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NY Times, Published: February 23, 2010

Toyota Official Says Recall May Not Fully Solve Safety Problem Sign in to Recommend
By MICHELINE MAYNARD

WASHINGTON — A Toyota executive told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday that the company’s huge recall might “not totally” solve the problem of unintended sudden acceleration in its vehicles.
 
In response to a question by the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, the executive, James E. Lentz III, the president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., said that Toyota was still examining the sudden acceleration problem, including the possibility that the electronics system may be at fault. At this point, he said, Toyota has found no evidence of a computer problem, but “we continue to look for potential causes.”

There is the possibility, he said “of mechanical, human or some other type of error.”

“We need to be vigilant and continue to investigate all the complaint of the consumers,” Mr. Lentz said.
 
Mr. Lentz also told the committee that Toyota was installing a new brake system that can override the gas pedal on almost all its new vehicles and most of those already on the road. He said that more than 800,000 recalled vehicles have been repaired.
 
Mr. Waxman, while criticizing Toyota’s response to the recall, told Mr. Lentz: “We need to be sure that you’re doing a full and adequate analysis of something you’ve denied, but that other witnesses have shown us is very possible.”
 
“Consumer complaints need to be taken seriously,” Mr. Waxman said in his opening remarks. “The possibility of electronic defects must be actively investigated.”

In a confrontational back-and-forth, Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts told Mr. Lentz, “You said you had solved the problem, you don’t know if you have solved the problem.”

Referring to the tests the company is running on its computer systems, Mr. Markey added, “You’re only at the beginning of your investigation.” 

“We have not seen failures,” Mr. Lentz reiterated.

Since last fall, Toyota has recalled more than eight million vehicles worldwide — more than six million in the United States alone — in two actions related to complaints about accelerator pedals that can stick, making it hard to stop the vehicles. Witnesses before Mr. Lentz detailed how an electronic problem could have caused sudden unintended accelerations.

And one witness, Rhonda Smith, recounted the harrowing moments of Oct. 12, 2006, when her Lexus sedan sped out of control at 100 miles an hour.

Ms. Smith told the energy committee that she furiously pushed buttons, shifted gears, and slammed on the brakes as she tried to stop the vehicle, Finally, after six miles, she was able to stop the car.
 
She was the first witness in the first of three hearings on Toyota’s recall of millions of its cars. In their opening remarks, lawmakers said they wanted to understand why the Toyota failed to adequately respond to reports of the unintended acceleration, and they questioned whether the car’s computer system was at fault, rather than, as Toyota asserts, the floor mats and gas pedals.

Ms. Smith told the committee that she felt that Toyota’s response to her complaint was “a farce.” She said a company technician told her he was not able to replicate the episode and suggested that it was caused by pressing on the brakes while the tires were spinning.

“Of course we were insulted, and furious over being called liars,” Mrs. Smith said.

Later, Mr. Lentz said he was “embarrassed about what happened” to the Smiths. “We’re going to down and get that car and see what happened,” he said.

Mr. Lentz grew emotional when he spoke of losing his brother in an auto accident 26 years ago. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of what these families go through,” he said, his voice breaking.
 
Asked why Toyota had moved away from a business model that prized quality and openness, Mr. Lentz offered a simple explanation: “We lost sight of our customers.”
 
“We outgrew our engineering resource,” he said. “We’re suffering from that today.”
 
Lawmakers on Tuesday repeatedly pointed out that their only goal was the safety of the American consumer.
 
“Safety must come first,” Mr. Waxman said while also faulting investigators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for not aggressively pursuing problems with Toyota vehicles.

Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican of Tennessee said the goal was to “make sure that mistakes of the past are not repeated and to be responsible when so much is on the line.” Tennessee has a plant from Denso, a major Toyota supplier, as well as a Nissan factory and a Volkswagen plant under construction near Chattanooga.
 
In a statement prepared for delivery to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday, the president of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, said he took full responsibility for the safety crisis facing his company.
 
Mr. Toyoda, in his statement, said he feared the pace at which the company grew in the last decade was too quick. Toyota increased its global sales by about 50 percent, in part by building plants around the world, and became the world’s biggest auto company in 2008.
 
Traditionally, he said the company’s priorities had been safety, quality and volume. But in its growth spurt, “these priorities became confused, and we were not able to stop, think and make improvements as much as we were before,” he said in the prepared testimony. “We pursued growth over the speed at which we were able to develop our people and our organization. I regret that this has resulted in the safety issues described in the recalls we face today, and I am sincerely sorry for any accidents that Toyota drivers have experienced.”
 
And he apologized to members the Saylor family, which was involved in an accident last fall in San Diego that killed four people and brought the issue of sudden acceleration into the spotlight.