Recalls: End of the Road for Toyota?

Toyota HQ in Toyota City.

Akio Toyoda, Totota CEO (2011)

Toyota, once a stellar example of automotive reliability, has lost considerable grip on the reputation it has enjoyed for decades. The main culprit is sudden unintended acceleration (SUA).The skid actually started in 1986, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Authority (NHTSA) recalled some Toyotas for “speed control problems.” But the issue then did not attain the major proportions it has now.

The Toyota brand explained

It reared its ugly head again in 2003, when “unwanted acceleration” occurred during production testing of their Sienna minivan. Worse, they didn’t report it to the NHTSA until five years after. The worst incidents occurred in July 2007 and August 2009: In the first, Troy Edwin Johnson, sitting in his car, was killed by a Camry speeding at around 120 mph. In the second, an off-duty highway patrolman and his family were killed when their rental Lexus crashed. “Uncontrollable acceleration” was reported to be the cause of both accidents. Since 2003, the NHTSA has conducted numerous investigations of different Toyota models, mostly with reported acceleration problems. Many of these have led to recalls.

Toyota has paid nearly 50 million dollars in recall-related fines, and the bad news does not end there. They still face numerous lawsuits, for charges ranging from lost resale value to injuries and death as a result of the reported defects. These cases could drag on for many years, resulting in steadily increasing losses.

The most damage may be to their reputation. Can they rebound from such a major financial and legal disaster, or will they go down the drain? Only time will tell. This is probably the greatest challenge ever faced by an automaker, or any company, and how they handle it will be their biggest test ever. Will the company that dethroned GM as the world’s number one carmaker fall?

Should hot rodding be illegal?

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If I Need a Car in Italy, I’ll Go to Garagedelparco

I came upon this used car website that’s totally Italian. If it weren’t for Google’s translation, I wouldn’t have known what it had to offer. So I thought I could help out a little bit to let other people know about this site, Here’s what I have to say about it.

In Italy, like elsewhere, you can face problems when buying a used car (compro auto usate). Used cars in Milan (auto usate milano) are the same as anywhere else in the world. Many used car sellers (vendita auto usate) don’t tell you the whole truth about the car’s age and condition.

Checking out the Garagedelparco website, it seems to me that used car buyers would have less of a problem if they will take the time to visit the site and see what it has to offer. The website is attractive, chock-full of information, and easy to navigate.

                        

The way I see it, Garagedelparco doesn’t just sell cars, they also sell worthy rides. If I’d need to buy a used car in Italy, I’d ask for documentation, and Garagedelparco seems aware of the need to provide complete papers that are in order. Their cars are also checked inside and out and thoroughly tested. It seems they won’t sell you what they won’t buy, and they won’t merely replace easily worn out parts, like the timing belt, tensioner bearings, and even the water pump. The list of parts under warranty (depending on the car’s mileage, of course) is comprehensive.

You can ask for an over-the-phone estimate of your own used car’s value, based on data you provide, such as the exact make and model, year of registration, mileage, and any options the car may have.

                    

This site is quite useful for those in need of a good used car, particularly if you’re in Italy. So if ever I’ll be in need of a used car in Milan or elsewhere in Italy, I think I’ll check out Garagedelparco.

Threewheeler Car Comes Back in 21st Century

The Threewheeler from Morgan is a classic renewed in 2011.

It's likely that you haven't seen a three-wheeled car before. You might also think that cars with just three wheels are unstable and prone to accidents. But then again, it's a fact that there used to be a time when there were cars manufactured that only had three wheels. Take the one made by Morgan which gained a foothold in society fifty eight years ago. In its time, it became a popular race car and as a mode of transportation, it was just as accepted - at least until four wheels became the norm.

Now, this British icon has made a comeback. The year is 2011 and the manufacturer has given it a combination of old fashioned classic design and modern engineering. According to Morgan, the Threewheeler is the "perfect solution for 21st Century transportation." If you're thinking it will be like an antique clunker, you're mistaken, because the Threewheeler can go from zero to 96 kph in just 4.5 seconds and with a top speed of 186 kph using only 100 hp, it's really a car that's perfect for sports driving and leisure at the same time! It's the perfect fun car that can get you places.

