Could recent recalls be a back door covert attempt to ban all hybrids?

Well before my Prius, I had a 95 Dodge Caravan. I was in an incident where I had hit a patch of oil or diesel left behind by a construction crew. An unlucky application of the brakes at just the precise moment cause my minivan to lock it's non abs brakes. I started to skid and panicked a bit. Then I started to pump my brakes, like you are supposed to when they are locked in a car without ABS. I was unfortunately too late and I slid into the car ahead of me. So yes, I was in a panic situation. I did not handle myself perfectly, having only a few seconds to react.

But that's not the situation with this San Diego incident. He was on the phone with 911. He was told repeatedly put the car into neutral. He didn't. He had way more than a few seconds. He was instructed on what to do and did not follow directions. That is not the sign of panic. Panicking people are relieved when they hear solutions to their problem, he was not. That's suspicious.

 

The question is: IF electronic throttles are inherently unsafe, would you allow their use just to me emissions standards?

One can hope that such a ban would not include existing vehicles... but alas that's probably not how it would play out. Almost all non-hybrids can be converted to work with just a mechanical throttle (or electrical throttle).

If it is a conspiracy that the US cars that would benefit from an electronic throttle ban, would have already had mechanical throttles designed, maybe even built.

 

austingreen, you speak the truth. And sadly it won't matter. The scientific validity of mechanical vs electronic throttles won't sway American opinion. Sensational "A current affair" style reporting of what MAY be an accident will. And in the end, all they are doing is swaying public opinion. Without it, trying to ban electronic throttles or hybrids in general, would be like trying to get a health care plan pass the republicans.

The truth is, the truth doesn't matter and it is not what it is all about. It's about whether Americans drive cars made by Americans with Japanese names on them or American names on them.

I don't know where people like apriusfan get their bizarre conspiracy theories from... Like I said, there are reasonable ones and out there ones (my favourite has to be the missile with the alien holographic projectors that made them look like air planes that hit the WTC... LOL).

I think it's best to ignore the out there ones. I personally don't think that an attempt to ban electronic throttles and thereby ban hybrids is all that unreasonable.

 

Don't laugh too hard, in Ontario, one solar powered car built by the university of Toronto engineering school had one crash resulting in one fatality (very sad), resulting in the ban of all solar powered cars on Ontario. In my opinion not justifiable at all, but after that accident no one was going to complain either.

People are very reactionary. Ban all cars, not likely. I don't think electronic throttles are unsafe, but you can certainly convince the uneducated masses. Ban all electronic throttles is much easier to pass as law than ban all cars whose brand conjures up people with slanty eyes...

I think I heard a GM spokesman once say: We need to get back our market share which in the last decade has been POLLUTED by foreign brands. Such disdain for their competition borders on xenophobia.

 

Well, chips fail all the time. Like most computer controlled systems they are designed to fail safe. So a car with a faulty chip will most likely result in an error trap being triggered on the computer. This trap will be like the infamous blue screen of death in windows. It will deliver the cpu to some place where it would execute a preordained error routine. I'm willing to bet that error routine doesn't involve full throttle... (Seriously, it probably just shuts the car down... it would be a failSAFE.)

Now assuming whatever the failure of the silicon is does not trigger the error routine and does not trigger fail safes, the effect should be random. It should NOT be the same every time. If one supposes that only the sudden acceleration glitches are being reported, then that supposition implies that toyota computers in general are very glitchy. But that is not the case.

The only place where accelarator issues like this might arise is with the accelerator pedal encoders which tells the cpu what position the pedals are in. But given the fact that the computer also know what position the brake pedal is in, that failure along won't cause all these issue.

So that leave only a software malfunction specifically involving extraneous acceleration. This software malfunction must occur on a level where brake pedal and gas pedal positions have been processed and erroneously interpreted.

Since the computers on modern cars do not have an OS, (ie. one program does everything, no apps, no plug-ins, or additions), the bug has to be one that does this in such a way the is so subtle that no one can find the problem. Also it must only affect American cars.

There is one type of program that can cause all these implausible problems: a computer virus.

 

A specific failure mode that is rare and is not channeled, would likely be accompanied by more frequent failures of a different nature.

So for this to happen as you have described it will have to be a failure that is channeled. Such channeling would be something you design failsafes around. It would require the supposition that toyota did not implement a failsafe on their automotive software. If that is the case Toyota is in big trouble. But somehow I don't think so.

 

Why are you convinced there is nothing here? After all, IF there was a ban on electronic accelerator pedals, it would be a ban on hybrids. That is not non-existent, it's a fact of logic and so is the concern on electronic accelerators. A ban is a real possibility.

Unfortunately you can't prove there is no conspiracy. And sadly if electronic pedals are banned, that's not proof a conspiracy either.

I'm not one for wonky conspiracy theories either. But like any good thread there is supposed to be a discussion of what is fact or fiction. I certainly think there is merit here, albeit marred by those who like implausible wonky theories... But that's why there is a discussion board.