Remember
Reminder department, once again
Letter conclusion (see below):
Our preliminary assessment is that Toyota resisted the possibility that electronic defects
could cause safety concerns, relied on a flawed engineering report, and made
misleading public statements concerning the adequacy of recent recalls to address the risk of sudden unintended acceleration.
Meanwhile, Toyota DARES to ask me for emails exchanged with the two preeminent engineers who were consultants to Congress on this matter, named in the letter. What nerve. Really, what nerve.
Because NOTHING HAS REALLY CHANGED FOR CONSUMERS SINCE 2010.
HENRY A. WAXMAN,
CALIFORNIA CHAIRMAN
JOE BARTON, TEXAS RANKING
MEMBER
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH
CONGRESS
Congress of the United
States
House of Representatives
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
2125 RAYBURN HousE OFFICE
Bu1LDING
WASHINGTON, DC
20515-6115
Majority (202) 225-2927
Minority (202) 225-3641
February 22, 2010
Mr. James E. Lentz
President and Chief Operating
Officer Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A.,
Inc.
19001 South Western
Avenue Torrance, CA 90501
Dear Mr. Lentz:
In response to the Committee's requests,
Toyota has provided
over 75,000 pages of internal
company documents, including over 20,000 pages in Japanese.
We thank you and Toyota for this cooperation.
Our preliminary review
of the documents raises three significant concerns. First, the documents appear
to show that Toyota consistently dismissed the possibility that electronic failures could be responsible for incidents of sudden unintended acceleration. Since
2001, when Toyota first began installing electronic throttle controls on vehicles, Toyota
has received thousands
of consumer complaints of sudden unintended
acceleration. In June 2004, the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent Toyota a chart showing that Toyota Camrys
with electronic throttle
controls had over 400% more "vehicle speed" complaints than Camrys with manual controls.
Yet, despite these warnings,
Toyota appears to have conducted
no systematic investigation into whether electronic defects could lead to sudden unintended
acceleration.
Second, the one report that Toyota
has produced that purports to test and analyze potential electronic causes of sudden
unintended acceleration was initiated just two months
ago and appears to have serious flaws. This report was prepared for Toyota by the consulting firm Exponent, Inc. at the request
of Toyota's defense counsel, Bowman and Brooke,
LLP. Michael Pecht, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, and director of the University's Center for Advanced
Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE), told the Committee that Exponent "did not conduct a fault
tree analysis, a failure modes and effects
analysis . . . or provide any other scientific or rigorous study to describe
all the various
potential ways in which a sudden
acceleration event could
be triggered";
"only to have focused
on some simple and obvious failure
causes"; used "extremely small sample sizes"; and as a result produced
a report
that
"I would not consider . . . of value . . . in getting to the root causes of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles."
Another expert consulted by the Committee, Neil Hanneman, an engineer with over 30 years experience in automotive manufacturing, product design, and product development, reached a similar conclusion, informing
the Committee that the report "does not follow a scientific method" and fails to test "major categories" of potential
causes of sudden
unintended acceleration, including "electromagnetic interference/Radio frequency interference," "environmental conditions," the electronic control
module (ECM), and "the
software algorithms in the ECM." .
Third, Toyota's public
statements about the adequacy of its recent
recalls appear to be misleading. In a February 1, 2010, appearance on the Today Show, you
stated that Toyota has "studied the events of unintended acceleration, and [it] is quite clear that it has come down to two different
issues," entrapment of accelerator pedals
in floor mats and sticky
accelerator pedals. In an appearance
the same day on CNBC you repeated
this claim and reported that Toyota is "very confident
that the fix in place is going to stop what's going on."
The documents provided
to the Committee appear to undermine these public claims. We wrote to you on February 2, 2010, to request any analyses by Toyota that show sticky pedals can cause sudden
unintended acceleration. Toyota did not produce
any such analyses. To the contrary,
Toyota's counsel informed
the Committee on February 5 that a sticky pedal "[t]ypically
... does not translate into a sudden,
high-speed acceleration event." Moreover, our review
of the consumer complaints produced by Toyota
shows that in cases reported
to the company's telephone complaint lines, Toyota personnel
identified pedals or floor mats as the cause of only 16% of the sudden
unintended acceleration incident
reports. Approximately 70% of the sudden
unintended acceleration events
in Toyota's own customer call database involved
vehicles that are not subject to the 2009 and 2010 floor mat and "sticky pedal" recalls.