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Fancy Green Van in the Philippines

This green van which appears to be electric was seen in Quezon City in the Philippines. It's painted similar to how passenger jeepneys of the country are decorated. On the side is a picture of Mayor Herbert Bautista, who recently won in the elections. Does this mean that Quezon City residents will be seeing more of this kind of vehicle? Who will be using it? In Cubao, electric vans ferry shoppers between the Ali Mall and Gateway Mall.

Promoting green technology is something that cities in the Philippines can benefit from because the country is one that has very polluted roads from inefficient combustion engines used by commuter vehicles like the jeepney. Ideally, the country has to have a law that will require jeepney and bus engines to pass a strict quality assurance test that will minimize emissions. There is already a Clean Air Act, but so far, no one seems to be acting on it and the roads remain as polluted as ever as a result of vehicular smoke. More about the Philippines in A Taste of the Philippines blog.

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Aging behind the Wheel? OXIS Antioxidants Help

Above image from Wikipedia

Do you spend a lot behind the wheel? If so, then you it’s likely you feel the harmful effects of driving for long periods of time. You feel tired and you get a back that starts to hurt along with your extremities. Usually, the pain comes from the wear and tear of joints, and this is what ages you prematurely. Let’s not forget the effects of vehicular pollution, which can add years to your skin. Even with the air-conditioning on, toxic fumes can still reach you inside the car and do damage to your body, making it prone to stuff like cancer. Fortunately, antioxidant products are available to counter the effects of driving. These days, there’s one powerful antioxidant that stands out—L-Ergothioneine or ERGO.

One company, OXIS International, has introductory products based on the anti aging antioxidant, ERGO. OXIS synthesizes this from natural sources like meat, milk, grapes, and fungi using special patented methods. As a multifaceted free radical countering antioxidant, ERGO works to boost other antioxidants like glutathione. People who drive often can benefit from the healthful effects of ERGO because it helps to reduce oxidative stress.

Drivers get oxidative stress from the activity of free radical molecules that multiply with the level of pollution in the environment (left). Free radicals are also present in our own bodies as a result of the natural metabolic process. The typical diet cannot provide the essential antioxidants to prevent oxidative stress. There has to be supplementation, and this is where OXIS products come in. For OXIS, everything that goes into the products has to be naturally occurring and protective to the body for the products to be safe and effective.

Overall, OXIS products address pressing health and anti aging concerns that involve the brain, the skin, the immune system, the blood, and also things like inflammation and detoxification. OXIS introductory products Ergo-Pur™ and Ergo-Plex™ have already been launched. The former is pure ERGO and the latter combines ERGO with other antioxidants. Both are ideal supplements to drivers who spend much of their time on the road.
ERGO is the key and primary ingredient in the leading products of OXIS. Others are in production. Patenting assures the protection of the unique processes and methods developed by OXIS when it comes to synthesis and use of ERGO. Product development continues even as OXIS opens up to more industry partners, staking penny stocks for bigger ones in the future.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how anti aging OXIS products can help you as a driver, you can check out the following links and get the details. Driving can make you older in the long run. Why not benefit from ERGO?

http://www.oxis.com
Oxis on Twitter
Oxis on facebook

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Flying Car on the Highway, Anyone?

Why is it that people want a car that can fly? It's a no-brainer really. They just want to have the means to be above and beyond the traffic jams on the road. It's a nice thought. But a flying car isn't really something that can take off when it comes to laws and regulations. A car is a car and it has to abide by the rules of correct design and specifications. A plane isn't really a car and should also meet legal requirements. Combining a car and a plane as one vehicle can be tricky. But it's not impossible.

