A little bit of investigative journalism goes a long way, as this article by Michael Fumento of The Calgary Herald demonstrates. Investigations into the validity of the claims made by Prius driver, James Sikes, that his car was out of control, offer some interesting insights.

“On the very day Toyota was making a high-profile defence of its cars, one of them was speeding out of control,” said CBS News – and a vast number of other media outlets worldwide. The driver of a 2008 Toyota Prius, James Sikes, called 911 to say his accelerator was stuck, he was zooming faster than 140 kilometers per hour and absolutely couldn’t slow down.

It got far more dramatic, though. The California Highway Patrol responded and “to get the runaway car to stop, they actually had to put their patrol car in front of the Prius and step on the brakes.” During over 20 harrowing minutes, according to NBC’s report, Sikes “did everything he could to try to slow down that Prius.” Others said, “Radio traffic indicated the driver was unable to turn off the engine or shift the car into neutral.”

In fact, almost none of this was true. Virtually every aspect of Sikes’ story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he’d tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute.

The lack of skepticism from the beginning was stunning. I combed through haystacks of articles without producing such needles as the words “alleges” or “claims.” Where to begin?

Well, the patrol car didn’t slow down the Prius; the bumpers never touched. The officers used a loudspeaker to tell Sikes to use the brakes and emergency brake together. He did; the car slowed to about 90 km/h. Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a halt. He stopped the car on his own.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the transmission or the Prius engine button either. Over a 23-minute period, the 911 dispatcher repeatedly pleaded with Sikes to shift into neutral. He simply refused and then essentially stopped talking to her except to say that he thought he could smell his brakes burning.

“I thought about” shifting into neutral, Sikes said at a televised news conference the day after the incident. But “I had never played with this kind of a transmission, especially when you’re driving and I was actually afraid to do that.” Sikes, who has driven the car for two years, also said “I figured if I knocked it over (the gear knob) the car might flip.”

He told CNN, “I was afraid to try to (reach) over there and put it in neutral. I was holding onto the steering wheel with both hands – 94 miles an hour in a Toyota Prius is fast.” Yet for much of the ride he had a phone in one hand.

And this is especially interesting: Most gear shifts are on the console, requiring the hand to drop to shift. But in the 2008 Prius it’s located on the dash within inches of the steering wheel – precisely to allow shifting without the hand leaving the wheel. I sat in one and did it easily. Another unique feature of the shift is that it’s amazingly simple, with only forward, reverse, neutral and “B.” The express purpose of “B” is to slow the car while preserving the brakes, as in a steep descent. Sikes actually could have shifted into two different gears.

Moreover, why would Sikes describe shifting gears as somehow “playing with the transmission?” And apparently he’s never shifted while the vehicle was moving and thought somehow a gear shift could flip his car.

The dispatcher also pleaded with him repeatedly to hit the ignition button. Again, he says he was simply afraid to.

Early in the news conference, he said it was because “there was too much traffic to just shut the car off. You know, turn off the vehicle and get hit in the rear.” But that’s always true when you slow down; just make sure nobody’s right behind you. Then there are the brakes.

Sikes said his brakes had just been checked out a few weeks earlier, but during the incident he “was laying on the brakes. It was not slowing down.”

Others have made similar claims, so Car & Driver magazine recently put them to the test. They found a V6 Camry at full throttle could be stopped at 130 metres. But to really test the claim, they used a powerful 400 kW supercharged Roush Stage 3 Mustang. It took 275 metres, but stop it did.

By comparison, the Prius can only muster 133 kW (73 kW petrol engine and 60 kW from electric motor). Further, as Newton’s Second Law reminds us, weight is inherently a factor in slowing a moving object. The Prius weighs about two-thirds of what the Roush does.

But while these other cars were brought to full stop, Sikes says he couldn’t even reduce his speed. A video on the web also demonstrates a 2008 Prius easily slowed to a stop with the accelerator fully depressed.

An assisting officer said he saw Sikes apply the brakes and smelled them.

Now here’s the potential smoking gun: Sikes told the reporters that “I was reaching down and trying to pull up on the gas pedal. It didn’t move at all; it was stationary.” That’s awfully daring for somebody who insisted he didn’t even want to take a hand off his steering wheel, notwithstanding that he did so to hold his phone.

I tried to imitate Sikes’ alleged effort in a 2008 Prius. In my case, it required squashing my face against the radio and completely removing my eyes from the road. To settle this issue, Sikes would simply have to sit in his Prius and show he could reach behind the pedal while it was fully depressed. Why has nobody asked him to do so? So why did he do it? Sleuth work at the websites Jalopnik.com and Gawker.com reveals that Sikes and his wife Patty in 2008 filed for bankruptcy and are more than $700 000 in debt. Among their creditors is Toyota Financial Services for a lease on a 2008 Toyota Prius, with value at time of bankruptcy of $20 494. The Jalopnik website shows a copy of Toyota’s secured claims form, though when Jalopnik questioned Sikes by e-mail he denied being behind on his Prius payments.

But the news conference alone makes it clear Sikes’ story didn’t wash. Journalism schools are supposed to teach that skepticism is paramount. “If your mother says it, check it out,” goes the adage. Yet comments on websites across the country reveal that practically everyone thought the Prius incident was a hoax – though they couldn’t prove it – except for the media.

