Like I said on page 1

Are none of you people listening???

Sniper is making this as clear as day!

Toyota is lying to you. he knows this, because he abused 3 engines to the point of breaking. Therefore, Toyota is crap.

Toyota has killed 52 people! Or, maybe 34 as he keeps saying, who actually knows. But, 52 people!! Dead!! Of course, many here said that the government was over reacting about swine flu, causing a national panic for no reason, and how it was a big bust. It only killed about 9000 Americans, it's a freaking OVER REACTION!

Now, he made it clear that any computerized system must have a safety feature such that the brakes override the throttle input when both are depressed. Only AFTER stating that did Toyota claim that such a thing exists...BACKPEDALING!! They read PPOT, realized their mistake, and are now lying, pretending that they had this all along! I bet they have the original schematics locked away inside a giant silver balloon in Colorado...

Also, remember...Sniper loves and respects all cops, and knows that no cop would make any mistakes AT ALL, and therefore, the cop was MURDERED by Toyota.


I'm so glad the weekend is coming...

:rolleyes:

How many followed RedBeard's post w/ diagrams? (nice work, btw)

Toyota screwed the pooch on that design.

...and they know it.

From a different forum, someone there owns a Prius.
You can toss it into neutral at any speed. You can kill the engine at any speed. You can try to put it into park at any speed, and it'll go into neutral if you're over 3mph. You cannot flip the car, and it's perfectly capable and willing to go into neutral at speed.

It even has an engine braking option (since the motor turns off when in neutral). It keeps the motor connected and running for compression braking.

...as long as the computer is working properly. Right?

Years ago, we had a customer bring in his 2002 SS Camaro into the service department. The driveshaft was snapped in two and the customer said the engine started to race out of control. We plugged all our diagnostics into it and no codes. We spent 3 days trying to duplicate it to no avail. Finally, I looked at the floor mat and moved it forward about an inch. Voila! When revved, the mat kept the gas pedal from returning. The driveshaft snapped because he put it into neutral and then got scared and put it into drive.

In the end, all this stuff about Toyotas is going to be crap....just like what happened to Audi. Everyone sees a little problem and sees a bigger corporate payday via the class action lawsuits.

I don't care about the FBW systems on the Prius. This is the type of car that needs it. But as soon as the foot touches the brake, the power should cut out, no ifs/ands or buts. I have not reviewed the software, since it isn't published.

However, the brakes should actuate without need of the computer. Period. Until that is changed, I will not get into one. Ever.

Who knows?

People have been saying "it needs this, it needs that, oh my god, who designs a car without XYZ?!"

Well, the Prius has XY and Z. that's all I was saying. It can be put into neutral, just as people stated must be possible. It cannot be put into park. The engine can remain running while in neutral, which gives you brakes and steering. And, if you hit the brakes and throttle at once, the brakes take dominance.

So, all of the secondary systems are EXACTLY as this group (and every forum group I've come across so far) wants. The design of the mechanical systems is not at fault, because it seems to have all of the stuff that people expect.

Now, if there's a chip failing somewhere for some reason, that's a whole different ballgame, but that's not what people are *****ing about.

I certainly hope you are correct. But the hydraulic diagram is an indication, safety was not the #1 priority on this vehicle. Again, until the actual computer code is out available to be reviewed, no one here can state whether there is even a remote possibilty of a runway situation.

The control loops (aka Blocks) on the Gas Turbine software had enables on them. Unless a certain condition existed (like there is no signal from either brake sensor), then the block would be disabled.

The following is speculation.

What if Toyota software does not have this type of enablement? What happens when the brake and had are hit at the same time? Well, the gas pedal signal wants the motors to work as drive motors. But the brake pedal signals that it wants the drive motors switched to Regenerative breaking mode. Who wins? Or will system switch back and forth as it cycles through the control loop?

Speculation off.

On the San Diego incident, the Police officer reported that the brake lights were on as he passed. That says to me that Sikes had his foot on the brake. The fact that he did not slow down says that the brake pedal signal did not override the throttle signal.

Why didn't he switch the car into neutral? I don't know. Maybe he was too busy trying to avoid hitting other cars while going 90+ mph.

Why didn't he switch the car off with the on/off switch? I don't know. Maybe he didn't understand he had to hold it for 3 seconds. And maybe he was too busy trying to not hit other cars while going 90+ mph.

When he operated the hand brake, this activated the rear brakes (no motors connected) only and they were enough to slow the car down. All of this is verified by the officer.

What would I do? I'd check the condition of the rear pads vs. the front pads. I expect the rear pads are burned up and the front pads are fine. Hopefully the report on the condition of the car will get reported.

Was the San Diego incident a hybrid? I'm not sure....

Once the media whips the public up to a fever pitch, all things can happen. Why did the Transportation Secretary tell everyone to park their Toyotas and not drive them? It's not even his job to do that...it's the NHTSA's job. Go figure when our government owns 60% of GM. Like I said earlier...only time will tell. Everything else on the part of all of us is just pure speculation.

