Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will reveal the results of a year-long investigation into Toyota's alleged sudden acceleration problems.
The problems may have their roots in Japan, but a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, could play a pivotal role in determining the future of the world’s largest automaker.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is expected to release the results of a long and intense probe into the so-called “sudden acceleration” problem that has reportedly plagued Toyota products.
The maker acknowledged it had a pair of problems, first recalling millions of cars, in October 2009, due to loose carpets that could trap the accelerator pedal, then announcing a second recall three months later because of potentially sticky throttles. Toyota went so far as to shut down production at most of its U.S. plants, also halting sales of vehicles on dealer lots until it could make necessary repairs.
But critics have continued to insist that the recalls didn’t address alleged defects with the electronic control systems used to manage the maker’s vehicles. Any number of possible problems, from software glitches to electromagnetic interference, have been accused of causing some Toyota products to suddenly surge out of control.
Toyota has repeatedly resisted such claims, vowing to fight the hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed against it.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – which suffered a black eye when internal Toyota documents suggested lax regulators allows Toyota to sidestep an earlier recall – ordered an official investigation last spring. NHTSA turned to space agency NASA to oversee the study.
Preliminary results, released last August, suggested that, at that point, the investigation had failed to turn up any electronic gremlins – though critics have argued that such problems may be hard to reproduce in a lab.
But should U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, as many expect, give Toyota a clean bill of health, it could begin the process of resuscitating the brand’s reputation. Of course, that can take time, as German maker Audi discovered, two decades ago, when a similar investigation blamed driver error, rather than product defects in another sudden acceleration investigation.
Toyota does have other safety issues to contend with, however. In total, it recalled 11 million vehicles in the U.S. along during just 2010 – for everything from sticky accelerator pedals to excess corrosion and faulty brakes.
The maker’s sales have suffered as a result, Toyota the only major maker to see its volume decline during the final three months of 2010. Sales posted a double-digit gain in January, but that followed a significant increase in Toyota’s already hefty incentives.
Meanwhile, Toyota paid a record $48.4 million in fines, last year, for failing to respond properly when it learned of potential safety defects.
Should the NASA/NHTSA study uncover technical problems that have not yet been addressed it is anyone’s guess what impact that will have on the beleaguered maker.
The timing of NHTSA’s announcement will be serendipitous, as Toyota plans to release its latest quarterly earnings report just a few hours earlier — the numbers expected to show a significant impact from the maker’s ongoing safety-related problems.