Global Biz

Toyota faces federal, congressional probe

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-02-23 14:16

Eric Dezenhall, a crisis management consultant in Washington, said the subpoena might cause Toyota to limit its testimony because apologies are admissible in court. He predicted the company would walk a line between carefully phrased testimony and enough disclosure to describe the cars' mechanical problems and steps Toyota had taken to make the vehicles safer.

In his opinion piece, Toyoda vowed to oversee "fundamental changes" in the way the automaker handles current and future safety problems. He said he was looking forward to discussing the "back-to-basics" approach Wednesday when he is scheduled to testify before US lawmakers.

House investigators said they believe Toyota intentionally resisted the possibility that electronic defects caused unintended acceleration in their vehicles and then misled the public into thinking its recalls would fix all the problems.

Toyoda contends the automaker simply did a poor job of diagnosing the safety issues. "While we investigated malfunctions in good faith, we focused too narrowly on technical issues without taking full account of how our customers use our vehicles," he wrote in the Journal.

Rep. Bart Stupak, of Michigan, who will run Tuesday's hearing, said documents and interviews demonstrate that the company relied on a flawed engineering report to reassure the public that it found the answer to the problem.

In a letter to Toyota, Stupak said a review of consumer complaints shows company personnel identified sticking pedals or floor mats as the cause of only 16 percent of the unintended acceleration reports.

Some 70 percent of the acceleration incidents in Toyota's customer call database involved vehicles that are not subject to the 2009 and 2010 floor mat and "sticky pedal" recalls.

In a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Stupak's committee raised questions about whether the agency lacked the expertise to review defects in vehicle electronics and said NHTSA was slow to respond to 2,600 complaints of sudden unintended acceleration from 2000 to 2010.

The government conducted only one investigation, beginning in March 2004, into whether electronic throttle controls could lead to sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles and closed it a few months later. Since 2004, NHTSA has rejected four petitions from owners asking for investigations into sudden unintended acceleration in Toyotas.

As regulators looked into reports that accelerator pedals were becoming jammed in floor mats on Lexus ES350 sedans, a Toyota safety official told colleagues that NHTSA didn't appear to be concerned.

"I ran into a lot of different investigators and (Office of Defect Investigations) staff and when asked why I was there, when I told them for the (Lexus) ES350 floor mats, they either laughed or rolled their eyes in disbelief," wrote Chris Santucci, a former NHTSA employee who works for Toyota.

Toyota said it was reviewing the Stupak letter and would cooperate with the committee's inquiry. Transportation Department officials did not immediately comment on the letters from the congressional panel.