Toyota Motor Corp. and federal investigators probed the latest report of sudden acceleration Tuesday, a dramatic incident on a California highway that ricocheted around the Internet.
Toyota is working on a fix to Priuses from the 2004 to 2009 model years. In November it said it will recall them when the remedy is ready. WSJ Detroit bureau chief Neal Boudette discusses whether Toyota has a handle on the problem and whether it can recover its reputation.
A California man called 911 for help on Monday and said his blue 2008 Toyota Prius sped up to more than 90 miles per hour on Interstate 8 near San Diego before a California Highway Patrolman helped him slow the car and bring it to a stop.
On Tuesday, reports of the incident, including interviews with the 61-year-old driver, James Sikes, recalling his ride, appeared on television shows and were prominently featured on Web sites including YouTube.com and Yahoo.
The reported incident occurred only hours after Toyota completed a presentation intended to demonstrate that the electronics in its cars couldn't be the cause of unwanted acceleration. The auto maker had hoped to presentation would kick off a week of aggressive rebuttals to critics.
Toyota said it interviewed Mr. Sikes but declined to say what he told the company. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration dispatched an investigator and Toyota said it would have its own engineers examine the car.
Reports of the San Diego incident sparked a flurry of new negative headlines about the company and its vehicles.
"I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny ... it jumped and it just stuck there," Mr. Sikes said at a news conference, according to the Associated Press.
"I was trying the brakes ... it wasn't stopping, it wasn't doing anything and it just kept speeding up," Mr. Sikes said, adding he could smell the brakes burning.
After calling 911, Mr. Sikes said his Prius hit speeds of up to 94 mph for about 20 minutes before a highway patrolman pulled up next to him and offered suggestions over a loudspeaker on how to stop the car, Officer Brian Pennings said in a telephone interview.
The officer directed Mr. Sikes to turn off the ignition and put the car into neutral, but Mr. Sikes shook his head to indicate neither action worked, Officer Pennings said.
The patrolman then told Mr. Sikes to use both the brake and parking brake simultaneously, which slowed the car to around 50 mph, eventually allowing Mr. Sikes to stop the vehicle, Officer Pennings said.
The officer said Mr. Sikes told police that while the car was moving he reached down to try to grab the gas pedal and saw the floor mat wasn't in the way.
The police did a visual inspection and saw the mat was in place and the pedal wasn't trapped, Officer Pennings said.
Mr. Sikes appeared to be so shaken that an ambulance was called, the police said.
"He was extremely distraught," Officer Pennings said. "It was clear he was dealing with a large amount of anxiety and adrenaline."
Mr. Sikes couldn't be reached for comment.
Mr. Sikes's vehicle was held by the California Highway Patrol overnight and on Tuesday was taken to a Toyota dealer in El Cajon, Calif.
Mr. Sikes's Prius will be subject to a recall by Toyota to prevent the driver's floor mat from pinning down the gas pedal. Toyota announced in November that Priuses from the 2004 to 2009 model years would be covered by a recall, and said drivers should remove their mats to prevent sudden acceleration. Since the company hasn't yet developed a remedy for the problem, the recall hasn't been enacted, a spokesman said Tuesday.
Reports of unintended acceleration have prompted Toyota to recall more than six million vehicles in the U.S. and some 8 million world-wide. The recalls are to fix floor mats and gas pedals that can get stuck—the cause, Toyota maintains, of the sudden-acceleration complaints.
Sounds legit to me, more legit than a floor mat problem, or that fact that the car was taken to a Toyota dealer the day after the incident. That's what looks sketchy to me.
