All About Japan Autos

Well, this is a little anticlimactic.

“According to the first review delivered by the National Academy of Sciences panel, as commissioned by the federal government, no new possible causes for unintended acceleration have been uncovered,” writes Left Lane News.

The Wall Street Journal says, “Some members of Congress, consumer advocates and product-liability lawyers have suggested that engine electronics may have played a role in problems that led Toyota to recall more than eight million vehicles globally for sudden-acceleration and gas-pedal problems. Those critics have questioned the adequacy of efforts by Toyota and regulators to study electronics,” hence the creation of the government panel.

“The panel — made up of electronics, engineering, automotive and safety experts from industry, academia and government — will work with NHTSA and congressional investigators already looking into Toyota throttle systems,” writes Reuters.

The NAS panel is just getting started. “Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in reports of unintended acceleration must be probed for all possible causes, the top U.S. auto-safety regulator said today,” writes Bloomberg. Bloomberg also quotes David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as saying “We must do everything possible to fully understand if there are vulnerabilities in these systems to cause this happening.”

The panel isn’t looking exclusively at Toyota vehicles, though the massive Toyota unintended acceleration recall did spur the creation of the panel. “The panel is tasked with researching unintended acceleration not only in Toyota and Lexus vehicles, but also for all other makes and models, and is expected to deliver a complete report of its findings by the fall of 2011,” writes Left Lane News.

The Associated Press reports, “NHTSA officials said unintended acceleration in Toyotas may have been involved in the deaths of 93 people over the past decade. It was a slight upgrade in the number of deaths linked to the problem — in May, the government tied 89 deaths to the issue.”

NHTSA officials and NASA engineers have been doing their own research into what might have caused the unintended acceleration problems. They hope to present that research by the end of August.

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