I watched this guy dodge and duck and weave and contradict himself...
it was not pretty.
2:27 p.m. ET: Lentz says that some Toyota and Lexus models will be retrofitted with brake-override systems.
2:31 p.m.: Lentz says the floor mat and sticky accelerator issues aren't the final fix to the problem. He says monitoring customer complaints, too, is important to see if anything else emerges, but that he doesn't think the car's computers are at fault.
2:37 p.m.: Lentz says that its engineering firm, Exponent, has been unable to replicate the kind of unintended acceleration that Gilbert, who testified earlier, found. He says he encourages the search by independent engineers, but he casts doubt on whether Gilbert could have found a problem that eluded others for 10 years.
2:45 p.m.: What about how 70% of complaints to you aren't covered by floor mats or sticky pedals, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., asks. Lentz says Toyota is trying to do a better job of going through them. Sometimes customers are wrong: "We are not here blaming customers, but it doesn't take place," Lentz says. But he acknowledges they don't know why they occurred.
2:54 p.m.: Lentz says Toyota is revamping its customer complaint procedures. Now, a U.S. or Canadian will be on the committee that deals with safety issues in Japan, where Toyota is based.
3:00 p.m.: Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, challenges Lentz' assertion that the sticky pedal fix is going to work. He wonders why Toyota isn't pulling in more cars that have had problem to test them. Lentz says it is adding more engineers to test centers. He says he wants to be able to get any vehicle within 24 hours that had an unintended acceleration problem, but he doesn't know about the Smith car. "Listening to Mrs. Smith...I was embarrassed to hear the story," Lentz said. He promises to follow up with the Smiths.
3:03 p.m.: Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., peppers Lentz with questions about the timing of the problems and recalls. Lentz doesn't know the answers. He says that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was clear that something would have done about the sticky pedal problem in November, and he acknowledges that an assistant Transportation Department secretary's visit to Japan a month later to call on Toyota might have figured in the recall decision.
3:07 p.m.: Toyota has not tested for electromagnetic inference as a cause of unintended acceleration yet, but intends to do so, Lentz says.
3:35 p.m.: Lentz dismisses the Gilbert tests (see our earlier post today) , saying he's not sure the unintended acceleration it talked about earlier a malfunction that can happen in the real world and that its testing lab was able to make the same thing happen on a competitive vehicle.
3:27 p.m.: Asked how recalls for unintended acceleration years ago could have taken place Europe and elsewhere, but not the U.S. , Lentz replies: "We didn't do a very good job of sharing information around the globe." Lentz acknowledges that it doesn't know whether Toyota has solved the problems, despite earlier public statements. He reiterates that based on "what we know today," it's not the electronics.
3:45 p.m.: "I think we lost sight of the customer," Lentz says. "We outgrew our engineering resource....We had strategies to deal with that, but our strategies didn't work." He says Toyota didn't understand simple things like how people use floor mats, that floor mats get stacked on each other.
4:10 p.m.: Why aren't Toyota vehicles involved in accidents being torn apart to figure out what when wrong? Lentz says it's because there are no "code readings," making it difficult to duplicate the accident.
4:21 p.m.: Giving Lentz a break from talking about safety, he is asked about why Toyota pulled out of continuing operation of its auto plant in Fremont, Calif., called New United Motor Manufacturing, called NUMMI. Lentz says it wasn't a Toyota plant, per se, because General Motor's shared in the plant. When GM pulled out, so did Toyota.
4:28 p.m. Lentz says there's no way to analyze information from cars' "black boxes" except send it to Japan. The equipment to analyze it should be in the U.S. by April, but isn't here yet.
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