This week, automotive technology professor Dr. David Gilbert said he plans to visit Exponent, the California-based research firm that helped Toyota criticize his research on the carmaker’s sudden unintended acceleration problem in a March 8 webcast and news conference.
“I am pleased that further examination of these safety and acceleration issues is taking place and I look forward to participating in this process,” Gilbert said in a statement after the webcast aired.
Gilbert used “careful and deliberate manipulation,” to obtain “unnatural” sudden unintended acceleration in his experiment with a Toyota vehicle, representatives from Toyota and Exponent Research, Inc. said in the webcast.
Relying on testimony from the independent research firm, Toyota attempted to prove through several demonstrations in front of reporters at its national headquarters in Torrance, Calif., that its electronics systems were not at fault for instances of SUA in its vehicles.
Since it was founded more than 40 years ago by five Stanford University researchers, Exponent has been called to defend large corporations such as Boeing Co., Suzuki, General Electric Co. and Ford Motor Co.
Exponent was hired by Exxon in 1989 to orchestrate its defense of the Valdez oil spill and by Swiss Re, an insurer of the World Trade Center, in 2001 to attempt to cut the amount of money owed by the insurer after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a Feb. 18 article in the Los Angeles Times.
Toyota, which has donated vehicles and funds to SIUC’s automotive technology department during a 25-year partnership, has recalled more than 8 million vehicles since October because of SUA-related incidents in more than a dozen models.
The March 8 demonstrations mimicked the one done by Gilbert in his research on SUA in Toyota vehicles, which began Feb. 11. In a Feb. 23 broadcast, Gilbert showed ABC News’ Brian Ross he could introduce a “fault,” an instance of SUA, to a Toyota vehicle without the computer reporting it as an error. The day after the broadcast aired, Gilbert testified in the first of three congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., in which members of Congress criticized Toyota’s handling of the SUA problem.
Gilbert “re-engineered and rewired” the accelerator pedal circuit on the Toyota Avalon used in the ABC broadcast, Exponent electronics expert Shukri Souri said.
With a complete alteration of the pedal circuit, including the addition of a resistor, an instance of SUA could go undetected by Toyota’s computer, but Gilbert failed to provide evidence that such an alteration could occur naturally, Souri and other Exponent researchers said at the news conference.
Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said in a separate interview March 8 that Gilbert “may have been taken advantage of by ABC.”
“We have no issues with the university. I think our position is that Dr. Gilbert meant well but didn’t dive deep enough into it,” Michels said. “He may have not the proper point of view to interpret what he did in a real scenario.”
In a Feb. 25 interview, Gilbert told the Daily Egyptian he applied the same tests to a Buick during his research and the GM computer system caught the artificial “fault” every time.
In the March 8 demonstrations, Exponent researchers applied Gilbert’s test to several other vehicles, including a Ford Fusion, Chevy Malibu, Chrysler Crossfire and a Subaru Outback.
Each of the cars reacted the same way the Avalon did in Gilbert’s Feb. 23 demonstration: The vehicle accelerated instantly upon application of the fault, with no error reported by the onboard computer.
Stanford automotive technology professor Chris Gerdes also testified that he spoke with Toyota and Gilbert. Based on his individual research, Gerdes said Gilbert’s findings warrant further investigation but did not provide a reason to doubt the fault-finding ability of Toyota’s computers.
Gilbert’s demonstration did not acknowledge it was a simulation, Gerdes said at the conference.
Toyota will continue to support SIUC’s automotive technology program as it has in the past, Michels said.
Nick Johnson can be reached at njohnson@dailyegyptian.com or 536-3311 ext. 263.
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