Page 133 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

how much detail on the sticky pedals would be revealed, TMA
President Yoshi Inaba and TMS President Jim Lentz met with
NHTSA on January 19 to share the latest information and come
to agreement on the details of a recall. That recall, announced on
January 21, 2010, covered all 2.3 million vehicles in the United
States with the CTS pedals.

THE “SMOKING GUNS” THAT WEREN’T
During the height of the crisis, two separate internal commu-
nications from Toyota were reported as “smoking guns,” pur-
portedly showing evidence that Toyota was aware of safety
problems and was actively hiding information from the public.
The more prominent of the two was an e-mail sent by Irv
Miller, a group vice president of communications for TMS before
he retired from Toyota in February 2010. On January 16, 2010,
Miller was involved in an e-mail exchange with Katsuhiko Ko-
ganei, a Japanese colleague, over the details of an announce-
ment about the sticky pedals. Koganei expressed hesitation
about making a public announcement and sharing technical de-
tails of the sticky pedal issue; Miller argued that Toyota had to
“come clean” about the sticky pedals. He warned, “We are not
protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide
on this one is over.” That certainly seems like evidence that Toy-
ota was concealing information about unintended acceleration.
The other was a presentation given by staffers of Toyota
Motor of America’s (TMA’s) Washington office, which handled
the company’s interactions with the NHTSA. That presentation,
from July 2009, noted that the company had saved $100 mil-
lion by persuading the NHTSA to accept a limited recall in 2007,

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