📰 Auto News Edmunds.com Announces Million Dollar Prize for Unintended Acceleration Research

[Bru]

Any electrical engineers in house should go find a Camry

http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/press/161986/article.html

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — March 2, 2010 — Hearings related to the Toyota recall are now over, but they haven't added much clarity about the cause of unintended acceleration. Edmunds.com, the premier online resource for automotive information, announced today that its company representatives are developing a plan to award one million dollars to researchers who address yet unanswered questions about unintended acceleration.

As Edmunds.com has previously disclosed, every car company has received complaints from consumers relating to vehicles that suffered unintended acceleration. This problem has been festering for more than 20 years when Audi fell prey to notorious headlines about the subject. Personal anecdotes about unintended acceleration occur throughout Edmunds' CarSpace forums, the most established automotive community online. The discussion entitled "Toyota Sienna Uncontrolled Acceleration" at http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.f105086/0 was started by a site visitor in November 2006.

"We have heard compelling testimony from consumers. Many incidents are not fully addressed by recalls. NHTSA is responding to the challenge with more of what they have already done: additional investigations. Isn't it time to try a different approach? We at Edmunds.com think so," commented Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl.

Edmunds.com is currently drafting rules for a new prize, attempting to attract the best thinkers in the world to apply themselves to determine what is really causing sudden unexpected acceleration in vehicles.

"'Open source' created a forum for great programmers to contribute in building great software. Let's see if this kind of 'crowd sourcing' can work in the pressing area of automotive safety," proposed Anwyl.

Edmunds.com challenges participants to demonstrate in a controlled environment a repeatable factor that will cause an unmodified new vehicle to accelerate suddenly and unexpectedly.

"Consumers need to feel confident that the vehicles that they are drive are as safe as possible," Anwyl stated. "We look forward to seeing the safety contributions that this effort generates."

Click to read more...

 

[Bob Kazamakis]

Is it that hard to use a throttle cable?

 

[Angus]

this is right up my pop's alley - designs motor controls and processors. (motor control as in electrical, not combustion)

i fwd'd it on to him

 

[sickmint79]

i wonder how they actually set this up financially on their end, like if they pay into something basically as insurance that somebody won't find an issue. i believe that's how some of those million dollar candy prizes and such work.

 

[Oreif]

The human body can build up heavy metals.
The right foot seems to attract lead.
Quite a few vehicles have over 300hp engines with some over 500hp.
Just send me the million, thanks.


Actually,
What is there to research? Is it really that hard to figure out?
Drive-by-wire throttle-body + environment + a gazillion electrical controls/sensors/accessories driven by a laptop sized computer module = glitches/timing issues in the system.

So instead of getting the "blue screen of death" like windows or the "red ring of death" on your Xbox, You now get the "screaming acceleration of death" in your car.

Drive-by-wire is the problem. Lockheed had a F-22 crash because the FBW system glitched. They have made less than 200. Northrop only made 23 B2's and one has crashed (it is almost nearly all fly-by-wire). Car manufacturers make hundreds of thousands of cars per year. So even if the problem is say .05% of the time (which is actually quite low) and they used the particular system in 400,000 cars that would still be over 2000 cars per year that could get the glitch. Between the internet and speed of the media, it doesn't take long for the news to travel even if it was 10 cars that actually failed.

Edmunds is actually smart to offer the million dollars. as they state: demonstrate in a controlled environment a repeatable factor that will cause an unmodified new vehicle to accelerate suddenly and unexpectedly.

You think it's scary now, wait until they start having problems with a full drive-by-wire systems that control the throttle and the brakes. There are a few cars that just came out with full DBW systems within the past years.

 

[Angus]

What my pop's and i were looking into was that they dbw system in the toyota also controls the transmission. So when you're accelerating to your death, you can't even throw it into neutral...

today, my pops is going to lok into where he can get the ecm/ecu schematics along with the signal sender unti (gas pedal).