that they did issue recalls for in Japan.
Toyota engineers brought the issue of the floormats getting entrapped on the accelerators to the attention of the company in 2005, but their reports were buried and they covered it up again when dealers and isolated incidents were occurring. There was an actual defect in one of the pedal designs used. This "different pedal" happened because Toyota broke with the single tight supplier sourcing of the "Toyota Way" in order to guarantee they could keep product flowing (after their lines were shut down at one point for two weeks do to an issue at a brake pad supplier). As they lost tight control of the engineering and QA processes at their suppliers, more issues started to creep in and quality decreased. When the issues were recognized, they were buried so as not to damage their reputation for quality and reliability while chasing the number 1 sales spot.
Nice to hear again from someone that knows what they're talkin about..
"callin bull@&*g" still doesnt make what you "think" as true.. reality is any car can be stopped by its brakes even at full throttle... Including 600+hp vipers or over 1000 whp awd gt-r's. Its a fact proven over and over.
Yes and no.
I laid out the case with all the technical details in the thread I linked in my post above. What I will tell you is that you have two scenarios at play:
1. Any car can with the engine pegged at WOT can stop itself with it's brakes unless it is travelling at a very excessive speed. For example, in the Car and Driver testing people love to throw around, the Camry was not able to fully stop itself from 120mph. It was able to slow down to 10mph before the brake pads failed. In general though, if you are going below 100mph or have performance brake pads, yes you can stop the car.
However, that doesn't account for the much more realistic scenario...
2. A modern cars brakes rely on vaccuum assistance to operate properly. This assist greatly reduces the amount of force someone needs to push on the brake pedal with to achieve the desired result. Because of this, the pedal ratio on brakes has been greatly reduced. If a car loses vaccuum assist the brakes become almost impossible to push and you don't do anything other then glaze the pads against the surface of the rotors.
When a car is pegged at WOT, it does not build any vaccuum. There is enough vaccuum reserve in order to allow for one or two assisted applications of the brake pedal. Once the vaccuum reserve has been used, the brake pedal will become incredibly stiff and require more force to stop the car then is humanly possible to do.
In the case of the troopers car in CA, the USDOT measured the brake force required to stop the car. Under normal circumstances it was 150lb.ft. At WOT, this doubled to 300lb.ft. Once vaccuum assist was lost these forces were multipled 10 times. So, a car at WOT without vaccuum assist would need upwards of 3,000lb.ft. of braking force applied to stop the car, far more then any person can do.
So, what happens in most cases is that the car takes off on the person, their first instinct is to hit the brake. The car will start to slow. If for any reason at that point they let off the brake the car will start to re-accelerate they may have one other chance to bring it to a halt. If they miss that opportunity, they can do nothing but burn up the pads against the rotors.
This is what Car and Driver never tested. All of their tests were accelerate under WOT to a certain speed and then slam on the brakes until the car stops. That works. What they never tested was, what if there is no vaccuum assist left? My guess for why they didn't do it, is because the car wouldn't have stopped.
Excellent post NJ. Very true, Toyota had become a very large company, and one that had morphed outside of it's main ideals in certain areas. Ford learned a lot from Toyota along the way. Their history was getting worse, and was littered with many of the same type of problem cover-ups and NHTSA issues that Toyota was starting to understand.
Toyota was never very keen on becoming number 1, nor interested to talk about it. Internally, they viewed it as a curse, I'm sure they still do. Ford has had some growing pains as well, as they sought to take advantage of Toyota's problems and beef up sales. Ford would have had far less complaints and recalls if they had acted quickly years ago to fix their cruise control setup. Instead, they fought. Interestingly, the latest unintended acceleration complaint is against Ford, and they seem to think it's the cruise control.
The utter irony is that the best record is GM, hardly ever a UA complaint.
Excellent post NJ. Very true, Toyota had become a very large company, and one that had morphed outside of it's main ideals in certain areas. Ford learned a lot from Toyota along the way. Their history was getting worse, and was littered with many of the same type of problem cover-ups and NHTSA issues that Toyota was starting to understand.
Toyota was never very keen on becoming number 1, nor interested to talk about it. Internally, they viewed it as a curse, I'm sure they still do. Ford has had some growing pains as well, as they sought to take advantage of Toyota's problems and beef up sales. Ford would have had far less complaints and recalls if they had acted quickly years ago to fix their cruise control setup. Instead, they fought. Interestingly, the latest unintended acceleration complaint is against Ford, and they seem to think it's the cruise control.
The utter irony is that the best record is GM, hardly ever a UA complaint.
I would very much question your assertion that Toyota was "never very keen" on becoming number 1. The fact is that they were VERY keen on it and the desire to chase the sales crown is what led them down the path of ignroing their business principles and letting quality slip. Toyota's myriad issues that came to light during the floormat recall showed just how far the company had pushed itself to achieve the sales crown.
I'd say they Became keen on it. This is due to a company becoming large enough, where central control loses their command they once had. I agree on many of your assertions, probably spot on.
As a university business student, Toyota comes up numerous times in our class discussions of successful companies. They have really excelled at ensuring great quality with their innovative manufacturing techniques and inventory management, which both America and Europe have been slow to learn.
People can say what they want about Toyota, but there is no denying that they know how to build a great car.
Reports are that the 2012 Camry has a CHEAP interior and marginal ride control. Wait till the 2013 Altima starts cooking....much better initial reviews.
So, what happens in most cases is that the car takes off on the person, their first instinct is to hit the brake. The car will start to slow. If for any reason at that point they let off the brake the car will start to re-accelerate they may have one other chance to bring it to a halt. If they miss that opportunity, they can do nothing but burn up the pads against the rotors.
This is what Car and Driver never tested. All of their tests were accelerate under WOT to a certain speed and then slam on the brakes until the car stops. That works. What they never tested was, what if there is no vaccuum assist left? My guess for why they didn't do it, is because the car wouldn't have stopped.
As all tests showed, and I've done this on my own car, is to shift to neutral. It's extremely easy, since it's the one up from D
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Wait till the 2013 Altima starts cooking.
