Opinion of Hearings?

I only saw part of it, its look like the congressmen had gave Mr Toyoda a break. Nothing like yesterday.

 

it's a dog and pony show. you can never look good, but i don't think that many people really care. most of the questions from congress are unanswerable. they a more intent on making a statement and garnering votes for "doing something". some independent authority needs to bring to light all auto mfg's problems and how they are handled by nhtsa and the mfg. themself. i think they are all probably similar.

 

typical witch hunt [someone must PAY, we are going to extract our #2 of flesh]:

"hold the suspect witch under water, if he/she comes up alive, it's definitley a witch, if it dies, well I guess it wasn't a witch"

rotflol

 

Watched the last 45 minutes or so. Some of the questions were unbelievable (will you ever recall my Camry hybrid, for any reason!).

Overall, I think they did a good job, given the tough circumstances.

 

I'm impressed. I never thought the pols would be that creative in trying to save the American car industry. Somebody did a good marketing job. Ford and GM will get some market share from this--for awhile. I suspect that's what it's all about.

Smart investors know there's never been a better time to buy a Toyota--or a Honda.

 

A car in not an investment. Its a consumable. Smart salesman will tell you to buy their car. Smart investors will buy their stock.

 

i'm buying if $55.

 

The stock is down over $20 in less than 30 days, it has been beaten up pretty badly. It also had huge volume on the way down, if you look at this chart:
TM: Basic Chart for Toyota Motor Corp - Yahoo! Finance=

Not sure when a good time to jump in would be, but its recent high was over $92, and its in the low 70's now. Of course it could go either way still.

 

Really enjoyed the webinar .... very informative, first time I realized the throttle control system was a duplex setup. Gave me greater confidence in the fail-safe character of the design.
I am still curious as to the details of the ABC expert's claim that he had discovered a design flaw, apparently based on an induced short-circuit in the system which he claims is possible under normal operational conditions.
Where are the details?

 

lol.

I only read reports and saw a couple of clips. No way I could watch it all. The way this reads, its as if you have concluded that toyota has been doing everything right, and they have this pr trip to go through. I would say most people have a different view of the company.

The major things I saw. They played softball with toyota. No one really nailed them on issues that they could. Their was disbelief that toyota really understands or is honest about the problem, but the comittees seemed satisfied about adding brake interlocks and having outside companies look over the safety.

The answer about toyota not providing encryption keys to the nhtsa agency is troubling. That the nhtsa has relied so much on the auto manufacturers being honest is more troubling. I expect that there will be some changes here. Toyota facing up to its safety problems and nhtsa watching them and other automanufactures will be a good thing.

The answers on how long Toyota knew about the sticky pedals and other issues are troubling. The likelyhood that electronic components including software are at the heart of many of the problems seems more likely as toyota continually denies it, but has no explanation.

These things are normally dog and pony shows. At least some toyota documents came out, and they came out with the prius and corola recalls because of the pressure. The real test will be how dealers treat complaints in the future (will toyota again say we know its floor mats when they know there are other problems simply because the fix is cheaper and they can snow the nthsa?) If that continues the downward spiral continues. If Mr. Toyoda actually grabs the reins and stops the behavior of fighting toyota core values - continuous improvement, listening to customers, and going out and looking for themselves - there is hope of a quick turnaround. Right now it may all be because of the press and pressure.

 

I am not seeing eye to eye with most of you:

According to the media, Toyota/Toyoda did not do well today. Read some AP articles published in the last few hours. Congress is blasting Toyoda and the media isn't helping. They're obviously very sorry - what else can they do? And I hate how the congressmen are so expressive and firey as if they themselves are actually affected by the Toyota problems. They all drive state-owned gas guzzling GM SUVs anyway - what do they have to worry about?

The government's $2 billion stake in GM is convoluting the fairness of these hearings.

The good news today is that GM will no longer make the Hummer. Thank you China.

 

Bit off topic, but

Still viewing it, and I get an impression that for any computer related unintended acceleration to take place, the two CPUs would need to agree on how much the throttle should be opened. Having two CPUs should protect against HW failures. However, if both computers are running the same computing architecture and software, there is no protection against software or hardware bugs (like when the Intel CPUs had the division error that only came up with specific spreadsheets).

The doomsday scenario is that the SW simply goes to a state where it concludes that the throttle needs to be wide open. No detected faults, no diagnostic codes.

Now, if the CPUs were running on different computing architectures, and 100% independently developed code for the design specification, the possibility for HW or SW bugs causing unintended acceleration would be eliminated, barring some weird bug in the design specification itself. This level of detail did not come through in the webinar, though.

 

Reguarding an opinion on the hearings I actually think Toyota is handling an adverse situation very well.

But you also have to keep in mind that "we" at Prius Chat are probably more focused on Toyota and the hearings than most of the general public. My point being it doesn't matter too much what happens within the hearings, it's how it get's reported. Because most people are going to "judge" the hearings by whatever soundbite they hear about the hearings, not the hearings themselves.

Most of the reports I've heard about the hearings are still making it all sound as ominous as possible for Toyota.

This is just a difficult situation for Toyota.

I'm still looking forward to a period when there is a nightly newscast that doesn't mention Toyota.

 

$2 billion sounds way too low. The government owns 60% of GM now. GM vows to repay $6.7 billion in bailout money by June / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com and GM to start repaying loans due to reduced losses - Nov. 16, 2009 says

http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/11/news/companies/gm_taxpayer_profit/ says

On that note, http://www.cnbc.com/id/25392542 says that GM's all time high was "market cap of about $56 billion in 2000, when the stock was at its all-time high of $94.62 a share."

 

OK, I re-phase it as "Smart investors will keep an eye on their stock."

 

2 billion?

I thought they were asking for what, $25 billlion to bail them out just last year?

 

It was a circus, and Gilbert was the stunt clown. He jumps into
a pile of wiring he barely understands with both feet, and when
he tries to walk falls flat on his face. The audience roars
with merriment.
.
_H*

 

perhaps another "Tiger Woods" type incident will take the media focus off Toyota, after all the media has the attention span of a knat.