Prius Named Top Compact Car for Longterm Dependability by JD Power
By John O'Dell March 18, 2010Award Comes As Prius Continues to be Involved in Toyota's Safety Recall Woes
NHTSA Report Issued Today Vindicates Toyota in New York Runaway Prius Claim; Police Report Tends to Back San Diego Driver's Runaway Story
A little good news for Toyota amid all the negative press coverage it's been collecting lately - its Prius hybrid - well, the 2007 model of the Prius hybrid (right) - has been named the top compact car for longterm reliability in the annual JD Power & Associates dependability study.
It's the third year in a row that Prius took the top spot in the study, which ranks three-year-old vehicles based on responses from thousands of owners. The 2005, '06 and now '07 Priuses are the only hybrids to have been selected long-term reliability champion in any vehicle segment.
Whether the industry-leading hybrid will be in the running for a fourth title next year remains to be seen, though.
Toyota is embroiled in a series of ongoing controversies over its dedication to safety versus profit and the reliability of its recent models after a number of brake and accelerator safety-related recalls involving more than 8 million vehicles including its 2004-2010 Prius models.
Before the Bad News
The JD Power survey was conducted before news of those troubles broke, and rated the 2007 model-year Prius for problems owners' encountered over the subsequent three years.
It is likely that the publicity this year will have some influence on how owners rate satisfaction with their vehicles in next year's study, though - it certainly has caused hundreds to come out of the woodwork with complaints about Prius brakes and acceleration problems since the first of the recalls was announced in November.
That initial recall was to fix a potential problem that could lead to overly thick aftermarket floormats getting under the accelerator pedal and jamming it into an open position.
The fix is to remove offending mats and to have Toyota dealers shorten the length of the accelerator pedal to increase the gap between the floorboard and the end of the pedal - which hangs down from the firewall.
A second recall, ordered last month, affects the third-generation Priuses (and its upscale sibling, the Lexus HS 250h hybrid) built last year and and part of January as 2010 models.
Brake Woes
Toyota has said that the software controlling the interface between the mechanical brakes and regenerative braking system can cause a situation on slippery or bumpy roads in which a driver can experience an apparent loss of braking power during a hard stop.
The company insists that continued application of the brake pedal will stop the car, but has acknowledged that the software can momentarily prevent brake force from increasing as a driver depresses the pedal.
Toyota has said it developed a fix for the problem and began applying it in the factory to 2010 Prius and Lexus HS 250h models sometime in January and subsequently issued the recall for 2010 models built before the software fix was instituted.
Those recalls, and others involving acceleration in non-hybrid Toyota models, have caused the company's vehicles to come under intense media, regulatory and consumer scrutiny and the number of complaints registered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about Prius braking and acceleration has soared in recent weeks.
Two widely reported incidents involving allegations of runaway acceleration in Priuses has increased the focus even more, although both have been cast into doubt by government and Toyota-sponsored tests.
Vindication In One Case
In the most recent, a housekeeper in New York ran her 2005 Prius out of a driveway and into a stone wall across the street and claimed that the car has accelerated even though she'd been applying the brakes.
A just-released statement by NHTSA, however, says that the crashed Prius' engine control unit that monitors and records things such as brake and accelerator pressure shows that the brakes were never applied and that the accelerator was fully engaged.
The NHTSA statement says nothing more, but the clear implication is that the driver had perhaps mistaken the gas pedal for the brake pedal and that there was no flaw in the car that contributed to the crash.
In the first incident, a San Diego man gained national news exposure after he called 911 to report his 2008 Prius was running away with him, at speeds of up to 90 miles an hour, on a long stretch of freeway in San Diego. He claimed he could not stop the car despite constant effort to do so by applying the brakes.
Not So Clear
His story had many unexplained inconsistencies - he refused to put the car into neutral, for instance, when the emergency dispatcher told him to, and he was able to stop the car after a California Highway Patrol officer pulled alongside and then in front of him.
Subsequent tests of the car by Toyota and by NHTSA have failed to replicate the runaway throttle-no braking scenario that the driver spelled out, and Toyota says that its examination of the Prius' brakes and the car's computer show that the brake pedal was pulsed but never applied steadily.