Believe it or not, there's already a plane out there that can roll on roads like a car. It's called the Terrafugia and it's now in the final stages of being given the go by the laws that apply both on the ground and in the air. The makers wish it to be classified as a light sports aircraft, much like an ultralight. This would require fliers to have only 20 hours of flying time to qualify as a pilot. The manufacturer says the Terrafugia can transform from a plane to a car (or vice versa) in less than 30 seconds. It may require some getting used to, but it's still practical. It uses ordinary gasoline, by the way. With that fuel, it can cruise to 185 kph and fly 644 km.

When the Terrafugia finally gets the nod of all concerned agencies and laws, you can get one for as little as $200,000. But if you imagine yourself rolling along the highway and then taking off when you see heavy traffic ahead, then think twice. It may not be that useful. However, if you wish to use it as a handy plane to get from one strip to another, then it may be the one for you.

This model die-cast Hot Wheels Lamborghini Lp 640 may not be a flying car, but simply looking at it will make you feel that you can really fly and conquer the highway! Yep, it's for collectors. If you want it, just click here or on the image to place your order.

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Roadside Sewer Sludge: Source of Alternative Energy and Revenue for Municipalities

Driving on stretches of municipal roads can sometimes reveal unsightly trash and wastewater sludge on the road or curb. They’re actually blights to municipalities that make for unpleasant living conditions—even vehicular accidents. There’s wastewater wherever there are ditches by the roadside. The decaying organic matter in roadside sludge makes its presence known when warm gases condense water and rise from manholes and walkway drains. The emissions are a source of toxic methane gas that smells foul. You wouldn’t want to do a “Marilyn Monroe” skirt stunt over one of those vents.

The fact is that municipalities don’t want this kind of waste from sludge, but it’s unavoidable. The good news is that something can be done about it. The solution will allow municipalities and private corporations to reduce the waste and benefit from extra revenue at the same time. The secret lies in producing beneficial and marketable products from once useless wastewater sludge using a suitable recycling technology. A company that specializes in this endeavor is N-Viro International. What N-Viro does is use biosolids from municipal sludge from roadside drains, sewers, tanks, etcetera, and turn these into either a fertilizer called N-Viro Soil or a clean coal called N-Viro Fuel. The waste to energy processes used are patented and done in special facilities such as the one in Daytona Beach, Florida. The process in making N-Viro Soil combines organic sludge and alkaline wastes from the cement-making and power-generation processes. For N-Viro Fuel, coal is mixed with manure or other biosolids to produce a clean-burning altenative energy source touted as clean coal. This belongs with other opportunity fuels as it is a new, renewable, and creates money while providing energy.

Both N-Viro Soil and N-Viro Fuel are waste to energy products, with the former providing nutritional energy for crops to grow and the latter giving energy for electricity generation. These are not our usual sources of energy and are sustainable unlike fossil fuels or products with artificial components. Waste materials like sludge from roadside sewers are the key. As long as there are municipal wastes to process, and for sure our municipalities won’t be running out of this in a long time, we can produce these immensely-reliable products. If all road and infrastructure organic sludge can be effectively collected and used to make marketable products like N-Viro Soil and N-Viro Fuel, municipalities can have a continuous source of revenue and people will be dealing with stench from organic wastes a lot less. Trips across town will become a more pleasant experience with lesser chance of you coming into contact with gas and slippery sludge that could ruin your day. N-Viro can make municipalities a lot cleaner and safer for vehicles and their travelers.

N-Viro licenses its waste to energy green conversion technologies to municipalities in the United States and elsewhere. As long as there’s organic matter from wastewater sludge, sewage, and other sources, it is possible to make alternative energy products. Since going public in 1993, N-Viro has made over $40 million in sales. It only goes to show how effective the technologies are and how much governments benefit from very useful and highly-marketable products. http://www.nviro.com




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GM Cars Set to Adopt HUD Technology

Fighter jets have them and they look cool in movies. The head up display (HUD) or enhanced vision system (EVS), is something that has proven to be very useful to pilots who need to keep their head up and eyes looking front even as they monitor visual cues that help them fly. The HUD display may appear to be distracting at first, but tests have proven them to be helpful and improve flying performance. Now, General Motors is planning to use HUD technology in its cars.