They have been as determined to not investigate Sikes’ claims as Sikes was to not stop his car. It’s a Toyota media feeding frenzy and the media aren’t about to let little things like incredible stories and readily refutable claims get in the way.

After examining Sikes’ Prius, U.S. safety investigators said earlier on Monday that they had found no evidence to support or disprove Mr. Sikes’ version of events. “These findings suggest there should be further examination of Mr. Sikes’ account of the events of March 8,” Toyota said.

A lawyer for Sikes, John Gomez, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Via CalgaryHerald

Toyota’s popular environmental crusader, the Prius hybrid, will have its production levels slashed this month as the Japanese manufacturer struggles to address claims of braking system problems.

Nearly 450 000 third-generation Prius models were recalled earlier this year amid claims the brakes could fail to properly function when the car switched between petrol and electric mode, or was driven on particularly slippery or bumpy roads. The issue has caused a sales slump for Toyota with the US market — the Prius’ single most important market — recording a 40 per cent fall in Prius purchases.

Reports from Tokyo say Toyota will trim 10 per cent from Prius production levels to meet the slowing demand. Prius production reached a peak output of 50 000 units per month back in October 2009, after going on sale in May the same year. It’s understood that figure will now be scaled back to around 45 000 units a month. In the Prius’ home market of Japan, the petrol-electric hybrid has been a sales success, and thanks to state subsidies and tax incentives, has topped the nation’s best seller list for the past nine months.

“The outlook for Prius demand is uncertain,” a Toyota spokesperson said. In the US, regulators are investigating more than 60 reports of customer issues with the Prius’ braking system as Toyota’s investigation of the problem continues.

If you own a third-generation Toyota Prius, you can find recall information here.

Toyota South Africa Motors (TSAM) today announced the vehicles to be included in its recall service campaign to correct the accelerator mechanism in these cars. The list of affected vehicles is the result of an exhaustive technical study which covered all Toyota vehicles on sale in South Africa. The affected passenger vehicle models are:

• Toyota Corolla (February 2007 to January 2010) – 45 040 vehicles
• Toyota Auris (June 2006 to January 2010) – 6 665 vehicles
• Toyota Verso (October 2008 to January 2010) – 841 vehicles

This equates to a total of 52 546 Toyota vehicles that will form part of this campaign.

Toyota will start contacting customers of the affected vehicles immediately. All Toyota dealers in South Africa and the countries that TSAM serve will be involved. These include Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. Owners will be given the opportunity to contact their nearest Toyota dealer at their convenience and schedule a time for the repair. The action will take place as a precautionary measure,  despite the fact that the problem has not surfaced to the same effect in the hot and dry climate of South Africa.

In more detail, the problem relates to the operation between the mechanism’s friction shoe that provides pedal feel and ensures pedal stability, and the adjoining surface. The corrective action will take the form of a small precision-cut steel plate that will be placed in the assembly to alleviate the friction between the friction shoe and adjoining surface. This will prevent the problem from surfacing in vehicles equipped with this steel bar for the life of the vehicle.

Repairs will start from 23 February 2010 and the corrective action should take less than an hour, but could take longer if the dealer is experiencing very high levels of service calls. TSAM will honour the full cost of the repair and no owner will be required to pay, regardless of the state of his or her service plan, warranty or the ownership status of the vehicle.

“We would like to apologise to all Toyota vehicle owners for the uncertainty and inconvenience that this process may have caused. We value the trust and confidence that Toyota owners have put in our brand over the past five decades and we will do everything in our power to honour that,” says Dr Johan van Zyl, President and CEO of TSAM.

As further support to the campaign, concerned customers can visit www.toyota.co.za or phone the Customer Contact Centre on 0800-139-111 for up to date information on the recall service campaign.

In an unrelated service action, TSAM has decided to recall all new generation Prius models (August 2009 to February 2010) for a software upgrade to the electronic brake system. This action involves 216 vehicles. This upgrade will address the delayed brake feel on slippery surfaces that has been experienced elsewhere in the world. Given the small volume of new generation vehicles affected Toyota is already in the process of contacting each Prius owner to inform them of this upgrade and schedule a convenient appointment time at their closest Prius dealer.

In late 2009 a recall of 4.2 million U.S. vehicles was issued by Toyota Motor Co. over concerns that accelerator pedals could become lodged under floor mats, causing sudden acceleration. That problem was blamed for several crashes, including an accident involving a Lexus that accelerated to more than 200 km/h before crashing in San Diego, killing four people.

The latest issue however, relates to potential problems with the actual accelerator pedal mechanism, causing the accelerator to become stuck regardless of whether the vehicle contains a floor mat. Toyota said the accelerator pedal mechanism, may, under very rare circumstances, be harder to depress, slow to return to the idle position or remain open in a partially depressed position.

This week it was announced that the recall would officially be expanded to other geographies, including South Africa. Given this development Toyota South Africa have identified the Auris, new generation Verso and Corolla as part of the technical study of all the vehicles that are sold in South Africa. It is likely that these three model ranges will be included in the South African recall programme.

Toyota has not excluded any other models yet and is expected to announce any further additions to their recall list by mid-February – we’ll keep you posted.