By Angela Greiling Keane, Jeff Plungis and Jeff Green March 3 (Bloomberg) — Toyota Motor Corp. ’s top U.S. executive warned his bosses in Japan in 2006 that the quality of the company’s vehicles was slipping and that regulators were stepping up scrutiny. A slide presentation by Jim Press , then Toyota North America’s president, urged changes that would have given the Americans more information to deal directly with safety complaints, according to copies posted yesterday as part of a Senate hearing on sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles. The disclosure that Press was asking for better communication on safety issues from Toyota headquarters as early as 2006 bolstered the Senate panel’s complaints that the company’s response to complaints was insufficient. Chris Tinto , a vice president in Toyota’s Washington office, made a similar request less than two years after Press. “It doesn’t seem like this message was heard in Japan,” said Senator Jay Rockefeller , a West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “A year and a half later, Chris Tinto, Toyota’s top safety official in Washington, tried to warn his superiors in Japan that quality problems were growing and, in his words, ‘we have a less defensible product.’” The Senate commerce committee was the third congressional panel to review the handling by Toyota and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the recalls, involving about 8 million vehicles worldwide. “There is a new dynamic in the U.S.,” Tinto wrote in the note for the 2008 presentation. “As you face NHTSA, we ask TMC to trust our judgment when we need your urgent help in getting issues resolved. We need faster information flow and more technical support when hot issues arise.” LaHood’s Testimony “Public safety took a back seat” to Toyota profits, Rockefeller said. U.S. regulators may urge automakers to install brake- override systems on new vehicles, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said during the hearing. NHTSA is “looking at the possibility of recommending the brake override system in all manufactured automobiles,” LaHood told the Senate panel. The software can slow vehicles in the event of unintended acceleration. Toyota has said it will put advanced brake-override systems in all new vehicles starting in 2011. The company will also retrofit seven current models with a software fix that slows a vehicle if it receives signals both to accelerate and brake, Jim Lentz , the company’s U.S. sales chief, told a House committee last week. Legislation Planned “I firmly believe this is going to require strong legislative action,” Rockefeller told the Toyota executives at the hearing’s close. “We must seriously consider a rulemaking requiring brake override.” Complaints of defects aren’t limited to Toyota vehicles, and the entire U.S. auto industry should be examined, Senator Daniel Inouye , a Hawaii Democrat, said at the hearing. “It is not a Toyota problem,” Inouye said. “It is an industry problem. If it is an industry problem, we should hear from the industry, not just Toyota.” Other lawmakers urged investigations into both Toyota and NHTSA, which regulates auto safety. “Clearly the recent recalls have not been handled well either by the government regulators or the Toyota Motor company,” Senator John Thune , a South Dakota Republican, said. Death Toll NHTSA has received complaints of 43 fatal crashes involving unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles from 2000 through last month, up from 26 reported through mid-February. “Toyota became the number one car company in the world because of its relentless marketed reputation for safety,” said Senator Frank Lautenberg , a New Jersey Democrat. “I’m deeply concerned that this reputation was built on a house of cards.” LaHood told the Senate panel he’d support a ban for NHTSA employees hired by automakers from interacting with the agency for a certain period of time, a ban already in place for political appointees at the agency and Congress members. NHTSA Administrator David Strickland , in his first testimony before Congress on the recalls, said his “responsibility as an administrator is to run a department with the highest ethics possible.” NHTSA Funding Two Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee asked for a hearing into NHTSA’s funding yesterday. Congress hasn’t had a session on the agency’s budget in three years, Republican Representatives Jerry Lewis of California and Tom Latham of Iowa said in a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey , a Wisconsin Democrat. Toyota appointed former U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater to help lead a committee on global quality formed by the company to reduce the likelihood of future vehicle recalls. Slater, a partner at the Washington law firm Patton Boggs LLP, will serve on the panel being set up by Toyota after the recalls. The Japanese carmaker announced the appointment in testimony prepared for yesterday’s hearing. “We are making fundamental changes in the way our company operates in order to ensure that Toyota sets an even higher standard for vehicle safety and reliability, responsiveness to customers and transparency with regulators,” Yoshimi Inaba , Toyota’s North American president, told the Senate panel. NHTSA has received four reports from drivers saying their Toyota vehicles experienced sudden unintended acceleration after they were in the shop for repairs under the automaker’s recalls. The reports were posted on the regulator’s Web site. A Transportation Department spokeswoman, Olivia Alair , said the agency is looking into the complaints and hasn’t confirmed their validity. “We will continue to thoroughly investigate any complaints involving unintended acceleration,” Brian Lyons , a Toyota spokesman, said yesterday. To contact the reporters on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net ; Jeff Plungis in Washington at jplungis@bloomberg.net ; Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan, at jgreen16@bloomberg.net
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Toyota Executives in U.S. Lobbied Headquarters in Japan for Safety Changes
