Lawsuit Against Toyota on Prius Inverters

I wonder if Toyota would consider testing and coating their electronic components in silicone. Since silicone is extremely heat resistant.

Silicone - Wikipedia

"Silicones are used where durability and high performance are demanded of components under hard conditions, such as in space (satellite technology). They are selected over polyurethane or epoxy encapsulation when a wide operating temperature range is required (−65 to 315 °C). Silicones also have the advantage of little exothermic heat rise during cure, low toxicity, good electrical properties and high purity."

 

I just spoke with them as they requested on Twitter. They said I'm covered in the warranty enhancement program so I'm fine. Um no. I said it's going to kill people, being reactive not proactive regarding a failure which causes a complete loss of power. I'm furious about this.

 

we need a class action.

 

Where do I sign?

 

Kathleen Ryan

6/2014 - E0E software update "remedy" completed

1/2018 - Inverter Failure on 91 frwy ; 56k miles on odo

70 mph > 15 mph ; Fast Lane to right shoulder

2 dealerships = 100+ post E0E "remedy" software update failures

USA = 800 inverter failures <2 months

ZE3 reactionary repair - doesnt prevent - after inverter failure

Is E0E software update a cure?

G9200-49075 inverter assembly never safety recalled.

Public Docs - Goog - NHTSA Fed Safety Recall Policy

 

Ok, a question and a few comments.

I just bought a 2012, so I'm new here. I did enter my VIN number and saw there were "no recalls" for it. Which is odd, if they found out about this problem in 2014, why isn't mine affected?

Comment 1 : any car can have a traction power failure at any time, no matter the brand or type. Other drivers are not supposed to crash into you, but as long as we have human driven cars, this is unfortunately just a risk of driving. All you can do is turn on your hazards and hope other drivers don't screw up - but every mile you drive on a highway, you are at the mercy of other drivers not screwing up and killing you anyways.

So a loss of traction power from an inverter failure doesn't seem like a huge safety hazard to me. Any car I might buy can have it's engine suddenly fail for any number of reasons, including ECU failure, electrical faults, blown transmission, a sensor failure, throwing a rod...list is very long.

Comment 2 : Since mine is 6 years old, for the next 9 years, if I do have an inverter fail, Toyota will replace it for free. That's not a bad deal...

Comment 3 : Inverters are available on ebay for $200, from low milage Prii that were destroyed in crashes. It's right there at the top of the engine bay, how hard could it be to swap? It would be vaguely annoying to have to do that, but mine already made it 80k miles on the original inverter, so if I swapped in one with low miles on it, I would expect to get years of trouble free driving after the fix.

 

That is interesting. I don't recall ever seeing any threads about a 'do it yourself' inverter swap. I wonder if anyone has done this? I guarantee you..if it is possible, someone here would almost certainly attempt it.

 

It's just a box that has cables going into it and coolant hoses. You should be able to swap it with basic tools.

Obviously the guys selling them on ebay for next to nothing didn't have any trouble extracting them. And I read a DIY transaxle swap guide, and removing the inverter is one of the first steps. You also would need to do this to repair the engine or many other common tasks, all mentioned right here on this forum. I think the reason you never saw an inverter DIY post was because since Toyota is willing to pay for it until 2025, nobody will.

 

Failure is caused by overheating of the active semiconductors, not some bulk material. Cooling is needed, not heat resistant material. The implication is the area of the semiconductor that is used to transfer the heat is not large enough for the heat being generated, but there is another issue with semiconductors running close to the limit, the "safe operating area". To extend this you pretty much need to replace the device with one that is larger. This does two things, it increases the "safe operating area" (this is the area under a graphed power vs temperature plot) because the power is shared by more material, and because the device is larger, it also increases the area through which heat may be transported to the "heat sink", in this case the liquid cooled heat sink.

Whether there is enough room to replace the devices in the current design inverter or replace the entire inverter with a newer design or whether there is even a device available to do so, or whether there is a better basic design I cannot determine. But Toyota can!

In their mind these vehicles are beyond their design life (in Japan vehicles are not kept longer than 5 years or so for multiple reasons, and regulations make it economically unreasonable to try to do so). So they are dragging their feet on a proper replacement effort. Why fix what is obsolete?

So I request Toyota give me a 2018 "Canadian Advanced Technology Package" Prius so I won't have to deal with a failing inverter. They can have Pearl S in exchange.

