Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
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Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
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Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#2Yeah, but 18 months is a long time to wait to see if you need to do a recall on a potentially deadly product.
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#3I'm sure that this is a common phrase, but one of my friends gave this advice to me:
"Their perception is your reality."
He was talking about management, and maintaining a good image to your employees, but the phrase applies to everything.
People's perception was that Toyota had some terrible electrical problems, and the news media, being a for-profit endeavor, ran with it.
So Toyota's perceived problems became reality, and we needed to devote 10 months of the brightest engineering minds in the world to change that.
Unfortunately, that's how things work.
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#4The interesting part of this is that NASA did a study. I used to work for NASA as a contractor. I never met anyone with automotive engineering experience. Not that there weren't any, but wouldn't it make more sense to hire an automotive engineering consulting company to do a study? Come to think of it, I wonder who NASA hired to do the study. I bet dollars to donuts it wasn't government (NASA) employees.
But people (and therefore politicians) see NASA and think smart. It just shows you how political this whole mess was.
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#5I'm sure that this is a common phrase, but one of my friends gave this advice to me: "Their perception is your reality." He was talking about management, and maintaining a good image to your employees, but the phrase applies to everything. People's perception was that Toyota had some terrible electrical problems, and the news media, being a for-profit endeavor, ran with it. So Toyota's perceived problems became reali…
Alternatively they could just have type "Audi accelerate problem" into Google.
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#6>> So who won in this debacle?
The author does not mention the advantages that would come to GM as a result of this recall. Since the gov is an owner of GM, you could argue there was a potential conflict of interest here.
See this ->>>
"GM isn't wasting any time taking advantage of Toyota's weakened position after its massive recall and sales stoppage. The General has just announced new incentives for current Toyota customers.
In a phone call to Inside Line, a GM official said the new offer consists of zero percent financing for 60 months on most Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models. Cash buyers get $1,000 toward a down payment and lease customers can get a waiver of three payments up to $1,000.
To qualify for the incentives, customers must show proof that they own or lease a Toyota.
This is starting to get interesting. "
http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2010/01/toyota-reca...
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#7The interesting part of this is that NASA did a study. I used to work for NASA as a contractor. I never met anyone with automotive engineering experience. Not that there weren't any, but wouldn't it make more sense to hire an automotive engineering consulting company to do a study? Come to think of it, I wonder who NASA hired to do the study. I bet dollars to donuts it wasn't government (NASA) employees. But people (…
I think some of the people working on all those rovers keep up with automotive technology. Also, when it comes to the specific systems involved they know more about sensors, robotics, and real time systems than just about any organization on the planet.
PS: NASA engineers were contracted to conduct research into whether electronic systems or electromagnetic interference played a role in incidents of unintended acceleration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHTSA-NASA_Study_of_Unintended_...
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#8[deleted]
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#9My biggest gripe with this is that when the truth finally comes out, it gets no attention. The perceptions that changed rapidly from "toyota = safety" to "toyota = death" will be slow to switch back. It will take years, although Toyota has done a good job marketing themselves since the incident.
Re: Toyota's Recall Crisis: What Have We Learned?
#10The interesting part of this is that NASA did a study. I used to work for NASA as a contractor. I never met anyone with automotive engineering experience. Not that there weren't any, but wouldn't it make more sense to hire an automotive engineering consulting company to do a study? Come to think of it, I wonder who NASA hired to do the study. I bet dollars to donuts it wasn't government (NASA) employees. But people (…
NASA does have a large continent of forensic engineers which is actually more relevent to the discussion than automotive engineers. Though so does the NTSB, so honestly I'd rather see a study done by the NTSB.
An automotive engineer will know how automotive companies usually design braking and acceleration systems. They can tell you if Toyota did something out of the ordinary compared to the industry standard. Assuming they didn't, the automotive engineer is no more qualified to go deeper than that than any other mechanical engineer. So bringing in a forensic engineer who knows how to deconstruct accidents is probably far more relevent than bringing in an automotive engineer who knows how to create a braking system by stiching together vendor components.