But a report by the CHP officer, released just today, says that in the officer's view the driver appeared to be panicked and physically acting - with arched back, tightened grip on the steering wheel and a visible lifting of his body from the car's seat - as though he was pressing on the brakes with all of his strength.
Whether Toyota's problems will continue to affect people's perception of its cars long enough to color next year's JD Power dependability survey is anyone's guess at this point, but we here at Green Car Advisor probably won't be betting on a fourth consecutive top rating for the Prius in 2011.
LEAVE A COMMENT
Click here to comment on this entry.Sure it's dependable, right up until it suddenly accelerates and runs into something!!!
Edmunds and JD Power are joking right? I have had the utmost respect for your publications over the years, but this causes you to lose all credibility with me and thousands of others. These cars are ticking time bombs and they get picked as the most dependable cars? Both of your organizations have serious rating issues and are misleading the public in a very dangerous manner.
Please get your acts together or I will start RATING your publications with the National Inquirer and the Star!
"Both of your organizations have serious rating issues and are misleading the public in a very dangerous manner."
There is a lot of "misleading" going on right now and I don't think Edmunds and JD Power are doing it. Uninformed people calling a proven dependable cars a "ticking time bombs" without so much as a single proven case shows how media driven hype can displace facts all too often.
I don't think over 50 reported cases of this acceleration problem is "media-driven hype", firstwagon. Why would so many people suddenly be reporting the same type of problem with these vehicles? Some sort of conspiracy, you think? What I find abhorrent is that Toyota is beginning to find over and over again that "driver error" is the cause of these problems. Wasn't "pilot error" the problem with the F-16 years ago, until it was proven it indeed was an engineering defect. How many pilots died before this was looked into seriously and General Dynamics was found to be at fault? I think the same will be proven in the case of Toyota. They are treading on very dangerous water when blaming their customers for something that is almost certainly an electronic failure, just as in the F-16. In any case, naming this car as the most dependable in any class seems a bit of a reach. At this point, I would not drive a Toyota if you gave me one.
That should have read "over 50 suspected deaths and numerous reported cases of this acceleration problem"...
So many people?
How many accidents are there in the US every year? 100,000? 200,000?
Check out how many people die every year in car crashes.
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
Is 50 people claiming it was the cars fault a significant number? Have any of those cases being proven? Every case I've read about so far has been very suspect.
What proof do you have for an "almost certain electronic failure" that cannot be reproduced or demonsrated?
...other then you heard it on the internet.
I know there are a lot of accidents every year, and I know a lot of people die in cars every year. I am not disputing that fact. Cars are safer now than ever and I don't dispute that either. Nor do I know how many people have complained about this problem. I'm sure Toyota won't tell us that. But over 50 people have died, and an unknown number have reported the problem. Are you saying those that died and the others that have reported the problem were all at fault? Didn't know how to drive a car? Come on, get real.
Why would someone say they had this problem if they didn't? Publicity? Fame and fortune? Funny, I don't know who they are. Do you? Toyota has hired a number of former NHTSA employees through the years who are covering up this issue and doing damage control. We may never know the full truth on this subject.
I don't know that it's an electrical problem. All I know is that people say they're driving down the road and suddenly the car accelerates and they can't stop it. That would be a pretty scary situation, don't you think? I'm not an electrical engineer, nor an automotive engineer. However, I think in the end this will be proven to be an electrical problem, computer or otherwise. Something is causing these cars to accelerate, and to deny it is foolhardy.
Of course it can't be reproduced. The conditions that cause it have to be reproduced exactly. That could take numerous rounds and years of testing. And even then it may not be reproduced.
You are entitled to your opinion, of course. If you want to buy a Toyota, or continue to drive one if you already have one, best of luck to you. I hope you don't become one of these people that Toyota and others are now trying to dismiss as faulty drivers. The fact that they've recalled millions of vehicles says that they know something is wrong. They just don't know what it is. They wouldn't incur such a cost for nothing.
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