More problems with Toy SUVs

[Ecomike]

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20100419/fc7cfc20-d518-474e-bf87-863989e4e60e

Seems Toyota is having more problems. If I understand this, they are using electronics and software to control stability, to avoid rollovers?

No thanks, I will stick with my old fashioned 87 jeep thank you very much.

Just can't get too excited about the idea of rebooting my PC while trying to avoid a collision with an 18 wheeler heading my way, LOL.

 

[bjoehandley]

Seems like alot of these computer related issues could be solved by actually teaching people how to control their vehicles....then leaving those damn computer aids off the friggen car!

 

[kastein]

stuff like this keeps the vehicles from rolling over by keeping Darwin rolling over in his grave... very simple... conservation of momentum

 

[DrMoab]

I think the biggest problem with Toyota is Consumer Reports.

Ever since they decided they didn't like the Isuzu Trooper and did everything in their power to make it rollover so they could give it a negative rating I quit putting any faith in them.

BTW, anti rollover electronics are in every vehicle made now. You can thank the wonderful Ford Explorer and their Firestone tire fiasco for that.

 

[Brad M.]

BTW, anti rollover electronics are in every vehicle made now. You can thank the wonderful Ford Explorer and their Firestone tire fiasco for that.

BINGO.

BTW, does anyone else beside me find it intriguing that Toyota's reputation is being so fiercely attacked by the Fed Gov't, now that they own GM? Coincidence in timing of events, or is there more to the story? Hmmm...

 

[ehall]

It's coincidence, so is the SEC filing suit against Goldman-Sachs the same day dems start pushing for even more regulation over Wall Street

 

[joe_peters]

Well, since Toyota has been having so many "issues", seems that things have improved enough for GM to repay $5.8 B early.

 

[ehall]

The govt still owns them. The govt paid the govt back. Hoorah

 

[Ecomike]

The govt still owns them. The govt paid the govt back. Hoorah

LOL, you mean the taxpayers payed the tax payers back? LOL.

On the coincidence idea, really hard to say, but seems a little too obvious for it not to be coincidence (or stupidity to make the timing so obvious, who knows), but I do know that millions were made on worthless puts on GS the day the news came as the news came out hours before the GS puts were to expire worthless on options expiration day!!! Some body made a fortune on those puts in one hour! They were up some thing like 11000 %!!!! I was joking with wall street friends that GS probably new the news coming and shorted their own stock! LOL.

I stil remember hearing an EMT freind of mine tell me 20 years ago about how GE removed the hardware limits on radiation exposure on Cat scan machines, and went to software, then after a number of patients were given lethal doses of radiation they went back to hardware control limits.

 

[Bwillie]

Gotta love the old .gov Soon the state will own everything.

 

[Onyx Dragon]

These electronics aren't as bad as you all make it out to be. My 04 GTP Comp G had it, and it was kind of fun to play with. They weren't all that intrusive, and in the Comp G, they were tuned to not come in right away in case the user was actually using the car for a bit of fun. Now, having said that, I'd feel a lot better if I were married and my wife and kids were out driving one day in the winter, and it started to snow, or she had to pick the kids up from school and it was raining or something.

 

[tbburg]

...,I'd feel a lot better if I were married and my wife and kids were out driving one day in the winter, and it started to snow, or she had to pick the kids up from school and it was raining or something.

I'd feel better if the mother of my children were capable of controlling the vehicle she's using to transport our kids, in the road and weather conditions she's likely to encounter while doing it.

That is, if I were married and had kids.

 

[Onyx Dragon]

I'd feel better if the mother of my children were capable of controlling the vehicle she's using to transport our kids, in the road and weather conditions she's likely to encounter while doing it.

That is, if I were married and had kids.

It's not always their fault. Some idiot swerving into their lane during a snow and there's trouble. Fact is, the computer can adjust a lot faster than any of you think you can, and is able to actually stop the car from getting into trouble LONG before it actually does.

 

[Ecomike]

It's not always their fault. Some idiot swerving into their lane during a snow and there's trouble. Fact is, the computer can adjust a lot faster than any of you think you can, and is able to actually stop the car from getting into trouble LONG before it actually does.

That assumes that the wiring is OK, the sensors are calibrated and are still accurate, and the PCM/ECU is working properly, and that the software is fault free, and that electrical power is good...... All it takes is one undiscovered fault in the system and it all fails. Lets face it, we have enough trouble teaching significant others to check the oil and antifreeze and T-fluid, much less recognize a slow change in sensor/CPM response time caused by wearing sensors like a TPS!

Our 87 Jeeps were upgraded with the early TPS sensors for Fuel injection, and here 23 years later Toys are having problems with run away gas throttles that are electric (TPS and cable issues telling the PCM to acclerate while the driver is braking)!

Our jeeps had, have the same TPS, IAC issue of run away idle speeds while trying to brake once the TPS/throttle sticks, or the IAC sticks.

 

[kastein]

X2. Fly by wire makes me extremely worried due to my background in RAS functionality (reliability, accessibility, serviceability/stability) on microprocessors. As far as I know vehicular stability control systems don't have any real fault detection logic. What's going to happen if one of those sensors gets screwed up and sends wacky values? What happens when the sensor in your gas pedal gets stuck and the ECU thinks you are flooring it? What happens when a cosmic ray happens to corrupt the MSB of the value read from the analog to digital converter that is watching the gas pedal, and suddenly it looks like you are pushing the gas pedal 50% harder than you really are? Is any of this checked? Aerospace systems are commonly 100% duplicated or even more (the space shuttle has 3 copies of every electronic system which MUST always agree, plus a backup that is built completely differently and runs entirely different software which must also agree, even the actuators and sensors are duplicated, the system which disagrees is literally overpowered by the other systems) which is why they very rarely fail. Even then, see the Air France disaster... that was probably because of an electronics failure.

