Transport Committee on March 16th, 2010

[Stephen Beatty]

Absolutely.

Here are two things that need to be understood. One is that a basic operating principle of Toyota Motor Corporation--and it's given to all of its executives on a worldwide basis--is, “Obey the laws of the country in which you operate”. First and foremost, we not only have teams inside Toyota Canada that are responsible for identifying problems in the marketplace, but we also have full confidence in our manufacturer to do the engineering to follow up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Go ahead, Mr. Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Arigato gozaimasu.

I'm a 2009 Corolla owner, so I actually have a recall notice. I want to be clear that I deal with Burlington Toyota, and they've been excellent to deal with. I have a lot of confidence in the Scherle family, who run the business there, but when the rubber hits the road, I want to understand from a consumer point of view, because I am one.

With reference to the floor-mat issue, which was in the fall, my Corolla did not get a recall on those floor mats because those floor mats were not involved in that issue. Is that an accurate statement?

[Stephen Beatty]

That's right.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

I have no idea about the letter Mr. Masse was referring to earlier because I haven't seen it, but do you know if you were referring to the floor-mat issue that you sent Mr. Masse the letter on or...?

[Stephen Beatty]

That's the issue. The reply at time was that we'd do two things. We'd obviously communicate with affected vehicle owners, and more broadly we'd engage in public information activities to explain what this was all about.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Since my wife and my two teenage daughters drive that car, they are safe because the floor mat in Canada is different from the floor mat south of the border. Is that correct?

[Stephen Beatty]

That's right.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Now my problem is the pedal. We haven't taken it in yet, so we're not part of the 60% that are done. But we do have an appointment on Thursday.

As a Toyota consumer I want to know what your reaction was and what I should have expected. What did you do in terms of letters and so on? Would you do anything differently?

[Stephen Beatty]

I think several things came out of this. First, I should have started the public information campaign around the pedal several days earlier when the first recall message was sent to Transport Canada.

The issue of the sticky pedal is technical in nature. It's hard to see inside the pedal so it's difficult to actually display to the media. I have a cutaway of the pedal here that I will pass around to members of the committee. Basically this represents the pedal inside your car. This is the foot pad, and it is basically a lever.

We are making a simple adjustment inside the pedal to reduce the force of the friction assembly operating against the pedal. It's 100% effective. When you see the way it operates you'll understand very clearly how that system functions. However, in looking at the pedal itself it was very difficult for the public to understand what that meant. More importantly, it was becoming confused with issues of runaway cars, which is not something that the sticky pedal causes.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Beatty, before I pass any time I have left to Ms. Brown, do you think you could have been a little more proactive about letting us know? Is that what you're telling us?

[Stephen Beatty]

Absolutely.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

If I have any time left I'd like to share it with Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here this morning.

There are a couple of things I'm interested in. First of all, Mr. Beatty, you talked about your early detection, early response system. Could you talk to the committee about the system you have in place for sharing information or complaints within your corporation?

If I were to take my car into a dealership and have them do work on it, is that information automatically shared with the corporation? How many of those indicators does it take to trigger the response, “We have a problem”?

What kinds of variables do you look at? I'm sure there are as many variables in these situations as there are drivers of cars. How many variables do you look at before you recognize that there's a challenge?

That's kind of in the past, but into the future, you said in one of your recommendations that policy should be developed to require and promote continued driver education--part of those variables I'm talking about. Given that I'm sure you want to have a continuing relationship with your consumers, should this be the responsibility of the dealership, or should it be mandated by Transport Canada?

[Stephen Beatty]

I think the answer to the last question is both.

We're increasingly doing second delivery nights with our vehicle owners to explain the technologies to them. We're finding that in the course of the normal sales process and delivery of a vehicle, it is not possible to cover all those new technologies, in part because customers want to get into their new cars and drive them away from the showroom when they've just purchased them. We are inviting them back to try to explain some of those other systems and to do some of the customization we can now do with on-board systems.

