pdma-nz - *Feel sorry for Toyota?

PDMA-NZ Blog

Saturday, 27 February 2010

While Toyota has got some bad press recently and the other makers are benefiting from it, I bet those other car makers are shaking in their shoes as they could easily be in the same position.

When you think about, the environment that a car operates in is pretty extreme: temperature, vibration, dirt (and that include all the crap that the kids seem get over the interior of the car!). For those of you who don’t develop products for that type of environment, can you imagine how long your product would last? And cars these days are expected to last a long time, like 15 to 20 years!

If something goes wrong with a car, it may result in bad quality ratings, car recalls to fix a problems, or worse, someone gets injured or killed. It doesn’t take much – I understand that one the issues that Toyota has had was that the car mat was sliding forward and jamming the accelerator - a car mat! You wouldn't think that something as mundane as a car mat could kill someone!

Given my love for cars, I had always dreamed that the ultimate job would be to work for a car maker. But a past work colleague of mine had worked for a car maker and he assured me that working for a car maker wasn’t all it's cracked up to be. He gave me an example of making a minor change to a taillight - when such a change occurs, it requires a committee to be brought together to review the change. The committee would include for example: electrical (the change might impact the electrical system), overall design (does the design change effect the overall appearance of the car), lighting (incase it impacts the visibility of the lights), aerodynamics,……. the list goes on. You might think that this is over the top, but remember, a problem with a floor mat killed people!

You wonder sometime why automotive technology seems to lag behind other forms of technologies such as consumer electronics. But you have to realize, if your computer crashes, it's not going to kill you and often to fix it, all you need to do is upgrade the software (and in a lot of cases, it is done automatically). Whereas if something in your car fails, you could be injured, or again, killed. And if there is something that needs to be fixed, the car will need to be taken back to the dealership for the problem to be repaired, which is very public and costs a lot of money for a car maker. But then again, cars do already have a lot of computer and software controlling many of the operations of the car, so maybe all that is needed in the future is a software upgrade. In fact, I think that it has been identified that with the Prius, it is a software fault that is stopping the brakes working. But I think that it will be some time before you will be able to connect your car to the internet and download a fix!

Toyota has been praise many times for its leading technology in hybrid cars. But maybe it's this that has got it in trouble. New technologies are new and therefore have not had the many years of testing in a real-world environment. So maybe further testing should have been done. But how much?

What do you think?

Cheers
David

POSTED BY: David Stokes AT 01:35 am | Permalink | 9 Comments | E-mail this

Comments:

Further testing in real-life situations is the answer. We had a problem with a Prius recently, when a Prius taxi arrived home for a pick up, and just after the bags were loaded in the boot, the car would not start up. We could NOT get our bags out as the boot door would not open!..we were stuck without our bags and nearly missed our flight!...thanks Toyota - get it right first time.

Posted by Aruna on 02/28/2010 16:36:07

If Toyota had undertaken further testing in real life situations, would you be satisfied buying a vehicle that was a year or two 'older' (in technology, looks etc) than the competition and cost more? More testing means more prototypes, INCREASED DEVELOPMENT TIME and INCREASED COST. Regarding Aruna's experience with the Prius, why is it immediately a Prius problem? Unless the root cause is known, how can you be sure that this was caused by a fault from Toyota, and not another problem (aftermarket battery, flat key fob, blown fuse from installing taxi equipment)? Take it easy on Toyota, you cannot predict how everyone will use something, so even testing has its limitations. Thanks, Ryan

Posted by Ryan Lovatt on 03/01/2010 03:19:40

Ok, I couldn't resist: A pet peeve of mine is the IPHONE's exploding in peoples faces - people immediately start jumping up and down without the facts - how did they know that the phones had not been abused (dropped, gotten wet etc)? These external effects are not an environment the phone is designed to endure, so maybe its a user problem? Maybe the car mats had been moved by people cleaning the car and they did not secure them properly again? I'm not defending bad design, but if 2 phones have exploded out of over 35 million phones sold, it sounds more like a user problem than a design issue. If it was a design issue, it would likely not have been picked up from further testing with these infinitesimally low odds. Regards, Ryan

Posted by Ryan Lovatt on 03/01/2010 03:30:01

Yes, good point. One cannot keep testing for all the potential possibilities of use and abuse. Product testing in real-life situations can reduce the risks of a faulty design that may not have been picked up in the lab or workshop. This can be done within limited time, cost and prototypes, as long as it is done. In our example it was not a life-threatening problem, hence not a major issue, BUT what if there was a little baby or a pet in the car and the doors don't open from the oustide?

Posted by Aruna on 03/10/2010 01:25:39

On another matter, why are products meant for people not designed for human use and human capabilities? e.g.why are cars designed for speeds far beyond safety levels, far above what roads can handle? ok, I know it is to please some who love the adventure etc. or is it more about designing to the technological capabilities rather than human capabilities? Good design is achieving a balance between technological and human capabilities, and considering the effects of over-use and other consequences on the human body. Good design is also about designing to reduce misuse of a product where possible.

Posted by Aruna on 03/10/2010 01:26:53

Hey - if cars didn't exist and someone came along and suggested it would be a good product, it would be deemed a health and safety risk and wouldn't be taken any further.....

Posted by David Stokes on 03/10/2010 03:36:28

The latest on Toyota: "The freeway incident happened at the worst possible time for Toyota - just hours after it invited reporters to hear experts insist that electronic flaws could not cause cars to speed out of control under real driving conditions." Ouch! http://www.nzherald.co.nz/motoring/news/article.cfm?c_id=9&objectid=10631073

Posted by David Stokes on 03/10/2010 03:41:32

I wonder to what extent there actually is a real problem here. This all smells a lot to me like the "sudden acceleration incident" affair which killed Audi in the US in the 1970s, and which - several year after the damage was done - a US DOT inquiry put down to idiots pushing the wrong pedal. There's at least some level of human error here: any modern car, never mind a Prius, has brakes which can overpower its engine by an order of magnitude. Unfortunately one of the real down sides of modern digital electronics is it's much harder to prove that it CAN'T be a system fault: I expect this means Toyota are going to get crucified. Which will undoubtedly have larger implications for innovation in the automotive sector for some time to come.

Posted by Dave Howell on 04/11/2010 00:01:33

Having said that, I think it's clear that Toyota have at least some technical issues, and that they've handled the affair incredibly badly from both an engineering and PR perspective. I'm interested in the extent to which that has disappointed those of us who regard "The Toyota Way" as something of a gold standard - turns out they're just as capable of losing the plot as the rest of us.

Posted by Dave Howell on 04/11/2010 00:02:13