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First Toyota unintended acceleration case headed for trial

Toyota is going to be back in the spotlight, as the first of its unintended acceleration lawsuits is headed for trial. This case covers a Los Angeles sushi shop owner, Noriko Uno. According to the what the family told The Detroit News, Uno only put about 10,000 miles on her 2006 Toyota Camry in four years. Uno was apparently afraid of high speeds, avoiding the freeway and taking a route home along LA's surface streets to avoid them.
On August 28, 2009, Uno's Camry suddenly accelerated to 100 miles per hour, eventually striking a telephone poll and a tree and killing her. The family contends that Uno attempted to step on the brakes and pull the emergency brake, neither of which brought her speed under control, while Toyota maintains that improperly installed floormats and driver error have been behind the majority of the 80 cases expected to be heard in court.
In Uno's case, The Detroit News is expecting the trial to focus on the lack of an override if the gas and brake pedals were pressed at the same time. Brake overrides were installed on Toyota's European fleet. The Uno family attorney will need to prove to the jury that it wasn't driver error that killed Noriko Uno.

Recharge Wrap-up: Toyota FCV Rally Car To Compete, Barra bullish on Chevy Volt

The Toyota FCV will compete in the last stage of the 2014 Japanese Rally Championship. The sport-tuned hydrogen-powered car will tackle the 177-mile Shinshiro Rally on November 1 and 2, emitting no greenhouse gases in the process. The rally course will help prove the safety of the vehicle before it goes on sale in Japan in the next several months. The Toyota FCV, rumored to be called "Mirai" in Japan, will begin sales there before April, according to Toyota, and in the summer in the US and Europe. Read more in the press release below. Carsharing is becoming more popular, and more visible, throughout the world, including the US. According to WardsAuto columnist John McElroy, 18 percent of US drivers have used some sort of carsharing service. Additionally, he says 60 percent of Americans are familiar with Zipcar and Uber. Mercedes' Harald Kroeger says promotions like free parking for carshares in Stuttgart are encouraging growth for Daimler's carsharing service, Car2go. Read more at WardsAuto. Ethanol is being help up by rail transport, according to ethanol producer Green Plains. More and more stations are carrying E15 blend gasoline, but grain producers have complained that crude oil is given higher priority by the rail lines shipping it, which rail companies deny. Union Pacific and BNSF Railway say they are stepping up service to make sure that ethanol can be shipped reliably to customers. Read more at Omaha World-Herald. General Motors "has placed a significant bet [on] the electrification of the automobile," says CEO Mary Barra. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club this week, she spoke about the Chevrolet Volt, and its importance to GM's future. While Barra admits the Volt's success has been "not everything we wanted," it has provided experience, and shows that EVs have "an important role in the future of GM." The new Volt is more refined, stores more energy, has longer range, uses less fuel and is a big investment for Michigan. She announced that the new Volt's electric drive system will be built in Warren, and that all of its major components will be made in Michigan. "Silicon Valley doesn't have a corner on the market for innovation, creativity and drive," says Barra. "These qualities exist here – in this region – as well." See the speech's highlight video and read more in the transcript below. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Anti-EV messaging alive and well at Toyota, sort of

The folks at Toyota in Japan can be pretty blunt about electric-vehicle technology prospects as a viable transportation alternative to the internal combustion engine. Here in the states? Slightly more sanguine. Toyota global head of research and development Mitsuhisa Kato, according to Automotive News, discounts the potential of substantial EV sales in the near future because the appropriate technology that provides comparable driving distances and fill-up times relative to conventional vehicles doesn't yet exist. While Toyota has been conducting testing programs with shorter-commute-distance EVs in countries such as Japan and France, its only production EV in the US is the RAV4 EV, and Toyota sold just 546 of those in the States during the first half of the year. Toyota is much more excited about the debut of its first hydrogen fuel-cell production vehicle, in both Japan and the US, next year. Toyota Motor North America spokeswoman Jana Hartline was a little more charitable when discussing the EV's prospects in an interview with AutoblogGreen. "For shorter range, EVs serve a really great purpose, but as far as having equal mile range to an internal combustion engine, there's going to need to be some serious breakthroughs," Hartline said. "And that where the fuel cell comes in." Last month, Toyota said its fuel-cell sedan that will debut in Japan next April will be priced at about $69,000, though the company emphasized that it shouldn't be assumed it will be priced similarly in the US and Europe. Toyota hasn't released many performance details, though the sedan is expected to have a full (hydrogen) tank range of about 435 miles, or about five times that of a Nissan Leaf. Read here for Autoblog's First Drive of Toyota's fuel-cell sedan.