Thomas Seder, the group head manager of the GM R&D says the HUD for future GM cars will combine different vehicle sensors including infrared cameras that allow the projection of laser lines on the windshield. Seder says the system can identify the edge of the road in a fog and can draw a line on the wundshield that will define it even as the cars moves. He says the GM HUD can also inform drivers of obstacles and other potential dangers ahead.

Seder says he was inspired to adopt the aircraft technology for cars after he came upon a transparent phosphor product made by SuperImaging, which let glowing images to be projected onto a windshield. This was what it took to take the available HUD technology developed by GM since 1988 to the next level. Before, images were only projected on small areas, but with the new phosphor product, the whole of a car's windshield can serve as a screen. You can have an idea of how this will look like by watching one of those episodes of the new Knight Rider series. Tests have proved it to make a driver better in driving and it's not the distraction that it's thought to be.

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Repaired Toyotas Reportedly Accelerate on Their Own - Emergency Remedy

After thousands of recalls and repairs made by Toyota dealers beginning with the floor mat issue and the delay in tye braking system, it now appears that some of the Toyotas which have been repaired now have a more serious problem - owners have reported that they accelerate on their own without any warning and it's not easy to stop.

One Camry owner, John Moscicki, who is also a professional racer, reported to the Associated Press (AP) how his 2007 model had accelerated five times before he had the floor mat problem repaired. In one instance, the car went off from a full stop to 50mph before he stopped it by shifting to neutral and then hitting the brake with his left foot while pulling on the gas pedal with his right. He said it was like his car was controlled by some other system (like in one of those Die Hard movies). His dealer checked the car for a week but found nothing wrong with it. It's been generally assumed that the problem is electronic, but as of this writing, the source is still unidentified.

Toyota owners who have complained of sudden acceleration of their vehicles are now being interviewed to determine if the problem was caused by the repairs done or if it is a time bomb waiting to explode. Moscicki said he had planned on giving his Camry to his college daughter but thought against it after he discovered the problem. "I wouldn't let her anywhere near this car," he said. 

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Faulty Hybrid Prius Brake Software Cost Toyota Big Time

Toyota's hybrid cars, the Prius, in particular, were touted as saviors of the depressed car industry. But Toyota did not count in faulty physical designs and software that made some of it's cars accident-prone. Of course, we now all know the ruckus that was created by the floor mat that snagged accelerator pedals, causing cars to speed up when they should really be slowing down. The problem became a big headache for Toyota, prompting vehicle owners to line up for repairs or submitting their cars to the massive recall.

Now, it seems that there's also a problem with the new braking system program Toyota is using. The Prius is at center stage of this drama now. Apparently, pressing the brake pedal in the Prius will not make the car stop immediately. An faulty software was blamed. You can compare the effect to what your digital camera does when you click the button to take a picture. The scene captured is almost never the one that you had intended to shoot because of the delay of the camera's software in processing the picture. In other words, if you click to take the picture of a basketball player dunking into the hoop, you will likely capture the scene after the dunk has been made. It's like that with the new Toyota brakes. You press, but you don't stop until the software tells the car to stop - and they say computers are now fast. It's incredible!

The number of vehicles recalled by Toyota worldwide has totaled 8.5 million already and it's likely to go up as more design problems are identified including a power-steering hose that could come in contact with the brake tube, creating an environment that can theoretically create a hole in the brake tube causeing brake fluid to leak.

The problems of Toyota has created a big dent on the company's image which took years to build and capture the Western market. Now, lawyers and lobbyists are hired by Toyota to try to fix the problem, which now involves congressional hearings and other tacky things that only lawyers can understand. But what the buying public to know is that it might not be a good time to buy a Toyota with all the defects in the cars it is releasing for consumption. Toyota has a proposal for a global fix, which ideally, should also address it's soiled reputation.