 

Well for Gen4 they redesigned the inverter to be smaller...not larger. So either the Toyota engineers know something you don't...or they totally screwed up. I'll take the former.

 

The whole assembly is smaller, not the semiconductors inside.

 

I agree -- anytime you drive, you're putting yourself at risk. However, I disagree with saying it's not a huge safety hazard. What particularly bothers me is that Toyota knows this product they've manufactured is faulty. They're reacting with the warranty enhancement program and limited recall instead of proactively doing what they can do protect their consumers and that really bothers me. Yes, I know cars can break down for various reasons, but well made, well maintained cars should be reliable. I was driving with my newborn in the car. If we had been hit & he had been hurt because Toyota put a faulty piece of equipment in my car, I would burn them to the ground.

 

If getting rear ended from behind at highway speed at night ain't a hazard then I really need to refine my definition of hazard.

 

David, they may have upgraded to using a newer type of FET that has become inexpensively available the last few years. They are called Silicon Carbide FETs and they can run hotter and handle per amps per channel. The older Gen2 inverter teardowns show they had to use very large IGBTs, don't know what they did for Gen3. Tesla uses silicon carbide FETs and many modern motor controllers and inverters do as they are an off the shelf part that can handle a lot of current.

 

Hmm I wonder if Weber Auto has a Gen4 inverter teardown in plan.

 

All docs public

Inverter Assembly G9200-49075 - intro Gen 3 Prius mid 2014

Never Recalled – WHY?

E0E SR 2010 – mid 2014 mdl yrs ONLY

Gen 3 thru 2015

Was "remedy" G9200-49075 or "software update"?

Goog - Toyota Statement of Facts - #15 & #51

 

how's that lawsuit coming along jackie boy?

 

In ‘service campaigns,’ car companies allegedly downplay defects linked to poisoning, crashes, and fires

Toyota and others are accused of spinning dangerous safety defects as no big deal

05/17/2018 | ConsumerAffairs | Automotive

By Amy Martyn

Amy Martyn is a writer and investigative reporter now based in San Diego by way of Tijuana, BC, Dallas, TX and Los Angeles, CA. She primarily writes about how consumers, taxpayers and businesses are affected by corporate and government policies. Read Full Bio→

Photo (c) GummyBone - Getty ImagesWhen a driver in southern California noticed that his three-year-old Prius was losing power as he cruised down the Interstate 5 highway, with warning lights illuminating on the dashboard and his gas pedal suddenly failing, he knew his only hope to avoid a crash was to pull off to the shoulder.

But the shoulder was under construction. With nowhere to go, his car stalled completely in the far-right lane.

For a minute or so, the driver sat in traffic as cars traveling 60 miles per hour swerved to avoid him. Then, in his rearview mirror, he saw one pair of headlights grow closer. They were not swerving or slowing down. He braced himself.

Most people consider it to be a scary and unsafe experience when their cars die on the road, as the owner of a 2012 Toyota Prius recounted happening to him in a report he later filed to the California Highway Patrol and Toyota.

Both the Prius owner and the woman who rear-ended him walked away from the crash in late 2015 without serious injuries, but the Prius owner later submitted his police report and correspondence with Toyota to federal regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety and Administration (NHTSA).

He expressed his concern that this apparent defect in the Prius could have turned out much differently. (This driver’s identity is not known because NHTSA redacts the names of all consumers who submit complaints and supporting documentation to their website.)

For Toyota, however, the fact that some of their Priuses can lose power in a moment’s notice is not a secret, and it is not even considered a problem. Instead, Toyota characterizes this as a safety feature, or a “failsafe mode,” to use the company’s terminology. When a part called the inverter in the Toyota Prius malfunctions, the car goes into this mode before it dies completely.

“The failsafe modes incorporated into the Prius are designed to allow the vehicle to be driven at a reduced speed for limited distances to help move the vehicle out of traffic and come to a safe stop,” Toyota’s press team told ConsumerAffairs in a prepared statement.

Toyota dealer sues

But drivers who are unable to pull over in time would likely disagree with that assertion. And a Toyota dealer says that nothing about Toyota’s so-called “failsafe mode” is safe.