These concerns are explained in more detail below.
We expect that members of the Subcommittee will ask you about these concerns during
your testimony tomorrow
and we ask that you come prepared
to address them.
I.
Toyota's Response
to Reports of Sudden Unintended Acceleration
In the early 2000s, Toyota began producing
vehicles that operated
with an electronic throttle control
system that severed
the mechanical link between the accelerator pedal and the engine.
In place of the cable that once connected
the two components, sophisticated computer and sensor systems now communicate an accelerator pedal's
position to the engine throttle,
telling the car how fast it should go.
Toyota began installing these electronic control
units in
Lexus,
Camry, and Prius models in 2001 and 2002 and in all Toyota-made vehicles
by 2006. 1
1 See U.S.
Bound Vehicle Models
and MY with ETCS-i, at TOYEC_0000577.
Toyota has
received many complaints from consumers about
sudden unintended acceleration since 2000. It also received
evidence that the number of complaints increased
in vehicles with electronic throttle controls. On June 3, 2004, Scott Yon, an investigator in the NHTSA Office of Defects
Investigation (ODI), sent Toyota Assistant
Manager of Technical and Regulatory Affairs
Chris Santucci an e-mail attaching
a chart showing
a greater than 400% difference in "Vehicle Speed" complaints between
Camrys with manually
controlled and electronically controlled throttles.2 ·
In response to the Committee's January 28, 2010, request for internal Toyota documents, the company provided
a representative sample of reports
describing calls received
through the company's
telephone complaint line. To produce this sample, Toyota
started with 37,900 customer contact
reports from the company's database
that Toyota identified (via the company's complaint coding system)
as potentially related
to sudden unintended acceleration. Toyota
then randomly selected
3,430 of these complaints for review, ultimately determining that 1,008 of these records directly
related to consumer
concerns about sudden unintended acceleration, engine surge, or similar problems. Toyota
provided these 1,008
reports to the Committee.
Toyota received many of these calls after
October 2009 when it recalled
of 3.8 million vehicles because
their accelerator pedals
could become entrapped
in all-weather floor mats, potentially causing sudden unintended acceleration. Excluding calls after October
1, 2009, calls that did not involve
incidents of sudden unintended acceleration, and calls involving
Toyota vehicles produced
before the year 2001, there were 233 reports of sudden unintended acceleration produced to the Committee from the random sample of 3,430 complaints Toyota reviewed. Of these 233 complaints, 69 involved vehicle
crashes.
These 233 incidents
occurred in a broad variety
of Toyota vehicles,
and were reported
in vehicles produced
in every model year from 2001 through
2010.3 Assuming that the 3,430
complaints randomly
selected by Toyota
for review are a
representative sample of the 37,900 complaints in the Toyota database, Toyota would have received an estimated 2,600 complaints of sudden unintended acceleration from Toyota
and Lexus drivers between January
2000 and October 2009.
These complaints would have included
an estimated 760 crashes.
In the data the Committee
reviewed, operators on the Toyota customer complaint line (who relied on consumer reports
and information from dealer inspections) identified floor mats or pedals as the cause of only 16% of the sudden unintended acceleration incident reports.
Approximately 70% of the sudden unintended acceleration events in Toyota's own customer call database involved vehicles that are not subject to the 2009 and 2010 floor mat and "sticky pedal" recalls.
2 E-mail from Scott Yon to Christ Santucci
and attachment, (June 3, 2004), produced by NHTSA.
3 Twenty-nine percent of the complaints
involved Camry models, 13% involved Lexus models,
10% involved
Corollas, and 9% involved Tacoma
models. Model
year 2007 vehicles were the subject of 17%
of all sudden unintended acceleration complaints, and model year 2002 and 2004 vehicles were each the subject of 13% of these complaints.
