Does all of this seem confusing? Opinions everywhere, pieces of facts here and there. Even suggestions of possible fraud in some cases have now surfaced in regards to some of the crashes. From a technicians viewpoint, I have to draw the line at personal experience with these cars and this problem. I have not observed a throttle sticking on one, so therefore I have not had the chance to actually search for the cause on my own. All I can do is rely on the information that basically everyone is getting to hear both from on the news and snippets from techs around the country. Remember all of these are also going to dealers to be fixed under warranty, the aftermarket (independent technicians) are not involved at all with this. One Toyota tech even did a video of how the repair is done and you can find it on YouTube which essentially amounts to removing the pedal assembly. The tech then measures a gap between two portions of the pedal assembly, and then he/she installs a shim to take up that space and that causes more spring return pressure in the pedal assembly. The push for years has always been to have techs that would robotic-ally simply identify a failed (failing) part, remove it and replace it. Remember its all about price, no matter how expensive one may think auto repair labor fee's are, I've said it many times it's under priced by a significant margin. Six months ago, the repair would again have been to replace the part if they found one sticking, and this may well have happened many times. I have never seen information to support or deny how often that may have occurred if it did much at all. The diagnosis and replacement of the pedal assembly likely paid a technician about 1/2 an hour's time for the job. I could very well imagine someone else at another time looking at that pedal assembly, and if they could not prove that it was faulty, they would back flag the dealership for the repair, who would in turn take back the pay that the technician got for doing the repair back off of him/her. Many people would take the position that the tech ultimately not being paid for that repair isn't their problem, and in a direct fashion that would be true on that day. But eventually these actions erode the technician talent pool, and is the fundamental cause of many of the anecdotal stories of poor service you have ever heard of, read or told. Lastly, there have been many times that I have seen people condemn American car manufacturers about quality, and they point to recalls as their proof. It really was just a numbers game before one of the imports suffered a big issue, Toyota's quality hasn't changed because engineering underestimated what appears to be the spring tension required on one specific part. GM and Ford especially were never as bad as consumer reports wanted to make them look. JMHO. Now the Prius brakes issue where there can be a delay under certain circumstances due to a rough road? I can picture what is occurring, the rough road bounces a wheel up and and immediately locks with almost no braking pressure. That would look like a need to begin an anti-lock function to the computer. This isn't something that a dealer technician could fix on his/her own. The fix would have to come in the form of software for the HV, and ABS computers. They could in some cases require a redesign of, or potentially add a yaw sensor if the car didn't come with one. They could even incorporate suspension height sensors to help detect road surface conditions. The wheel speed sensors alone do allow for detection of rough road conditions. There is a resonance to the lock-up that is occurring the system will recognize as not matching the anti-lock systems function, and be scored as road surface, which results in less ABS activation. In Toyota's case that time period must be significantly long which is allowing the drivers to observe it.

Firstly, there's not much engine braking on automatics. Secondly, you are far more likely to lose control on a RWD car with braking on a slippery surface beacuse the back axle swings around (try braking with only the back brake on a motorcycle on a wet road). An upshift to prevent engine braking would be to meet emission standards because it reduces the vacuum pressure in the inlet manifold. An automatic never runs in idle unless you put it there. And downshifting when you floor the throttle has always been standard on all automatics. I think the overheating would be because of the AWD problems, problems with synchronising the rear and front drivetrains ? Landrovers with viscous diffs used to chew up tyres.

VW's "VagCom" is just their own version of a scan tool. I've never had one in my hands so I don't know exactly how much it really does. FWIW, I'll never own one either. I do have a VeDis scan tool which is one of the strongest aftermarket European scan tools available but it is still an aftermarket tool, and I just don't expect it to be 100% complete. But it's the best I can afford. (5K+ there are others that are over a $20K investment, they do more than my VeDis, but imagine spending that kind of money and in a years time not expect to even get $1000 in diagnostic labor money back while using it) It's really tough fixing cars these days when it comes to tooling and equipment. I can justify (to a degree) owning O.E. tools for some 90% of the market. (GM, Toyota, Ford, Chrysler, current model years and Honda through 2004) But even with Honda I cannot justify staying current with the O.E. tool, because at $9,000 for just Honda's since 2005 I don't see enough of them to justify any greater expense in supporting them than whatever I can get through my VeDis Asian, or Snap-On scanners. But back to doing the diagnostics on this TAC problem. Even the VagCom does not actually tell the tech what is wrong. The cars are not sophisticated enough to do that. When a problem is determined by the system, say an open in one of the circuits. The system is good enough to flag the circuit affected, and in some cases might have a code that is accurate enough to say that the circuit was "open", although most of the time it will be more like circuit open/short. The problem with intermittents is the circuit is going open/short at any point through that entire single circuit, but the diagnostic system is not capable of saying where it occured. Likewise a scan tool, displaying serial data will show what the microprocessor shows that a particular sensor circuit is reporting, but it's up to a technician to figure out exactly why a given sensor is reporting incorrectly when/if it is. Many events we deal with have a circuit that has a problem, the computer stores a code, but the circuit then just happens to operate correctly when the vehicle comes in, and we end up in a no-problem found situation. redpennies car at this point appears to provide a challenge to any technician because it is not broken all of the time. Combine that with her frustration from the expense of both related (potentially) and unrelated repairs and the fact that in a flat rate shop the techs quite often don't get paid correctly to take whatever time is required to get it to act up and diagnose it and you have a perfect example of just what fixing cars can be like for a technician as well as the public. In every real sense, my getting involved with any of these threads is time spent at work, that I don't get paid for. The techs at the VW dealership when they work on her car now in all likelyhood don't get paid for their time either unless they can justify replacing some part, that redpenny pays to have replaced. It looks like such great customer service to not pay anything to a customer when they have a complaint, but it's actually decades of a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation. The price of which is starting to finally become obvious. Could I diagnose and fix red's car. Yep, no doubt. Would she really be happy if I did? Hard to say......

Along the lines of what Funky said, in 2015, I bought a used Lexus RX350, with low mileage that looked new. Its been great to haul dogs, compost, small trees, you-name-it. Brace yourself - I bought it after seeing it on Craigslist, and doing careful researching and having it checked out. It's incredible. A friend has a Toyota 4Runner that he loves, but he says the Lexus has more zip. It's called a crossover, meaning "the difference between the two is simple: A crossover is based on a car's platform, while an SUV uses the chassis of a truck. The result is that crossovers use "unibody" architecture, meaning the body and frame are one piece, while SUVs use a "body on frame" design." I also have a WONDERFUL place in Maine that services it for much less than the local dealership. They are all former dealership employees and do not try to up-sell anything like the dealer. I wish everyone had access to a place as nice as this one.