Just eliminate the "Drive-by-Wire" on ALL vehicles and the problem is SOLVED...

 

Dont forget about Audi in the 80's with their gas pedal problem. They have come back strong and have beat the problem and negatives caused by that. Toyota is not doomed but they have a long road ahead of them.

 

I drive on the road all day long for my job. I pay attention to drivers and their vehicles as part of my defensive driving technique. The folks on this site pay attention to there vehicles more so than the average person I believe. If you were to take 10lbs of pressure out of my tire I would notice it as I walked up to climb in it. I see peeps driving around every day with 10-15 lbs of pressure in there tires. It doesn't matter front or back. They are asking for a problem by ignoring basic vehicle maintenance. When something does happen they blame the tire.

I once saw a lady at a service station put so much air in her tire that was leaking, that it exploded on the rim. It cost 8 bucks to fix a leak, but she would rather pump it up to 90lbs every other day for 50 cents a pop than go take it in for repair. She probably blamed the tire also.

People are stupid, stupid, stupid......

I can't say that Firestone tires were defective or not, I personally didn't inspect them, but how does a company eliminate the human factor in their products reliability when people are stupid, stupid, stupid. I do believe that I read a article that said most of the tires exploding due to heat were under inflated at the time of the incident and the vehicles were loaded in the rear cargo area. I'm really not sure, but it sure does add up because people are (say it with me) stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

I agree 100%...People are STUPID!

 

Well, I retract my last comment. Not everyone is stupid, but I do look at peeps driving around and shake my head sometimes and hope they get where ever they are going.

 

It being an electronics problem wouldn't surprise me, especially something with a transistor hitting breakdown voltage and causing the random surge.

 

i will go on record again... i hope ford's market share will increase because of all this, I'm sure it will. ANd anyone who might get laid off from yota.. they can get a job at Ford. Buy American people, for Petes sake.

 

I 100% agree, a throttle cable and throttle postion sensor does the job just fine. Why did they need to change? Just make the good technology great, just my opinion.

On a side note, I don't like toyota's vehicles, never have, and I thought that it was all this electronic junk in the first place (eg: a software issue was my first guess many months ago).

But to play devils advocate here, I really do feel bad for the workers (blue collar working stiff). If Toyota goes down, they will become a statistic to the "U" number that continues to accumulate. I hate to see any American lose their job, union or not. So, kinda a bitter-sweet situation in my line of thinking. Good for business for Ford, Chrysler and Govt Motors, but bad for the employees of Toyota (the blue collar workers anyway, those will be the fist to go of course).

 

Sir, while I agree with your sentiment, there is alot more to that than just send them to Ford (and you know Govt Motors and Chrysler will get in on that as well). What's American anymore anyway? Man, this is a "global economy" now.....no such thing as "american cars" anymore. You can debate it all day long, now an American car is based on % of Amercian content sadly. Not based on a name like it used to be. That's just the way it is, too many Foriegn makers here provide jobs to americans to just close the foriegn makers down. It would DEVISTATE some local economies.

For Example: I Work for a Swedish Chemical plant, and there are Japanese Chemical plants(Shintech USA) and German chemical plants (BASF), French plants (Roche Vitamins).

By your analogy, what would happen if we just closed them down? (In the name of "Buying American" anyway). The other Chemical plant (DOW Chemical, Shintech Chemical) would NOT pick up all the slack (thousands of workers), therefore causing tremendous economic depreciation in our area (many small businesses would go under due to the ripple effect). Is this what you constitute doing, in the name of "buying american"? Seems far fetched don't you think?

 

Yes, the computer was replaced. Originally the service guy insisted it was the mats, I told him "it cannot be the mats, in fact I know for sure it is not the mats" he stated " how can you know for sure, are you a Toyota technician, do you work on cars every day, are you an engineer?" I stated no AHole, there are NO MATS IN THE CAR!!!!!! That shut him up very quickly. They then had the car and state that it "only did it to them 4 times but did not throw a code so just keep driving it and when it does it again, just drove it over for us" yup, thats what the idiot stated. I then went overseas and left it with them for 3 weeks to drive home etc. Well, the service mngr drove it and almost hit something. Happened over and over to him. So they replaced the computer. My papers state "computer replaced for erratic operation" That is not proof enough? No one will print this or hear my story nor read the service papers. They are still trying to cover this.