Toyota finds no flaw with safety electronics

Toyota Motor Corp said it had found no flaw with its throttle controls as it seeks to dismiss an external study critical of its electronic safety systems.

The conclusions, announced at a news conference on Monday, marked an attempt by the automaker to reassure consumers it has safety issues under control.

Toyota is working to win back sales seven weeks into a recall crisis that has tarnished its reputation.

But in developments that underscored the continuing pressure on Toyota, a Michigan judge ordered the automaker's top two U.S. executives to appear for a deposition and a congressional panel told it to surrender a 2006 memo from employees in Japan warning of risks to quality controls.

Toyota called its news conference to discredit what it said were mistaken conclusions being drawn from a study of its accelerator controls by David Gilbert, an auto engineering expert at Southern Illinois University.

Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide for mechanical problems with its accelerator assembly that can cause sticking and for the risk that floormats could trap an accelerator.

Unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles has been linked to at least five U.S. crash deaths since 2007. Authorities are investigating 47 other crash deaths over the past decade.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has also said it is looking into more recent complaints from drivers who say they suffered acceleration problems even after their vehicles were fixed in the recent recall effort.

Those complaints have been seen by some as further evidence that Toyota could face a problem with vehicle electronics or software that could go beyond the mechanical fixes it has announced under its recalls.

But Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said the automaker had found that post-recall accelerator complaints appeared to reflect a small number of cases where repairs at dealerships had not been performed correctly.

"We're confident in our electronic throttle control systems," Michels said.

Toyota: No evidence of flaw

Gilbert told a congressional panel in late February that he had found a way to simulate a flaw in Toyota's accelerator controls so that the vehicle could surge forward without a fault code being generated for an onboard computer Toyota has designed as a safeguard.

But Toyota said an outside review of Gilbert's findings by a Stanford University expert and engineering consulting company Exponent had not found evidence that conditions described by Gilbert could occur in real-world driving.

Chris Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford and director of the university's Center for Automotive Research, said Gilbert had essentially "rewired" Toyota's accelerator system to generate his results.