Price War.
Spoke Matt Murray, Roll Call, re the testimony to the House Oversight Committee this news cycle by the troubled, surly, presumptive Toyota executive James Lentz, and learned that the subcommittee on Energy and Commerce broke into regional lines. The pols with Toyota plants in their districts, such as Joe Barton of Texas, asserted that there should not be a rush to judgment, and that the Feds in the form of NHTSA must be included in the investigation of the sudden acceleration bogeyman. The pols from old-line US auto maker states, such as Bart Stupak of Michigan, pummeled Lentz and moved him to admit that the problem is not determined and not found yet. I follow this story closely with Lou Ann Hammond of Carlist.com, and it is clear that the Toyota executives have botched this scenario so badly that they cannot stop failing even now. They have committed the Error of the Third Kind, answering the wrong question precisely. The correct question is, Can we trust Toyota? The answer so far is, No. Wednesday 24 is the show-and-tell speech by Akio Toyoda, the effusively opaque grandson of the founder, who originally refused to travel to Washinngton to testify. What's in it for Washington? The real fireworks are about Toyota, not healthcare. The bargains have started already, with a Camry leasing for $179 a month for a three-year lease, no interest. A Prius 2010 is $249 a month. Sensational. Hope this starts a price war with Volvo. The Obama administration may have caught some luck, because the Toyota scandal is so massive and sinister -- with deaths, lies, videotape, Japanese impudence, American craven behavior -- that the healthcare fiascos looks like a lecture series in comparison. It is hard not to break down laughing at the numbing folly of the Japanese and their American lackeys. Toyota, according to Lou Ann Hammond, went for market share, not quality control, and the drive to build cars created a corporate culture of short-cuts and denials and, in the end, self-destruction. Will Toyota recover? Yes, but not for a time, and not until Ford enjoys a burst of energy, and even old Government Motors will not be left out. Lentz? Smoke. Akio Toyoda? Who?
There's yet another problem coming to the fore with certain cars: steering. It seems that in their continuing quest to make cars lighter - struggling to comply with government mandated fuel efficiency standards - automakers have decided that a computer chip would eliminate the need for a considerably heavier steering-assist motor assembly. There have been problems with under and over-steering. I can't help but thinking that Toyota's acceleration woes are due to much of the same. There is no reason why the old, reliable and time-tested systems should be replaced simply to meet some government mandate based on what we now all know is faulty science. This is precisely how mistakes happen – mistakes that could have been avoided under normally occurring market-based timelines.
It is perhaps a sign of the times that our government – sensing itself on the ropes – declares that everything must now be done in a rush. Health care must be passed now; the same with jobs (bill); cap and trade; education and banking reform; immigration; don’t ask, don’t tell; energy independence; and so many others. The rush is on perhaps to avoid the shifting of political realities; or, perhaps, to build monumental political legacies; or, perhaps more ominously, to overwhelm the system a la the Cloward-Piven (strategy).
As the old adage, “Haste makes waste,” will continue to hold true, perhaps the whole point of all of this is precisely: ‘waste’ the old, on with the revolution!!!
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
I suspect that the breakdown of the QC/SPC system in Totota results less from haste than from seniority. If we were to examine the CV's of the salarymen running quality control in Toyota, I expect them to include very few if any software guys at the most senior levels. The fly-by-wire design transition requires a corresponding change in the fundamental design of the QC/SPC systems.
Debugging is a science of its own. Software failures are not typically drifts from spec , a move from .06 to .08 in a cutting tool, but rather catastrophic crazy changes - from "open window" to "flood the basement". As software content increased management structure and systems should have changed. Did they? Will they?
GM just announced the Shutdown of Hummer, China deal fell through. Bad days for MoTown.
We have 3, count them 3, federal investigations, involving two and potentially all three branches of government in this union-inspired kabuki. DoT is investigating. Congress is investigating. DoJ has convened a grand jury to consider criminal charges. The apparent topic is public safety. The real topic is the unionization of Toyota. This is the kind of thing that can happen when the government owns 60% of an industry. Vide the Post Office for analogs: corrupt, inefficient, bloated, heavily unionized, monopolistic, and yet wonderously jealous of any competition. This all out assault on Toyota is harassment of a competitor, not vigilence in the name of the public. If public safety were Congress' real concern, they would have initiated criminal investigations into the commuter airline industry for overworking and undertraining their pilots, resulting in the deaths of 55 people in the Colgan crash alone. Pilot fatigue and poor training are notorious, wide-spread, and well documented among commuter airlines and kill far more people than the pitiful handful killed in Toyota vehicles. This is trade war and protectionism as a side show for a deaf and floundering Democratic party.
Here's how this drama is likely to play out: serial posturing by politicians, followed by the firing or retirement of a few senior American Toyota officials, followed by the Toyota Apology Tour while it negotiates unionizing its nation-wide workforce and the precise amounts it will pay into Democratic campaign coffers in return for reduced charges and fines. And in 5-10 years, no Toyota vehicles will be manufactured in the US. Canada, yes; Mexico, yes; US, no. Because the product is basically sound, there will be scant slump in Toyota car sales, and GM and Crysler will still be defunct at the end of the same 5-10 year period.