Featured Prius (and all Toyota vehicles) & the Kobe Steel Revelations

My guess is any problems will be found with crash tests

 

Well, lets hope that chain is not made of Kobe Steel.

 

I would be VERY surprised if they could not trace the steel back to the individual coil that came into their factory. I made aluminum beverage cans for 22 years. We could use the little code number on the side of the can and find out what line it came off of, which shift, and which day. That would let us get very close to the specific aluminum coil that can came from. And we were making a couple thousand cans a minute.

 

I have no doubt they have records tracing back to specific lots. So the potential parts:

• steel - body, suspension, gears, rotor, steel wheels
• aluminum - engine, transaxle blocks, alloy wheels
• copper - wiring and stators

Bob Wilson

 

Only if vehicles withing that materials date range were tested. Also, it may be that only certain material batches would have failed. No real way to tell without the correct documentation. Much of the testing is destructive in nature.

 

Copper would be the most troubling to us if it impacted the motors.

 

I think the hood and hatch are also aluminum? Steel isn't currently a potential issue, unless they find documentation issues with it also, Kobe said it is currently investigating other possible falsification incidents going back as long ago as ten years

Hard to imagine how potentially bad a situation this could be, as it could potentially effect everything from cars to airplanes, it depends on what they find, how many batches are affected, how far out of tolerance. If it turns out that there were batches that are potentially unsafe, then this could mean massive recalls. Even then the scope could go a lot of different directions because for example presumably there are different aluminum alloys used for engines, as opposed to wheels, as opposed to hoods etc. so in theory using just Toyota as an example there could be certain VIN numbers that would need a new hood for example (best case scenario I guess) but maybe some VIN numbers would need a new engine and transmission? What if a month's worth of cars have to be recalled for new engines? And I won't even think about airplanes, although I can only hope that aluminum used in critical structures like the wings the airplane manufacturers also do their own quality testing. Otherwise entire airplanes have to go back to Seattle for example to get replacement wings and/or fuselage components?

Hopefully this turns out to be much less serious or the scope turns out to be relatively small, but we don't know yet.

 

Other reports mention steel.

 

The hood is aluminum. The block etc. is cast and any problems would show up at the casting plant. In my experience with the Prius hood, if it is 30% weaker you wouldn't notice. It's pretty weak anyway. All it does is deflect air and look good. I suspect it has minimal effect in energy absorption in a crash, as it's so weak, even at the specified strength.

Steel wasn't in the release. Only aluminum and copper. Weak copper would also not be a problem, as it isn't stressed in the Prius.

If you really want to worry about something, worry about the nuts behind all the other wheels on the road!

 

I believe the copper windings in the motors are stressed and cooled by the transaxle fluid. Temperature fluctuations can shorten the life of metals.

 

FYI:"Iron powder products typically used to make items such as automotive gears" was mentioned in the Bloomberg article Zero Hedge quoted. (I posted this last night in Fred's House of Pancakes)

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

whatever happened to hari cari, are the japanese emulating the germans?

 

For the record, tensile strength is not a measure of stiffness. It is, unsurprisingly, a measure of strength. Elastic modulus is a measure of stiffness.

 

I don't think anyone is worried about bodily harm, it's a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop to find out if substandard materials were used which could lead to shorter than expected lifespans of certain components, resulting in expensive repairs down the road (perhaps measured in years) which would translate into lower resale value for affected vehicles, or at best handled by recall. And again Toyota is just an example, if this turns out to be a.large scale compromise of quality than not only multiple car makers but multiple industries could be affected.

Or it could turn out to be a false alarm, or relatively minor and isolated. Ageeed no point in overly worrying yet. But if you hear the whistling sound of a shoe falling.....

 

Oh good so nothing important.

 

I guess it would be important to know the properties not up to the requests.
Tensile Strength modifications would have very little effect in the copper use, but fatigue and/or crack growth may demand other properties to be readressed, don't they?

 

They wouldn't be having these problems if they bought their parts from China sources.

I'm constantly dealing with verifying Chinese sourced parts' materials at my company. It's a runaround sometimes.

It's sad that Kobe has tarnished their reputation, which was all they had against other sourcing competition. Now I see this as an invitation for procurement of Chinese made parts.