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Hybrid Sales - A Savior to the Slumping Auto Industry

People always like to buy something new an innovative. This has always been known by cell phone manufacturers. Even when almost everyone has a cell phone, the sales keep coming in because there will always be new models to choose from with new features that make their mouth water. Car makers and sellers should get their cue from the cell phone industry and realize that the automobile industry is being revived by new technology, like what's in this Mercury Mariner engine (left), that makes owning new cars as attractive as owning new cell phones.

While it's true that cell phones and cars aren't the same, it's hard to deny that the appeal of cool technology will never dampen in consumers. It's a fact that sales of new hybrid cars are going up even as sales of petroleum automobiles remain down. Ford has announced in December 2009 that sales were up 67% for its hybrids in spite of the dim forecast for the auto industry that has an overall slump of 11%.

Hybrids like the next generation Ford Escape (top; left) remain expensive and rare but the demand for them is increasing due to curiosity with the new engines and stricter environmental laws imposed by states like California in the US. In November 2009 alone, nearly 32,000 hybrid units were sold. Ford attributes the increase in sales to the release of the new hybrid models that are expensive, yet are practical due to rising fuel prices and the economic downturn.

It's likely other manufacturers will see the trend and follow suit in producing more hybrids. Making them almost the same price as conventional combustion engines will make them more popular and that will likely increase sales even more.

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Hybrid-Only Sai Car Unvelied by Toyota for Japan Market

After the Prius, there's Sai, another hybrid-only model from Toyota. It's recently unveiled for the Japanese market. It's costlier and bigger than the Prius. Government incentives are making hybrids extremely popular in Japan and a monthly sales average of 30,000 per month is expected beginning Dec 7, 2009, when the Sai sales will begin.

Like other automobile companies, the global economic crisis and stricter environmental laws has led to slumps in sales of regular combustion engine cars. The age of hybrids appears to have arrived and consumers are switching, opting for new technology automobiles that switch between a fuel-burning engine and an electric motor.

Compared to the Prius which gets 38 kilometers per liter, the Sai delivers a bit less at 23 kilometers per liter. That's still twice the mileage of a regular gas guzzler. One reason why the Sai is less efficient is the 2.4 liter engine. The Prius only has a 1.8 liter engine. The Sai is also bigger and roomier than the Prius - using an unorthodox dashboard design. However, the instrument panel that divides the dashboard in the middle looks dangerous in a collision, especially if a kid is seated in the passenger side.

Toyota hopes that with the release of the Sai, hybrids will become more popular and boost company sales even more.


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Toyota Recalls Cars on Floormat Issue - Are There Other Dangers?

Toyota never anticipated that the holding mechanism of the floormat of some of its cars (left) like the Camry and Prius could cause the accelerator pedal to get snagged (top) and stuck (the secured floormat would keep pushing on it). After accidents have happened attributed to the design, the recall was initiated on specific car models, although more could be added to the list. Toyota has recommended that the floormat of the drivers side of affected car owners be removed and not replaced.

Interestingly, although there seems to be no accidents reported relating to this. There had been some concerns about the seat slider handle that were used in old Corolla models. You know that handle that you pull at the near the bottom of your seat to slide it forward and backward? Yes, that's the one. Well, it turned out that shoes can sometimes get snagged on this. The picture on th eleft shows a knob that's diagonally placed. It's those with a horizontal design that can be a problem.

The shoes prone to this are rubber or hiking shoes that have those extensions at the heel end that you can use to hang them up to dry with (left; encircled). Yes, it's happened and it can come as a surprise when the driver suddenly realizes that he or she can't move his foot forward to press on the clutch! It can take several seconds to realize what has happened and at high speeds, it can be a very distressing situation.

While the concern is easily solved by wearing shoes ideal for driving, the problem is that that the knob handle design for the seat slider could still cause accidents. The good news for Toyota is that other brands of cars may also have knobs that can snag some shoes. Designers should take a close look at this for the safety of consumers.

Toyota has had recall issues in the past.


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