“Somehow, this has been twisted where they want people to believe that that portion of it is safe,” Roger Hogan, owner of Claremont Toyota and Capistrano Toyota dealerships in southern California, tells ConsumerAffairs in an interview. “Failsafe is not safe and that seems to be some misnomer that's floating around there all of a sudden.”

In reality, Toyota is simply trying to avoid the expense of recalling and properly fixing cars that should not be on the road, Hogan charges in a $100 million federal lawsuit that he has filed against Toyota.

The case, which was originally filed last year in federal court, alleges a pattern of Toyota failing to fix safety defects in its cars in order to keep costs down.

According to Hogan’s complaint, Toyota has been notifying dealers about several serious safety issues in cars via informal “service campaigns” and “technical service bulletins” rather than recalls that car companies are required by law to issue if a defect is considered dangerous.

Hogan says that Toyota’s so-called “technical service bulletins” are known as “Toyota’s Secret Bulletins” because dealers are instructed not to inform drivers about the problem unless someone brings their car in with a complaint.

More recently, Hogan has made local headlines for his own efforts to address the practice by refusing to sell about 700 Priuses that he says are prone to suddenly dying on the road because of defective inverters. “I will not allow my family to drive one of these cars,” Hogan tells ConsumerAffairs.

Non-recalls becoming more common

It’s highly unusual for a car dealer to sue his own boss or to refuse to sell an estimated $1,000,000 worth of inventory, but the practice of car companies downplaying safety defects with “bulletins” and “service campaigns” is an old public relations stunt that is growing more common, industry experts say.

“You call something anything other than a recall, that immediately signals to the consumer this is not something that is about safety,” Jason Levine, the Executive Director of the Center for Auto Safety, tells ConsumerAffairs.

In recent years, Levine says that the industry appears to have grown bolder with the practice. “We're seeing more of it,” he says. “It’s an old practice that is continuing to be used by manufacturers and arguably has increased under an administration that is less likely to be opening investigations.”

The problem may also be compounded by underfunded regulatory watchdog agencies, and, according to the car industry’s own research, an underinvestment in manufacturing quality over the past decade.

Gas leaks in Ford Explorers

When people who drove Ford Explorers said that exhaust fumes from the car seemed to be leaking into the passenger cabin, causing health symptoms consistent with carbon monoxide poisonings, Ford Motor Company initially only warned car dealers about the problem.

“Some 2011-2015 Explorer vehicles may exhibit an exhaust odor in the vehicle... Customers may indicate the odor smells like sulfur,” the company wrote to its dealerships in 2014, advising them to offer free repairs to customers with complaints.

In the following years, as police officers across the country described falling unconscious and crashing their Explorers while driving, Ford Motor Company eventually blamed the police agencies themselves for the poisoning, saying that modifications that agencies had made to the Explorers had caused leaks in their fleets.

"What we found was that the police had modified these vehicles after they left the Ford factory,” Ford has repeatedly said while simultaneously offering to fix the leaks.

Not until late 2017 did Ford Motor Company publicly extend the same repair offer to civilian motorists. But even then, Ford framed it as a psychological issue rather than a legitimate safety concern.

“Ford is aware that some 2011-2017 Explorer owners have concerns about exhaust or carbon monoxide,” the company wrote in a public notice to consumers and dealers at the end of 2017.

“These vehicles are safe,” Ford added in its customer service bulletin. “However, for our customers’ peace of mind, Ford is offering this no charge service that reduces the potential for exhaust to enter the vehicle."

A reckless decision

Levine says this notice from Ford is incredibly reckless because it “signals to consumers that this is not a problem, despite the fact that carbon monoxide is a silent killer. It literally kills thousands of people every year.”

In the case of the Ford Explorer, several high-profile lawsuits describe debilitating injuries and neurological damage caused by long-term carbon monoxide exposure or resulting car crashes.

Levine’s group, which has counted 1,300 consumer complaints to NHTSA about carbon monoxide poisoning in the Ford Explorer, has repeatedly asked Ford to issue a formal recall.

Levine casts doubt on the company's claim that police modifications caused the carbon monoxide leaks, noting that civilians also complained about the fumes and that police have modified their own vehicles for years without reporting similar problems.

“We don’t think there’s any truth to that,” Levine said about the claims.

In a statement to ConsumerAffairs, the Ford press team only repeated the company’s earlier talking abouts about the issue.

