Page 109 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

separately and in conjunction with external EMI. All of these
tests are designed to exceed the standards specified by the So-
ciety of Automotive Engineers, the International Standards Or-
ganization (ISO), and the European Union. In general, Toyota
aims to test at EMI exposure levels two to four times higher than
regulations and standards require.
The chambers are used to test individual components, sub-
systems, whole systems, and whole vehicles.* Every model that
is developed ends up going through more than 1 million hours
of testing before going into production. That doesn’t include
the testing done on individual components by suppliers; for in-
stance, Denso, which makes ETCs, also tests its designs inde-
pendently of Toyota in its own test chambers.
Testing doesn’t stop at the design phase, however. Toyota
continues to test older-model vehicles looking for any combi-
nation of factors that could either cause a component failure—
leading to the system’s going into fail-safe mode or setting a
trouble code—or exhibiting unintended behavior.
After all this testing on hundreds of vehicles going on for
more than 20 years, there has never been a case of interfer-
ence or component or system failure in a completed design that
does not trigger fail-safes. In fact, for a number of vehicles (e.g.,
the current Camry), by the time they get to the production de-
sign, Toyota has been unable to cause the system to fail at all,
no matter how severe the EMI induced. While Toyota’s testing
is extensive, it is not unique. Every major vehicle manufacturer

* A video that shows a test chamber in operation and describes the various
tests run can be found online at http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/electronic
.aspx?fid=121565&id=E0C19173.

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