Toyota official says recall may not fully solve safety problem

A Toyota executive told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday that the company's huge recall might "not totally" solve the problem of unintended sudden acceleration in its vehicles.

In response to a question by the committee Chairman Henry Waxman, the executive, James Lentz III, the president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., said Toyota was still examining the sudden acceleration problem, including the possibility that the electronics system may be at fault. At this point, he said, Toyota has found no evidence of a computer problem, but "we continue to look for potential causes."

There is the possibility, he said "of mechanical, human, or some other type of error."
"We need to be vigilant and continue to investigate all the complaint of the consumers," Lentz said.

Lentz also told the committee that Toyota was installing a new brake system that can override the gas pedal on almost all its new vehicles and most of those already on the road. He said that more than 800,000 recalled vehicles have been repaired.

Waxman, while criticizing Toyota's response to the recall, told Lentz: "We need to be sure that you're doing a full and adequate analysis of something you've denied, but that other witnesses have shown us is very possible."

"Consumer complaints need to be taken seriously," Waxman said in his opening remarks. "The possibility of electronic defects must be actively investigated."

In a confrontational back-and-forth, Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts told Lentz, "You said you had solved the problem, you don't know if you have solved the problem."

Referring to the tests the company is running on its computer systems, Markey added, "You're only at the beginning of your investigation."

"We have not seen failures," Lentz reiterated.

Since last fall, Toyota has recalled more than eight million vehicles worldwide--more than 6 million in the United States alone--in two actions related to complaints about accelerator pedals that can stick, making it hard to stop the vehicles. Witnesses before Lentz detailed how an electronic problem could have caused sudden unintended accelerations.