Well, I guess that shows you are jumping in here and spouting off and you haven't even read or listened to the story.

I'll just add that with the whole point of the Prius being that it does at least 90% regen-braking, that the friction brakes may be rather whimpy. Does anyone have any info on that?

I mean why would Toyota spend extra money and weight on big brakes when they have that big regen-motor for braking...

Correct...I did just jump in the thread and what I say about Toyota is pure speculation.

MASSIVE

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1268441148.jpg

is this a repeat? is he faking it?

Man at Wheel of 'Out-of-Control' Prius Has Troubled Financial Past - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com

Nope. I've done it many times. In a car with a V8 and automatic transmission, stand on the brake while the car is still, and goose the throttle. The car will lurch forward.

Try this: get to 30-40 mph and stand on the gas and the brake at the same time. Your results will be different. It has to do with gear ratio.

More fuel for the fire:

How Real are the Defects in Toyota's Cars? - Business - The Atlantic

How Real are the Defects in Toyota's Cars?
Mar 12 2010, 2:56 PM ET

One of the great mysteries of the Toyota debacle is why Toyota ignored the complaints for so long. Or at least it's a mystery to reporters on cable news, abetted by consumer advocates who were all too happy to imply that Toyota didn't care how many people it killed as long as they made a profit.

Maybe so, but I doubt it; you don't usually make a profit by killing your customers. It's too risky, in this age of nosy regulators and angry consumer activists.

Their behavior becomes a bit more explicable when you consider this argument from Ted Frank:

The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota "sudden acceleration" fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages of the drivers involved were striking.

In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89--and I'm leaving out the son whose age wasn't identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

These "electronic defects" apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).

In the original Sudden Acceleration Incident craze that afflicted America in the late eighties, the National Highway Safety Transportation Administration eventually ruled that the problem was "pedal misapplication", aka stepping on the gas when you meant to step on the brake. These incidents were highly correlated with three things: being elderly, being short, and parking (or leaving a parking space). The elderly are more prone to the sort of neuronal misfiring described in yesterday's New York Times. Shorter people have to hunt more for the pedals. And starting up from a complete stop is the most likely time to press the wrong pedal.

I was interested in Frank's argument, so I took a look at the LA Times article, which is really admirably thorough. Here are the results, categorized into a nifty, though not necessarily particularly useful, spreadsheet. I went one further than Frank, tracking down the ages of all but a couple of the named drivers. If y'all wondered why I wasn't blogging today, well, there's your answer. I've excluded three cases where the information was just too sparse to have any idea what happened, but otherwise, that's the complete list.

Several things are striking. First, the age distribution really is extremely skewed. The overwhelming majority are over 55.

http://assets.theatlantic.com/static...x343-23095.png

Here's what else you notice: a slight majority of the incidents involved someone either parking, pulling out of a parking space, in stop and go traffic, at a light or stop sign . . . in other words, probably starting up from a complete stop.

http://assets.theatlantic.com/static...x343-23099.png

In many of the other cases, we don't really know what happened, because there were no witnesses of exactly when the car started to run away.

In fact, it's a little hard to be sure that some of the cases were sudden acceleration incidents, because the witnesses to what happened in the car were all killed; the family is trying to reconstruct what happened from their knowledge of the deceased. Obviously, most people are going to err on the side of believing that the car was at fault, rather than a beloved relative.

Further complicating matters, most of the cases involve either a lawsuit against Toyota, a complainant facing possible criminal charges, or both.

In some of the cases, the police or doctors have an alternate theory of what happened: one of the SAIs was bipolar, which puts you at extraordinarily high risk of suicide, and no one knows what actually happened in the car. At least two others involve young men who were driving at very high speed, which is something that young men tend to do with or without a sticky accelerator. Several more of the drivers seem to have had a medical situation, like a stroke, to which doctors and/or police attribute the acceleration.

The oddest "striking" fact is that a disproportionate number seem to be immigrants--something like a third, by my count, which is about double the number of immigrants in the general population. I have no idea what to make of that; are they more likely to file complaints with the NHTSA? Maybe they're shorter, on average, or learned to drive later in life? Or perhaps it's just a statistical fluke.

At any rate, when you look at these incidents all together, it's pretty clear why Toyota didn't investigate this "overwhelming evidence" of a problem: they look a lot like typical cases of driver error. I don't know that all of them are. But I do know that however advanced Toyota's electronics are, they're not yet clever enough to be able to pick on senior citizens.

Unfortunately, that won't help Toyota much. It will still face a wave of lawsuits, and all the negative publicity means that it may be hard for the company to get a fair trial. Even if it does, the verdict in the court of public opinion will still hurt their sales for some time to come.

Only the twentysomethings are better drivers than the 80+ y/o's. Never saw that coming. :D

24 incidents...how statistically significant is that sample size? Also, the number on the chart (with known ages) totals to 30. And then 3 were not included. How does this tie to the number 24? Did the reporter fail math as a child? Or did Toyota write his article for him?

Just another scam...this guy is just bankrupt...owes lots of money on his Prius and is looking for a big payday.