The documents provided
to the Committee reveal that Toyota's frequent
response to these complaints was to dismiss
the possibility of a failure
in its electronic throttle control system. In 2005, the driver of a 2004 Corolla reported to Toyota's
customer call center that he
was in the process of parking his car "when it sounded like the engine
revved then accelerated through a wooden fence and hit
a tree." In response, a "national representative" of Toyota informed him that "Toyota has found that these incidents
are most often the result
of driver
error."4 An internal
memorandum written in 2008 or later states
that in "many"
cases of sudden unintended acceleration, "pedal misapplication/driver error
has been the cause."5
In the documents provided to the Committee, Toyota representatives commonly
responded to drivers
reporting sudden unintended
acceleration by concluding that the events the consumer
described could not have happened. Toyota's internal
files are replete
with such statements
from the company. For instance:
•
A November 9, 2006, letter from Carole Hargrave
of Toyota Motor Sales to a 2005 Toyota Tacoma
driver states: "It is our understanding that you reported
that you applied
the gas pedal when it stuck, you then applied the brake but the vehicle kept going and hit
four parked cars. Your
vehicle was inspected
by one of our field technicians in regards to your concerns. The throttle was inspected
and moved freely without any binding and was
found to operate as designed. The brakes will always override
the accelerator. In order for
this accident to happen as reported two totally separate
systems, the brakes and
throttle, would have to fail at exactly the same time.
This is virtually impossible."6
•
A March 5, 2007, letter from the driver of a 2003 Camry states
that he was preparing to pull out of his driveway, had his foot on the brake, and put the car in reverse, when "the car took off, in reverse, like a rocket ship, careened
down my driveway, crossed . . . a
main street, jumped the curb on the other side of the street
and continued moving
in reverse between a utility pole and the street
sign. Itthen hit a tree . . . and finally came to a stop . . . ." According
to the letter, the Toyota
dealer to whom he
brought his damaged vehicle "denied that the car could have possibly malfunctioned" and stated that "such a
thing has never happened."7
•
A June 28, 2007, letter from Troy Higa of Toyota Motor Sales to the driver of a 2007 Toyota Tacoma states:
"It is our understanding that while you were attempting to park your vehicle in a parking
lot, you said you applied
the brakes but the vehicle
accelerated, which caused you to run over the parking
bump and into another vehicle
in the next parking space. . . . In order for the accident
to have occurred as reported,
two different
4 See Claim File 2005-08-38808, at TOYEC_90008834-37.
5 Unwanted Acceleration Investigations on Toyota
Vehicles, at TOYEC_00042008 (emphasis in the original).
6 Letter from Carole Hargrave
to 2006 Toyota
Tacoma driver, (Nov.
9, 2006), produced to the Committee by NHTSA.
7 Letter from 2003 Camry driver to Jim Lentz, (Mar. 5, 2007), at TOYEC_90004428.
Mr. Jam.es E. Lentz February 22, 2010
Page 5
systems
within the vehicle
would have had to fail, those being the throttle
linkage and brakes. For both systems
to fail simultaneously is virtually
impossible."8
In March 2007, NHTSA began
investigating whether accelerator pedals on some Lexus models could become entrapped in all-weather floor mats, causing
sudden unintended acceleration. 9 In response, Toyota issued a limited recall of 55,000 2007 and 2008 Camrys and
Lexus ES350 vehicles, advising drivers of those cars to remove all-weather floor mats and await notification that a redesigned all-weather floor mat was available for their vehicles. 10
In October 2009, Toyota expanded its floor-mat recall
to include six additional models spanning the 2004 to 2010 model years. 11 Toyota enlarged the i:ecall once again in November
2009 to include a total of 4.3 million vehicles.
12
Toyota issued another
large recall in January 2010. This recall, encompassing 2.3 million vehicles,
targeted pedals that can become
"sticky," or slow to return to idle, when subjected to wear or certain environmental conditions. 13 At the time of this recall,
Toyota took the unusual
step of stopping sales and production of the eight affected models,
including two of the most popular sedans in the U.S. market, the Camry and the Corolla. 14
Throughout this period,
Toyota has consistently maintained that there are no defects in its electronic
throttle control system
(ETCS-i) that could cause or contribute to sudden unintended acceleration. In public appearances on February
1, 2010, you emphatically denied any electronic cause of these incidents.
Reporters asked
you about speculation that defects in Toyota's
electronic controls
could be responsible for sudden unintended
acceleration, and you insisted that thorough testing
had ruled out such a possibility. 15
II.
The Exponent Report
8 Letter from Troy Higa to 2007 Toyota Tacoma
driver, (June 28, 2007), produced
to the Committee by NHTSA.
9 NHTSA, ODI Resume, PE07-016,
(Mar. 29, 2007).
10 Letter from Chris Tinto to Dan Smith Re Toyota and Lexus Optional Equipment All Weather Floor Mat, Part 573 Defect Information Report,
(Sept. 26, 2007).
