Page 130 - Toyota Under Fire

THE RECALL CRISIS

root cause was the same: high-humidity or high-heat conditions.
Engineers in Japan carrying out this testing were cut off from the
atmosphere in the United States at this time, and they still did
not consider the sticking pedals to be a safety issue but simply a
customer-satisfaction one. It required attention, but not the urgent
response that a safety defect would call for, especially given the very
small number of vehicles that were reported with the problem.
So while public concern about Toyota was heating up in the
United States, and speculation about Toyota’s electronics as
the cause was running rampant, Toyota’s decision makers on
recalls in Japan were looking dispassionately at data about ac-
celerator pedals that were not performing as expected but did
not change customers’ ability to stop their vehicles by using the
brakes. TMS spokespeople in the United States were battling
the rumors and speculation as best they could, but they were un-
aware of the global picture on sticking pedals. That was partic-
ularly apparent when, in late December 2009, media attention
was drawn to a customer who drove his vehicle to a New Jersey
Toyota dealer, complaining of a sticking accelerator. Neither the
dealer nor Toyota’s external communications personnel were
equipped to deal with the issue because they were unaware of the
full scope of the sticky pedal issues.
How did this disconnect between quality and safety person-
nel in Japan and customer-facing personnel in the United States
come to be? It was based in the history of Toyota’s evolution from
a small Japanese company to a leading global manufacturer.
As far back as the founding of NUMMI, Toyota’s first at-
tempt to produce vehicles in North America, the company has
had the intention of making its regional operations more self-
reliant. A major reason for engineering and building cars in
North America for the North American market comes back to

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