Are Toyota's Problems Becoming an Industry Problem?

James Sikes' wild ride in his 2008 Prius is now the second out-of-control Toyota that has been caught on tape. The first was a Lexus piloted by Mark Saylor, an off duty CHP officer who tragically died along with three family members who were in the car with him, when he ran through an intersection and into an SUV at 125 miles per hour. The last words of the 911 call, endlessly replayed on TV and radio, were, "Our accelerator is stuck ... we're in trouble ... there's no brakes ... we're approaching the intersection ... hold on ... hold on and pray ... pray ..."

Sikes, thank God, is alive and unhurt. But he has been clearly shaken. Speaking to a television news crew just after he was able to stop the car with the help of the CHP, Sikes said "I won't drive that car again, period." The next day, at a news conference at the dealership where he bought the car he was quoted as saying, "I will not drive a Prius again."
The Prius is, obviously, the green car. It's the car that the environmental elite traded in their Volvos for. But the Prius is also the vanguard of the auto industry - it's where the entire industry is betting that the future lies. Every auto manufacturer has a hybrid somewhere in their skunkworks. Honda just relaunched the Insight; Ford is coming out with the Volt. Nissan has its Leaf. Heck, even Porsche showed off a plug-in hybrid -the 918 Spyder concept - at the Geneva auto show last week.

All of these cars are just like the Prius in that there is a computer wired between the gas pedal and the motor(s). Toyota blames unintended acceleration woes on a mechanical problem, sticky gas pedals, but increasingly the "ghost in the machine" hypothesis looks plausible. If unintended acceleration does turn out to be a software bug, then Sikes -- an all the hybrid-buyers like him -- may find themselves taking the next logical step.

It starts with "I won't drive that car again." It escalates to "I will not drive a Prius again." Does it end with "I will never drive-by-wire again."? If so, Toyota's unintended acceleration problem stops being a Toyota problem and morphs into something much larger: an industry problem. Because there's just no practical way to make a hybrid car - which, by definition has two powerplants - without electronic throttle control and thousands of lines of code.