11 Letter from Chris Santucci to Dan Smith Re Certain
Toyota and Lexus Vehicles Potential
Floor Mat Interference with Accelerator Pedal,
(Oct. 5, 2009).
12 Data point to Toyota's throttles, Los Angeles Times, (Nov. 29, 2009).
13 Doubt cast on Toyota's decision
to blame sudden acceleration on gas pedal
defect, Los Angeles Times,
(Jan. 30, 2010).
14 Toyota halts sales of eight models,
including Camry and Corolla, over acceleration issues,
USA Today, (Jan. 26, 2010).
15 Squawk
Box, CNBC,
(Feb. 1, 2010).
Mr. James E. Lentz February 22, 2010
Page 6
In response to your public
statements, we wrote to Toyota on February
2, 2010, to request
"all analyses or documents
that substantiate" your claim that electronic malfunctions were not causing sudden unintended acceleration. 16 In response, Toyota provided
two types· of documents to the Committee: (1) reports
of internal testing
of various components and features of Toyota's
electronic throttle
control system, and (2) a single evaluation of the potential
for sudden unintended
acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles by the consulting firm Exponent, Inc. Neither category
of documents appears
to justify your public comments.
The electronics testing
documents Toyota provided
include thousands of pages of engineering standards; test methods; pre-production vehicle and component evaluations; e-mail
correspondence between Toyota
engineers about field testing of new features
of the company's ETCS-i system;
engineering change instructions; reports on field testing of competitor vehicles;
and sketches, diagrams,
test engineering reports,
photographs, e-mails, and PowerPoint presentations by Toyota and part manufacturers related to proposed
fixes for "sticky pedals." Except for one recent report, the documents did not include
any analyses that purported comprehensively to test and analyze possible
electronic causes of sudden unintended acceleration.
The only document
Toyota produced that claims to address the phenomenon of sudden unintended
acceleration in a systematic way is a February 2010 report on testing conducted
by Exponent, a scientific and engineering consulting firm located in Menlo Park, California. 17 This report was commissioned in December 2009 by Toyota
defense counsel Bowman
and Brooke, LLP. Exponent representatives told the Committee staff that Bowman
and Brooke requested
the report just days before its
publication date of February 4, 2010, at approximately the same time that we sought substantiation of your claims
about electronics testing. According to Exponent, at
the time the report was written, testing
was still on-going
and an interim report like this one is not customary for the company.
18
The report states that Exponent's testing did not lead to observation of "any instances
of unintended acceleration or any circumstances that might lead to unintended
acceleration. To the contrary,
imposing perturbations resulted
in a significant drop in power rather than an
16 Letter from Chairman Henry A. Waxman
and Subcommittee Chairman
Bart Stupak to James E. Lentz, (Feb. 2, 2010) (hereinafter, "Lentz Letter").
17 While Exponent has been involved
in several high-profile investigations, including a survey of damages to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
after the Oklahoma
City bombing and work on behalf of insurance firm Swiss Re in limiting
the company's claims
exposure after the collapse
of the World Trade Center,
the company has also faced criticism from "engineers, attorneys, and academics who say the company
tends to deliver to clients the reports they need to mount a public
defense." Exponent has, for instance,
issued reports arguing
that secondhand smoke does not cause cancer. See Toyota calls in Exponent Inc. as hired gun, Los Angeles Times, (Feb. 18, 2010).
18 Feb. 19, 2010, Committee
Staff interview of Paul Taylor
and Angela Steffen
Meyer.
Mr. Jrunes E. Lentz February 22, 2010
Page 7
increase."
19 According to Exponent, when its researchers imposed a fault on a Toyota electronic throttle control system, "the vehicle
entered a fail-safe mode consistent with descriptions provided in the technical
manuals for Toyota
and Lexus vehicles."20
On February 19, 2010, the Committee staff interviewed one of the primary authors
of the Exponent report, Dr. Paul Taylor. He stated that the report did not exrunine any vehicles or components that consumers reported
to have had unintended acceleration events. He also said that the study did not analyze
the vehicles' computer
systems, seek to identify potential
chip failures, exrunine
software and programming of the vehicles'
electronic control modules,
conduct any testing
under differing environmental conditions, or assess the effects
of electromagnetic or radio frequency
interference on the electronic throttle
control system. According to Dr. Taylor,
these are not among his or his co-authors' "areas of expertise."21 Dr. Taylor said that Toyota's counsel has hired other
researchers at Exponent
to conduct such tests of Toyota and Lexus
vehicles, but Toyota did not request that Exponent provide
interim reports on these additional studies.
