It seems that Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak, better known as “The Woz”, has a problem with his 2010 Prius. Under certain cruise control conditions, it accelerates wildly. Luckily, he can reproduce the problem repeatedly – and safely. In a statement at Discovery forum 2010, he said, “this is software. It’s not a bad accelerator pedal. It’s very scary, but luckily for me I can hit the brakes.” This would indicate that Toyota has more than just bad hardware to contend with. The interesting thing is, Wozniak said he spent 3 months trying to get Toyota and the NHTSA to look into the problem, with no result.
Toyota responded with the following statement:
“We’re in the business of investigating complaints, assessing problems and finding remedies,” said John Hanson, national manager environmental safety and quality communications at Toyota. “After man years of exhaustive testing we have not found any evidence of an electronic [software] problem that would have led to unwanted acceleration.”
So it seems to me that someone from Toyota needs to take a ride in Wozniak’s Prius, and take that information back to wherever Toyota is doing their testing. In the near future, we may see the 2010 Prius added to Toyota’s list of recalled vehicles. If and when that happens, you can be sure that Road Reality will have all the pertinent information for you.
by John Suit
Source: CNET via Slashdot