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Was the California Prius Incident a Hoax?
Mar 15th, 2010 | 3 responses
Was the California Prius Incident a hoax? Some doubts are being raised:
3 Responses to “Was the California Prius Incident a Hoax?”
I have a family member who has a prius. Just a month ago I witnessed him trying to back up a driveway that was at an incline. The lack of torque in the electric motor forces it to need to rapidly accelerate to make up for loss in torque. So it did and he backed it right into a tree at full speed before he could make the brake overcome the acceleration.
My first thought was “thank God that wasn't a kid”. All it was was a bumper repair but it could've been much much worse.. [it happened right near a school].
A self-diagnostic system did show evidence of repeated applications of the accelerator and brake pedals, Toyota said. “The data from the diagnostics test indicated that the accelerator and the brake had been rapidly pressed, alternately back and forth, 250 times,”
My vote goes in the Hoax & Fraud column.
Modern Automobiles can have as many as 40 microprocessors and the associated software. As an engineer who spent over 30 years of his life in electrical engineering I can tell you there are always bugs in both the hardware and the software. They may not show themselves for years or very often but they are there and a days worth of troubleshooting won't find the problem again. This may be a hoax but nothing has been done that proves it.