On February 19, 2010, we sought a review of the Exponent
report by two automotive engineering and safety experts,
Dr. Michael Pecht, a professor
of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland and director of CALCE, and Neil Hannemann, an engineer with over 30 years of experience in automotive manufacturing, product design, and product development. 22
These independent experts raised multiple concerns
about the value of the Exponent report.
A. Small Srunple Size
Exponent tested only six Toyota and Lexus vehicles and a series of individual parts, including pedal assemblies and engine control
modules. According to Dr. Pecht,
this small srunple is unlikely
to identify the cause of a rare and intermittent problem such as sudden unintended acceleration:
it is well known that the phenomenon of sudden acceleration, while often deadly, is not so
widespread that such simple tests with such extremely small sample sizes would undercover the root cause. For exrunple, Toyota recalled some 2.3 million throttle pedal assemblies to eliminate excess
friction between two pieces of the accelerator mechanism. This was apparently based on less than 1,000 complaints by customers; Ifwe assume
a similar fault rate for the "selected failure
19 Testing and Analysis of Toyota and Lexus
Vehicles and Componentsfor concerns Related to Unintended Acceleration, Exponent, Inc., (Feb. 4, 2010), at 15, TOYEC_00003197.
20 Id.
21 Feb. 19, 2010, Committee
Staff interview of Paul Taylor
and Angela Steffen
Meyer.
22 Letter from Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman
Bart Stupak to Dr. Michael
Pecht, (Feb. 19, 2009); Letter
from Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman
Bart Stupak to Neil Hanneman,
(Feb. 19, 2009). · .
conditions"
that Exponent studied,
then Exponent should
have been testing
l OOO's of cars instead of 6 to precipitate the problem with any acceptable degree of confidence. . . . Exponent
did not analyze
an adequate sample,
both in number
and type of vehicles, to reach conclusions about the potential
causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. In fact, they never tested
more than 1 of any particular model year type of vehicle.23
B.
Failure to Test for Potential Causes
Both experts reported
that Exponent failed to conduct
an appropriate analysis
of the causes of sudden unintended acceleration. As a result, they determined that the study was unable effectively to reach conclusions about whether Toyota
vehicles may have flaws that cause unintended acceleration.
According to Mr. Hannemann, "this report does not follow a scientific method. . . . [I]t is not clear if the testing is appropriate to the issue,
since the extent
of the problem was not defined.
. . . To even have a conclusion with such a poorly stated
problem is inappropriate."24 Dr. Pecht
reached a similar conclusion:
Exponent did not provide
a methodology which showed that they identified the potential causes
of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. Exponent did not
conduct a fault tree analysis, a failure modes and effects
analysis (FMEA) . . . or provide
any other scientific and rigorous study to describe
all the various potential ways in which a sudden acceleration event could be triggered.
This would be necessary
to plan and ensure that the testing
and analysis was complete, thorough
and of value. Exponent appeared to have only focused
on some simple and obvious
failure causes and did not provide any rationale to rule out other potential
causes (e.g., software).25
C.
Failure to Test for Real World Conditions
Both experts also observed that because Exponent
conducted only limited tests on vehicles or components in isolation and did not test under varying environmental and driving
conditions, these tests were unlikely
to be of value in determining the causes of sudden unintended
acceleration. According to Mr .Hannemann:
23 Letter from Michael Pecht to Chairman
Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman
Bart Stupak, (Feb.
21, 2010) (hereinafter, "Pecht Letter").
24 Letter from Neil Hanneman
to Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman
Bart Stupak, (Feb. 21, 2010) (hereinafter, "Hanneman Letter").
25 Pecht Letter.
there are also major categories of testing that were not addressed such as EMI/RFI
(electromagnetic interference/Radio
frequency interference), environmental conditions, and underhood
operating·environment conditions.26
Mr. Hannemann also found that "[T]his evaluation
seems limited primarily
to the electrical signals of two sets of sensors. There
appears to be no attempt
to evaluate the ETCS-i as a system.
. . . There
was no testing or analysis
of the throttle body hardware,
the wiring, the ECM, or the software.''27 ·
Dr. Pecht reported:
the tests did not consider
potential reliability issues arising from various conditions
and combinations of use, operation and the environmental loads (e.g. temperature, temperature changes, humidity,
contamination, EMI, radiation), representative of an appropriate sample of real-world driving conditions.