“Ford’s investigation and extensive testing did not find carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to everyday,” the team said, adding that consumers can take their Fords in “for a free service designed to reduce the concern.”

Nissan and Chrysler follow suit

In recent years, similar tactics have been deployed by Nissan and Chrysler, consumer groups charge. After hundreds of consumers complained about a loss of braking power in their 2009 Muranos, Nissan customers were invited to have the problem repaired in a so-called “customer satisfaction campaign.” NHTSA has since opened an investigation into the issue.

In a separate case, Chrysler initially refused to recall older Jeep models that were prone to fiery explosions when they were rear-ended, a defect linked to 70 deaths.

Chrysler eventually agreed to recall a portion of the cars in 2013 but invited other car owners with the problem to take part in a voluntary “customer service campaign.”

Slow recall process and alleged sabotage

In 2009 and 2010, Toyota became the center of one of the worst scandals in the automotive industry’s history when it faced a record-breaking recall, lawsuits, and a Department of Justice investigation into unintended acceleration complaints.

During that time, Roger Hogan was the president of the Southern Toyota Dealers Association, and he remembers that dealers seemed to be caught off guard by an onslaught of recalls.

“We were being bombarded with one recall after another, after another,” he tells ConsumerAffairs.

By law, manufacturers are required to send paper notices to the original car owners letting them know if their vehicle is under recall. But Hogan says that process was fraught with missed opportunities and miscommunication.

“Many people on second or third owner vehicles aren't doing business at Toyota dealerships, so they had no chance whatsoever to be informed about these dangerous conditions," he explains.

What’s more, when Toyota drivers brought their cars into the dealership, Hogan says that the database that dealers used to check a car’s recall status was slow and difficult to use.

Due to a combination of the factors, “the recall response rates were abysmal,” Hogan says.

To address the shortcoming, Hogan went to work designing a software “patch” that allowed his employees to more effectively gather recall information on every car in their service area and to find the current owners of defective vehicles.

Using the new software, Hogan said that Claremont Toyota identified thousands of recalls that had previously been missed. Nationwide, that translated into “some very significant safety issues that were being unaddressed for millions of customers in the United States.”

Hogan began marketing and selling the software he called Autovation to other dealers and invited Toyota’s corporate office to take a look in 2011. In a sales pitch, Hogan says he demonstrated to executives how the program worked and offered to sell it “for pennies on the dollar.”

Toyota got back to him one week later saying that it wasn’t interested. "We're very disappointed in you,” he remembers the company telling him, “for thinking our concerns for customer safety are as not as high as they are.”

Hogan continued to use Autovation at his own dealership until 2015, when he says that Toyota locked him out of the computer system in an attempt to sabotage his business.

“Toyota did not want Autovation to succeed because it would cost Toyota more money,” Hogan charged in the federal lawsuit he filed shortly after.

Software fix for inverters?

Toyota has agreed to recall an estimated 800,000 Prius cars that stall due to burnt-out inverters. But Hogan and consumers say that the Priuses are still dying on the road, even after undergoing repairs.

The problem, as Hogan alleges in his lawsuit against Toyota and in a petition to federal regulators, is that Toyota is not addressing the root of the problem -- the inverter itself. Instead, Toyota says that the problem can be fixed with a software adjustment in the car’s computer.

A software fix costs corporate about $80 per car, Hogan says, far less than the estimated $2,000 cost of a new inverter. He is now refusing to sell Prius cars from the model year 2010 to 2014 that have the problem until Toyota agrees to replace the part.

In a statement, Toyota responds that Hogan is only pursuing the faulty inverter issue to advance his ongoing $100 million lawsuit against the company, which Toyota dismisses as being born from a professional grudge.

“As with any component, inverters may fail over time depending on any number of conditions and variables,” Toyota’s press team says, adding that “the 2014 Prius inverter recall was implemented to enhance vehicle safety.”

Still, Toyota continues to insist that most cars experiencing the problem will go into a supposed “failsafe mode” as they stall out. Hogan says that dealers have another name for it: “limp home mode” or “unintended deceleration.”

"But it doesn't sound as attractive as failsafe,” he adds, “like you're really protected.”

NHTSA and Toyota are now both monitoring inverter failures on Prius cars, with one Los Angeles Times report finding that 800 Prius drivers reported their vehicles stalling out even after undergoing the recall repair.