Toyota Case: Vehicle Testing Confirms Fatal Flaws

EETimes ^ | 10/31/2013 | Junko Yoshida

[JoeFromSidney]

Couldn’t you do the same thing with an auto, grab the column or console shifter and bump it into neutral? The majority, if not all of the automatic shifter gate/detents that I’ve come across allow the driver to go from drive to neutral without engaging anything.

I think PRNDL is standard throughout the industry. I've never driven a car, one I owned, or borrowed, or rented, that had any other arrangement. I've never tried going from D to N while moving, though. I don't know if it can be done.

[Stevenc131]

“So they hacked it, inserted a command to “flip” something and it malfunctioned. But, they did not cause it to malfunction. It would have malfunctioned eventually. They just could not wait around for it to “flip” on its own, but trust them when they say it would happen eventually”

If I were a judge, they would have to prove to a very high degree of certainity that the bit flip would eventually happen on it’s own. Most systems have debug modes that allow you to stop a program at a particular point and bring up a command line where you can manually change a data element to whatever you want. It’s a good method to test a particular situation, but it has to be relevant to mean anything.

In the case of the Toyotas you still have a group of millions of cars that have operated for multi-millions (or maybe billions) of hours collectively without anything going wrong. I would want the experts to be able to explain how you can have millions of hours of operation without a failure, then suddenly the program in some random car just generates bad data on it’s own. To me it’s just b.s., same as the bogus Audi ‘sudden acceleration’ problem in the 80s.

[Venturer]

Most automatic transmissions will outlast the car. So will the manual transmission, but not the clutch.

[jim_trent]

> “To me it’s just b.s., same as the bogus Audi ‘sudden acceleration’ problem in the 80s.”

I remember that one. It was done by 60 minutes and nearly killed Audi. I believe that they were the same people who put a model rocked engine igniter in a pickup gas tank to make it catch fire. Anyone who stands to profit from testifying a certain way should be suspect. The people here profited big time.