Common mode failures were not considered and the load conditions on the vehicles
were all benign.
28
D.
Conclusions of the Independent Experts
Dr. Pecht and Mr. Hannemann reached similar conclusions about the value
of the Exponent report, each finding
that as a result of its limitations, the report is of little value
in understanding the potential causes of sudden
unintended acceleration. Dr. Pecht informed
the Committee that he "would not consider this report to be of value to the Committee, to NHTSA or
to Toyota
in getting to the root causes of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles.''29
Similarly, Mr. Hannemann concluded:
[T]here are major flaws in the methodology and almost nothing
added to the overall understanding of the concerns
of the unexpected acceleration phenomenon that is the subject of a massive
Toyota recall. . . . [T]his
report alone does very little to prove that there are no other causes
of unexpected acceleration in Toyota
vehicles. 30
III.
Toyota's Public Statements
On February
1, 2010, Toyota
announced that it had found the solution
to the problem of sudden unintended acceleration. In multiple appearances on national television, you said that
26 Hanneman Letter.
27 Id
28 Pecht Letter.
29 Id
30 Hanneman Letter.
Toyota has "studied the events of unintended
acceleration" and that it is "quite clear that it has come down to two different
issues": floor mats that entrap the accelerator and "sticky" accelerator pedals.31 On the same day, Toyota announced that it would replace the pedals on 2.3 million vehicles. You explained that Toyota is "very
confident that the fix in place is going to stop what's going
on."32
Your public statements differed
from private explanations that Toyota officials
had given to Committee staff on January
27, 2010, which indicated that it was unlikely that "sticky pedals" would cause sudden unintended acceleration. For that reason, we asked in our February
2, 2010, letter that you provide the Committee with "any analyses
and documents that support a
conclusion that 'sticky pedals'
have caused sudden
high-speed acceleration."33 The letter
requested that Toyota provide
a response by February 5, 2010.
Toyota did respond
on February 5, 2010,
but the company did not produce any analyses
that showed how "sticky pedals" could cause sudden unintended acceleration. To the contrary, it confirmed in a cover letter from outside counsel
Theodore Hester that a sticky pedal "[t]ypically
... does not translate into a sudden,
high-speed acceleration event."34 The letter also made clear
that the recalls announced in the last several months
provide remedies only for the high-speed
sudden unintended acceleration events caused by floor-mat entrapment, and the lower impact,
slow-to-idle events created by "sticky pedals."35 The causes of sudden unintended acceleration, Mr. Hester wrote, are "multiple" and "hard to identify."36
The letter did not explain why you would tell the public on February
1, 2010, that the recall of 2.3 million vehicles
to replace "sticky pedals" would "fix
. . . what's going on" if Toyota had no studies
linking sticky pedals
to sudden unintended
acceleration.
Toyota's own data also appear to conflict
with the assurances that you gave on February 1, 2010. As noted above, the data from Toyota's
consumer complaint telephone line show that floor mats or pedal problems have been identified as the cause of only 16% of the sudden unintended
acceleration reports received
through the complaint line. Over
80% of the complaints do not identify
either of these factors as causes of the reported
problems.
Furthermore, almost 70% of the sudden
unintended acceleration events in Toyota's
customer call database involved
vehicles that are not subject to the 2009 and 2010 floor mat and "sticky pedal" recalls.
31 Today Show, NBC, (Feb. 1, 2010).
32 Squawk Box, CNBC, (Feb. 1, 2010).
33 Lentz Letter.
34
Letter from Theodore
Hester to Chairman
Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak,
(Feb. 5, 2010).
35 Id.
36 Id.
IV.
Conclusion
Sudden unintended acceleration in vehicles is a serious and highly dangerous event. Our preliminary assessment is that Toyota resisted
the possibility that electronic defects
could cause safety concerns, relied on a flawed engineering report, and made misleading public
statements concerning the adequacy of recent recalls to address the risk of sudden unintended acceleration. We hope that tomorrow's hearing
provides the Committee
with additional information about Toyota's response to incidents of sudden unintended acceleration over the past decade.
Sincerely,
Henry A. Waxman Chairman
Bart Stupak Chairman
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
cc: The Honorable Joe Barton Ranking
Member
Committee
on Energy and Commerce
cc: The Honorable
Greg Walden Ranking Member Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations