more prius questions

yes I know it's the Honda group, but ...

this last runaway report in San Diego, the driver said:

A. He didn't want to hit the power button
at speed to turn off the ignition,
because he feared it would lock the steering.

B. He didn't want to shift to neutral, because he was
afraid it might accidentally shift to reverse.


I'm pretty sure (B) was not a real danger, all cars
have had lockout since decades ago, right?

Anybody know if (A) was real?

J.

 

(A) can only happen if you put it in park, which can't happen at speed
anyway.
(B) you're right, there is a lockout.

 

Can't speak for Prius, but my Accord's steering lock doesn't engage
until the key is removed, so not a problem to turn it to OFF.

Yes, only in books like "Stroker Ace" do people shift into R at 100 kpm.
.... Maybe it's a knew Toyota defect?

FWIW, this guy's story doesn't smell right.

 

The correct answer is C. Unskilled driver.


However, point D. is the most important. Faulty equipment.

A lot of Toyotas have major safety issues.

This car, instead of being on a highway, could have easily accelerated
out of control in a busy parking lot, killing or injuring dozens of
people.

We should focus our attention on WHY these cars are accelerating
suddenly, THEN focus on the drivers.

 

Apparently not.

 

No, it's not.

You mean this report?:
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local-beat/Runaway-Prius-Needs-Help-to-StopCHP-86965487.html

That incident is /extremely/ suspicious.

The driver admitted he floored the gas pedal in order to
pass another car, so there's a VERY strong possibility that
he's just trying to get out of a speeding ticket.

The Prius does not have the CTS gas pedal unit, and this
particular one was not part of the Prius recall.

The Prius has regenerative braking. Touch the brakes, and the
power to the wheels is automatically killed. It's basically
the same idea as Toyota is now applying to all non-hybrids,
such as the one in which the San Diego cop died.

The way the Prius throttle and brake work, it is /impossible/ for
the car to keep accelerating if the brake pedal is touched.

Plus the shifter is a completely independent circuit. The claim
that the shifter would not go into Neutral is clearly bogus. It
went into Park just fine after the driver stopped the car.

It is very odd how as soon as the cop pulled in front of the Prius
(thus presenting the driver of the Prius with the very real
danger of damage to his car), the car STOPPED. How so
very convenient!

 

That's the incident, but I saw another report that
the driver REFUSED to even attempt to turn off the ignition
at speed or to shift to neutral, for the reasons I listed above.

While making a five-minute 911 call?

I have not heard that the police were anywhere in sight,
until he called for them.

I thought I heard only some/all Lexus models have the
cutout.

The tv reports all have the cop saying he could smell
the burnt brakes, apparently as he drove behind.

The driver would not ATTEMPT it.

Er, yes, but that may be the first time the
driver tried it.

I'm curious how the cop managed to catch up with a car
going 90. I'm even curious how there was such a stretch
of freeway anywhere in socal, that was open enough to go
90mph for more than about one minute - and heard at least
one local news guy ask the same question!

So, my take is that it was a real runaway, even if
it did begin with the guy putting the pedal to the metal,
but that he REFUSED to try TWO things that might have
cut it short.

Another part of this is the claim that the brakes
would NOT stop the runaway, which still seems bogus
to me in ALL of these incidents.

But if it's true, they might want to put bigger
brakes on these suckers. And maybe a tail hook.

J.

 

Some peopel say this is hoax.

Some people say Toyota PR people or lawyers are planting the
suspicions of a hoax too.

 

This doesn't seem bogus to me; most drivers do not know how to apply
maximum pressure to the brakes all at once. Riding the brakes with an
open throttle will quickly overheat the brakes greatly reducing/
eliminating their effectiveness.

No, the cars need brake assist. See Mercedes Benz.

And that's called brake override.

 

All he did was shake his head at the cop. That could mean a number of
things.

All you know are the TV reports, which will be found later on to be full
of omissions and errors. Guaranteed.

Well you thought incorrectly.

All Priuses with regenerative braking have /always/ had the brake
override.

You have no idea if the driver had been braking hard immediately prior
to the alleged acceleration incident.

If you have ANY idea of how a Prius works, you'd know that what the
driver alleges is impossible.

The Prius has regenerative braking. The system not only applies the
regenerative brakes when the brake pedal is pressed, but ALSO kills
power to the engine. It would be senseless to have it any other way,
since the regenerative braking would be negated if power were applied at
the same time.

In addition to the above, the stop lamp switch acts as a backup, so if
for some reason the regen system doesn't kick in, current through the
stop lamp circuit tells the PCM to kill engine power on its own.

The driver SAID he tried to put it in neutral and the shifter would not
move. This is also impossible.

Too many things would have to fail for the car to actually be impossible
to stop. The driver is lying.

 

YOU CANNOT DO THAT ON A PRIUS.

The Prius system kills power to the engine when the brake is pressed. It is
IMPOSSIBLE to have both gas and brake activated at the same time on the
Prius. IMPOSSIBLE. Ask any Prius driver.

Which all Prius's with regenerative braking have had all along. The
driver's Prius also has a brake override. In fact, it has TWO independent
override circuits.

 

Yeah, I knew that about Prius; I was referring to the more general
statement re. "in ALL of these incidents." I should have been more
specific.

Well,all but at least one.
I wonder if they'll have enough to convict him of something; perhaps
reckless endangerment.

 

specifically, it kills spark and gas. At that speed, the engine itself
is in fact turning. At any speed over 42mph, the engine must physically
turn--that's inherent in the design.

 

yeah, IF it were possible for the throttle to be open while the brake
pedal is being pushed.

Not possible in a Prius. This ain't your father's Oldsmobile.

 

OK, to be more specific... when the PCM sees both throttle and brake, it
shuts off the injectors, which is how it "kills power". The engine may
still be turning, but it is now a drag on the car, not a power source.

I'm not too sure the PCM kills the spark as well. Spark is normally left
running so as to retain the ability to be able to pulse the injectors in
order to prevent O2-poisoning of the cat.

 

I disagree;
if the car/engine IS in a "runaway" state,then the throttle IS open while
the driver is pressing on the brake.(that's why the car accellerates)
the engine is not going to "runaway" with a closed (idle position) throttle
plate.No matter how much fuel the injectors dump into the intakes.

Unless,like the Audi example,the driver only thinks they're pressing on the
brake and is really standing on the gas pedal.

That is why some believe there's a software problem that occurs under some
unknown combination of conditions,that commands the electrically driven
throttle plate to open wide.
This is a possibility with throttle-by-wire.(TBW)

Duplicating the fault condition will be tough.
Some of the affected cars need to have an external monitor connected that
monitors the various inputs and outputs of the ECU.(I'd add a temporary
fuel pump cutoff switch so you can shut it down quickly if necessary.)
(it seems the ECU is not setting it's own fault codes,but only Toyota knows
for certain,and they aint talking.)

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

 

In this report.

Again, in the other report, it stated he refused for (bogus) reason.

Still, y'all have convinced me, this one at least was probably a hoax.

J.

 

stop right there dude. the input conditions are only "unknown" to
people that don't understand the systems. they are very much known to
the people that do and very well mapped.

you're repeating underinformed guesswork. if you want to worry about
something in this ridiculous toyota fiasco, worry about the extent to
which the whitehouse feels entitled to waste billions of taxpayer
dollars on supporting companies that outsource their jobs to china. you
should also worry about the shameless fear-mongering that's trying to
exploit public ignorance of "black boxes". it's a very worrying
precedent. don't let yourself get suckered in.

 

If the Prius PCM sees brake application, it shuts off the injectors.
That's why throttle position does not matter.

The Prius is very specifically designed to disable fuel delivery on
account of its regenerative braking. It would be stupid for fuel to
continue to be delivered when you step on the brake; that would defeat
the whole idea of regenerative braking.

Most of the alleged runaway incidents will eventually be proven to be
that. Statistically, it's inevitable, since just about all other
unintended accelerations prove to be that as well.

It's such an "out there" posibility that it ranks alongside the idea of
the moon landings being faked.

Throttle-by-wire, on account of its inherent dangers, has a design that
is MANDATED by the feds. The feds control the design to such an extent
that it's not even possible to hack into the software. And Toyota has
several additinal fail-safes built into the mechanisms and the circuitry
to prevent runaways. And this works. Even those 12 confirmed incidents
of actual sticky CTS pedals resulted in no crashes.

The default state of the throttle is OFF, unless every single required
parameter is correct. The slightest error of any kind, and the throttle
refuses to operate.

There are too many separate things that would have to fail to cause a
runaway Prius. And this is by design.

And if nobody can duplicate the fault despite hundreds of hours of
effort (except in a highly-unlikely scenario), then that sort of tells
you something...

 

I remember the original Audi 5000 case, where the lady ran over her kid. 60
Minutes interviewed her, and she said she was most definitely on the brake
and not on the gas, and that the car was clearly defective. This was
reported without question by 60 Minutes and the rest of the hysterical
media. The problem was, that same lady had previously admitted to the
/cops/ that she'd mistakenly been pressing the GAS. 60 Minutes didn't
bother including that little nugget in their smear episodes.

I'm not sure this Prius incident is an actual hoax. But what it is,
exactly, will come out in the next few months, after everybody has lost
interest in it. Keep an eye on the magazines, and on the back pages of the
newspapers.