Has anyone on this forum experienced this,or have they personally known a Prius owner with this issue ?
I personally have has 0 issue with our '05 Prius, which my wife is the primary driver now. However, based on my understanding and my education and training, my best guess is that the problem, if indeed exists, is likely caused by a fault in the electronics system. Many here on this forum have tried to prove that their Prius are fine, which is ridiculous to me. It is fine until something goes wrong. Chips can fail in case you don't know. People have died from this issue that authority is investigating. No one seems to be able to prove or reproduce the issue consistently, which further divides people into two camps, those who believe there is a problem and those who defend for Toyota. We will see who is right.... I know I belong to the 1st camp, even though I hope I was wrong because I love my Prius (though not as much as my wife does).
*Anything* can fail...and *anything* can fail in an unexpected way. That doesn't make it a design flaw, it makes it an accident. The witch hunt going on right now implies that Toyota knowingly and willingly made unsafe cars. Notice that full statement...knowingly and willingly. It's an implication that I simply don't believe...for any company, reputation is everything. Throw in the Japanese sense of loyalty and honor, and that would imply that Toyota *wanted* to lose face to the rest of the world. This simply does not ring true. Japanese executives would be ritualistically falling on their swords, right now. Is there a problem? Maybe. Was the problem known and intentionally covered up? Highly doubtful. That's my view on it. Chuck
Ceric, I already posted my opinion in another thread, but I will post it here too, because this is an appropriate place to do so. The reason why I'm pretty skeptic about all this "unwanted acceleration" buzz is that all the cases I ever heard of were from the U.S. only. If there really is a wide-spread firmware issue (or a hardware problem, for that matter) with Toyota ECUs, then why don't we hear any complains from Japan, from Europe, from Asia, simply from the rest of the world? There are *many* Toyotas driving all over the globe with the same ECUs in them, and nobody seems to complain, or at least I am not aware of any reports of these problems outside of United States. That's why I am rather suspicious when it comes to "runaway Toyota" reports. All this Toyota which-hunt reminds me of the 1950's McCarthy's communist hunt...
+1 My thoughts exactly... It is a little suspicious that all the claims come from the only country where extremely huge lawsuit payouts are possible.