With respect to the Transport Canada role in this, or indeed the role of the provinces, in part, the new technologies coming into play in our vehicles, such as the electronic throttle control, are there because of regulatory requirements. Electronic throttle control, for example, is essential for vehicle stability systems. It is important for meeting emission and fuel economy targets in the vehicles. To the extent that the industry, as a whole, is being mandated to bring those technologies forward, it would be helpful if we had a joint or collective responsibility to communicate with the public about how those systems operate.

In terms of our early detection, early resolution process, there is a fairly detailed presentation in the binder that covers that. Let me say that Toyota Canada was the first Toyota company anywhere in the world to have the type of data-sharing agreement we have in place. It allows every customer repair order to flow through our computer at Toyota Canada so that we can query that database. On top of that, we have a separate system that looks for unusual patterns of warranty repair and triggers automatic reports on them.

Wherever there is something unusual going on, based on the first report we get from the field, we are able to reach down and look at what's happening across Canada and identify whether something unusual is happening. If we can't explain it, we send it back to the quality engineers to understand: Is there a problem, or frankly, are we misunderstanding something? Because that can happen too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mrs. Crombie.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Ohayo gozaimasu. I hope I said that correctly. Welcome to our guests.

I just want to start with the brake override system. I do not know who this will be addressed to. Maybe it will be to Mr. Beatty.

Would the installation of a brake override system mean that if a driver experiences a sudden acceleration event, using that brake would stop the vehicle?

[Stephen Beatty]

It depends on what the sudden acceleration event is.

Sudden acceleration, as I said, can be broken down into a number of factors, some of which are as simple as pedal misapplication.

What brake override software will do is ensure that if your pedal is being pressed--for example, if it's underneath the floor mat--and you then press your foot on the brake, the engine speed will return to near-idle or idle, and that will calm the over-rev situation in the cabin of the vehicle.

The purpose of the ride-and-drive demonstrations we've put on over the past few weeks was to show that even without brake override software, the brakes in a car are designed to overpower the engine. You will stop in either fashion, but the brake override system gives you the added confidence that the engine is going to return to that near-idle position, and it reduces the amount of noise inside the cockpit of the car, which we think is critical, given the sort of high stress condition--

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

What would be the cost, Mr. Beatty, of implementing the override system? And do you think the cost would be worth it, given that it would help give that additional confidence to restore faith and give drivers that sense of security?

[Stephen Beatty]

I can't answer the question with respect to what the total cost would be. This is being conducted as part of a campaign by us, so the costs to Toyota Canada are passed on to Toyota Motor Corporation.

Suffice it to say that the very fact that we are moving on a voluntary basis to roll out more and more reprogramming or reflashing of brake override exactly demonstrates that we believe it is important for us to put that system into our cars.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Inaba, I think this is perhaps for you. Toyota is a global company, a global brand, with a sterling reputation that consumers trust. This is a little glitch today, but I am confident that you'll overcome it.

I want to talk just briefly about your designs and engineering and whether they're consistent universally or whether there are design modifications for different markets.

[Yoshi Inaba]

Of course, our products for different kinds of markets always have different features so that our products best fit the market conditions.

At the same time, as you kindly pointed out, our reputation is in a glitch. That is why Mr. Akio Toyoda really initiated his approach to form a special committee for global quality to go and check each and every process of quality assurance in our system so that we can ensure that we can restore the confidence of our customers.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Inaba, very much.

Where are the designs approved? In Japan, I suppose. And the accelerator pedal as well? Would those designs, those specifications, be approved in Japan?

[Yoshi Inaba]

Well, it is in transition. I think what we are going to do, as more and more vehicles are produced in North America, in Canada and the U.S. and somewhat in Mexico, I think we are also moving to increase our ability to develop the vehicles'--in your terms--design and development more in North America so that we can be much more in tune with the local need.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Inaba, again.

You have 78 suppliers in Canada, and Mr. Watson has referred earlier to CTS as one of your suppliers. Did CTS satisfy your manufacturing criteria and specifications? Are they in full compliance, and are you satisfied with CTS?