Sorry, even as an electrical engineer I would much rather have my foot on the brake pedal (and my hand on the e-brake) and my other foot on a gas pedal connected via a braided steel rope to the throttle valve than let a computer get in between.

 

[r33pwrd]

X2. Fly by wire makes me extremely worried due to my background in RAS functionality (reliability, accessibility, serviceability/stability) on microprocessors. As far as I know vehicular stability control systems don't have any real fault detection logic. What's going to happen if one of those sensors gets screwed up and sends wacky values? What happens when the sensor in your gas pedal gets stuck and the ECU thinks you are flooring it? What happens when a cosmic ray happens to corrupt the MSB of the value read from the analog to digital converter that is watching the gas pedal, and suddenly it looks like you are pushing the gas pedal 50% harder than you really are? Is any of this checked? Aerospace systems are commonly 100% duplicated or even more (the space shuttle has 3 copies of every electronic system which MUST always agree, plus a backup that is built completely differently and runs entirely different software which must also agree, even the actuators and sensors are duplicated, the system which disagrees is literally overpowered by the other systems) which is why they very rarely fail. Even then, see the Air France disaster... that was probably because of an electronics failure.

Sorry, even as an electrical engineer I would much rather have my foot on the brake pedal (and my hand on the e-brake) and my other foot on a gas pedal connected via a braided steel rope to the throttle valve than let a computer get in between.

I believe the throttle assemblies have a fault detection in them if they work I believe if the ECU sees a 100% value it should fault (ie if you get a short) as the assembly is designed to only go to 95% value (or something like that)

 

[kastein]

While that's a pretty smart design hack, I'd still be much more comfortable with two separate sensor elements at the very least, preferably two independent sensors.

Components can fail partially - say you have a variable resistor with one end connected to ground, one to sensor power, and the wiper fed into the sensor input on the ECU. If the sensor element fails anywhere below where the wiper is presently, the ECU will see WOT, if the sensor element fails anywhere above, the ECU will see idle. If it partially fails (i.e. cracks partway across the resistive strip) below where the wiper is presently, the ECU could easily see 80% throttle, or 90%, or 50%, or any other wacky value.

With two separate sensor elements (variable resistors) feeding separate ADCs in the sensor control board or ECU, you can determine that one of your elements just went wacky, automatically choose the lower of the two values, and alert the driver that their pedal is probably not operating properly and they should get it fixed ASAP.

 

[r33pwrd]

While that's a pretty smart design hack, I'd still be much more comfortable with two separate sensor elements at the very least, preferably two independent sensors.

Components can fail partially - say you have a variable resistor with one end connected to ground, one to sensor power, and the wiper fed into the sensor input on the ECU. If the sensor element fails anywhere below where the wiper is presently, the ECU will see WOT, if the sensor element fails anywhere above, the ECU will see idle. If it partially fails (i.e. cracks partway across the resistive strip) below where the wiper is presently, the ECU could easily see 80% throttle, or 90%, or 50%, or any other wacky value.

With two separate sensor elements (variable resistors) feeding separate ADCs in the sensor control board or ECU, you can determine that one of your elements just went wacky, automatically choose the lower of the two values, and alert the driver that their pedal is probably not operating properly and they should get it fixed ASAP.

POTS have been used in every major product you can think of without many problems. I sell MILLIONS of pots a year (as well as optical encoders) and the failure rate is VERY low. There are many saftey systems used in cars but like anything in this world nothing is perfect. And yes you can do back up systems like aviation uses but when a camry is 80K you will be OK with the %.00001 chance you will go WOT

 

[kastein]

I know... it may have killed someone (the various people who have died as a result of the accelerator pedal issues on Toyotas...) recently. Besides, I'm trying to sell twice as many pots for you stop arguing!

The TPS on the XJ is a variable resistor / potentiometer also, it goes bad quite often... usually due to some submarine captain driving the darn thing through a mud bog or river, but at other times too. I prefer reliability.

EDIT: Do you work for digikey/mouser/jameco/other electronics distributor, or a variable resistor manufacturer? Just curious.

 

[r33pwrd]

I know... it may have killed someone (the various people who have died as a result of the accelerator pedal issues on Toyotas...) recently. Besides, I'm trying to sell twice as many pots for you stop arguing!

The TPS on the XJ is a variable resistor / potentiometer also, it goes bad quite often... usually due to some submarine captain driving the darn thing through a mud bog or river, but at other times too. I prefer reliability.

EDIT: Do you work for digikey/mouser/jameco/other electronics distributor, or a variable resistor manufacturer? Just curious.

Ya I should see if I can get a pot for the XJ that is IP67 rated I am actually a manufacturers rep and I sell CTS (the company that makes some of the pedal ass. for Toyota). (also sell about 10 other lines from caps to joysticks).

and the people that died that is sad and I wish it would not have happened but I dont belive anyone has decided the electronics in the pedal where / are the issue. Im sure there will be better saftey "features" in the cars to come (like a BIG RED STOP button on the dash that turns everything off)