How much of the Toyota hysteria is just that?

The Toyota joke that I came up with, which I shared with my students as well, was:

You know why the latest model Prius has problems stopping?
Because, when Toyota upgraded the battery, they used the Energizer batteries and now the Prius keeps on going :)

But, of course, there is a difference between joking around and systematically understanding social issues.  As I posted earlier, I think we are overplaying the Toyota recall issue.  And, as we get more into the data, well, I will use Megan McArdle's words:

[You] don't usually make a profit by killing your customers.  It's too risky, in this age of nosy regulators and angry consumer activists.

Their behavior becomes a bit more explicable when you consider this argument from Ted Frank:

The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota "sudden acceleration" fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages of the drivers involved were striking. 

In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89--and I'm leaving out the son whose age wasn't identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

 These "electronic defects" apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).

And based on the data, McArdle has the following chart:

I tell you, the story is a lot more complicated than a simple narrative that we might prefer.

The other day, a colleague and I were walking from the parking lot to our offices, and I asked him if his wife was enjoying her retired life.  "Yes" he said, and added that she is recovering from an accident.  What happened?  His wife was walking towards her car with a couple of shopping bags when she was hit by a Lexus.  Nothing major, but nothing minor either. 
I asked him whether it was related to brakes/speeding up problems of Toyota--after all, Lexus is a Toyota product.  He said that the driver apologized profusely because it was her fault, and then he noted that it was quite an old woman who was driving it. 
Why mention this?  Because, McArdle reports that it is not only the age, but also ....

a slight majority of the incidents involved someone either parking, pulling out of a parking space, in stop and go traffic, at a light or stop sign . . . in other words, probably starting up from a complete stop. 

and has the following chart:

So, who you gonna believe? :)

Toyota recall: much ado about nothing?

The deaths and various levels of unfortunate experiences are horrible, indeed.  There is no denying that.

But, are we over, over emphasizing the risks associated with this?  Robert Wright, always the sober and rational person, writes:

it worries me that this Toyota thing worries us so much. We live in a world where responding irrationally to risk (say, the risk of a terrorist attack) can lead us to make mistakes (say, invading Iraq). So the Toyota story is a kind of test of our terrorism-fighting capacity — our ability to keep our wits about us when things seem spooky.
Passing the test depends on lots of things. It depends on politicians resisting the temptation to score cheap points via the exploitation of irrational fear. It depends on journalists doing the same. And it depends on Americans in general keeping cool, notwithstanding the likely failure of many politicians and journalists to do their part.

Wright correctly points out that the odds of dying from a car-related accident are much, much higher:

your chances of being involved in a fatal accident over the next two years because of the unfixed problem are a bit worse than one in a million — 2.8 in a million, to be more exact. Meanwhile, your chances of being killed in a car accident during the next two years just by virtue of being an American are one in 5,244.

So driving one of these suspect Toyotas raises your chances of dying in a car crash over the next two years from .01907 percent (that’s 19 one-thousandths of 1 percent, when rounded off) to .01935 percent (also 19 one-thousandths of one percent)

One of the best comments to Wright's piece is this:

Nobody understands risk. Smokers will complain about the dangers of Toyota software.

Cartoons for the day: Toyota

Toyota, Prius, and .... South Park :)

Yesterday as I was driving back home, I spotted a Toyota in my rear view mirror, and boy I changed lanes fast!
And today I was thinking that the answer to "what is faster than a speeding bullet" may no longer be "superman" but "a Toyota car" .... and then the news item about the brakes in Prius models ....
Which is when I was reminded about this absolutely hysterically satirical South Park episode, "Smug Alert" :)
I wish there were an embed option ....

Meanwhile, Apple's co-founder, Steve Wozniak says it is not a mechanical problem of sticky gas pedals or anything.  Then?  "It is the software, stupid!" is what he says.  Well, not those very words--I paraphrased it that way!

What has happened to the auto industry?  As a baseball manager once asked, "can't anybody here play this game?"

So, Toyota is the new GM?

Remember Government Motors General Motors?  It was bumped into second position by the mighty Toyota?  I suppose one cannot be king for long:

Toyota’s “reputation for long-term quality is finished,” said Maryann Keller, senior adviser at Casesa Shapiro Group LLC in New York, a strategic adviser to auto industry. “People aren’t going to buy Toyotas, period. It doesn’t matter which model. What’s happened is sufficient to keep people out of the stores,” she said in an interview yesterday.

The carmaker said late yesterday it’s expanding a record 4.26 million-vehicle recall announced in November to include 1.09 million additional U.S. autos, to fix accelerator pedals at risk of being trapped by floor mats. Losing its reputation for quality would undercut Toyota’s decades-long campaign to promote reliability and safety that helped it become No. 2 in U.S. sales.

So, if our logic for pouring money into GM and Chrysler because they are American companies that needed to be propped up, will we then extend that sympathy to Toyota too? Just asking :)

Ford and Toyota sell .... Chrysler and GM?

Turns out that Government Motors General Motors, is still struggling .... while Ford, which did not get any bailout money, is doing fine, says the WSJ:

Ford Motor Co. posted a 33% rise in December U.S. light-vehicle sales, ending a stellar year for the auto maker compared with its rivals. Ford recorded its first full-year market-share gain since 1995.
Meanwhile, Chrysler Group LLC posted a 3.7% decline compared with a year earlier and said its full-year sales were the worst the auto maker had seen in 47 years.
The largest U.S. auto maker—General Motors Co.—posted a 5.7% decline, but said its process to sell down Pontiac and Saturn inventory was ahead of schedule and reported a 2.2% increase for the four brands GM will keep after its streamlining.
Toyota Motor Corp. of Japan said its U.S. sales rose 32% to 187,860 vehicles last month.
The results underscore how the auto makers have responded to the recession that began officially in December 2007 and led to the bankruptcy filings of Chrysler and GM.

More cash for clunkers?

GM's imminent death. And then Ford and Chrysler.

I feel terrible for the familes of people who work for the Big2.5, but to a large extent the companies could have averted most of the crisis, if only they had planned ahead. Three colleagues and I had some spirited discussions on this--hey, if elected officials are qualified to comment on this, well, how much worse our discussions can be off-the-mark? :-) Of the four of us, one was in favor, two seemed to be ambivalent, and one was opposed. I think this vote-split reflects well the mood of the country and the Congress too.

Anyway, back to the planning ahead. Years ago, California, which was concerned about air quality, the state initiated a Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) program. The auto industry attacked it from the start. Here is a summary of the ZEV program. The right-wing Republicans and free-marketeers also attacked it--they preferred to arbitrate pollution through carbon-trading and other so-called-market mechanisms. Well, the ZEV continued to morph under the relentless attacks and lawsuits.

And now GM cries because it focused on its short-term profits--selling SUVs and pickups--when now the market favors fuel-efficient cars and trucks. Hey, they could have developed them in the 20 years, like how Honda and Toyota did.