Last weekend I took my family on a little road trip, since our family's DD is in pretty sad shape and scheduled for retirement in a few months, I rented a car for the weekend.
Our chariot for the trip turned out to be a 2011 Corolla, and I've got to say, it had the absolute worst programming of electronic throttle responce of any of any throttle by wire vehicle I've ever driven, including industrial vehicles.
It frequently acted like the cruise control was on, when it wasn't, for example, cruising at 65mph I would lift my foot off the pedal, at the moment my foot left contact with the pedal the rpms would increase about 200 rpm for a moment. It would then go back to the rpms I was cruising at and stay there for a disturbingly long time (like ten seconds or more) before very slowly starting to
drop. Even a tap if the brakes didn't
Don't ya hate it when you submit before you are done with a post?
Don't drive-by-wire vehicles 'learn' throttle maps as the mileage grows? With the way a lot of people have learned to drive autoboxes only, I see a lot of behavior that could definitely 'teach' a vehicle to behave that way...
Still pretty damn odd, nonetheless.
Darn android posted before I was done typing
Anyway, even a tap of the brakes didn't get it to slow down, I had to step on the brakes like I actually ment it to make it drop engine rpms as if the throttle valve was really closing.
I've never driven anything even remotely as disconnected from the drivers input, and I've been behind the wheel of more than my shareof automotive turds.
OH, it also had constant and annoying subtle torque steer. I thought I had a front tire going flat.
When I returned the car I mentioned the throttle issues to the guy at the counter, he said I wasn't the first to have that complaint.
Toyota has managed to make the Tempo that my mom drove in the early ninties look brilliant!
Do you think CAFE numbers have anything to do with it? If you remove the instant coast down on throttle lift, does it help keep the mileage numbers up over the long haul? Less glide on the coast and glide helping with efficiency?
HappyAndy wrote:
Darn android posted before I was done typing
OH, it also had constant and annoying subtle torque steer.
How does a car with that little power exhibit torque steer?
My Speed 3 really only did it under uneven road surfaces.............with nearly 300lb ft of tq.
former520 wrote:
Do you think CAFE numbers have anything to do with it? If you remove the instant coast down on throttle lift, does it help keep the mileage numbers up over the long haul? Less glide on the coast and glide helping with efficiency?
I considered that angle, and that might be whats going on, but if the engine management programming is set up to favor fuel efficiency over all else, even when contrary to the drivers input for deccelleration, the programmers have thier priorities completely wrong.
Yet that explanation is what makes the most sense.
HappyAndy wrote:
Darn android posted before I was done typing
You have a Toyota phone as well?
I just drove a Prius C and the throttle pedal seemed to have very little link to the engine/electric motors. Maybe Toyota has just decided to make really unpredictable cars with rebellious computer programs as a way to recapture the old excitement of the mid 80s? 
DaewooOfDeath wrote:
I just drove a Prius C and the throttle pedal seemed to have very little link to the engine/electric motors. Maybe Toyota has just decided to make really unpredictable cars with rebellious computer programs as a way to recapture the old excitement of the mid 80s?
or maybe they are trying to train consumers to get used to cars that don't want or need their input any more, to get us to the perfect utopia where you are just a passenger and the car does all the work.
wclark
New Reader
4/14/12 5:49 a.m.
HappyAndy wrote:
OH, it also had constant and annoying subtle torque steer. I thought I had a front tire going flat.
Worn ball joints, poor alignment (realigned by potholes) and of course messed up tire pressures or wildly different tires on each side will make a car exhibit that. A 2011 rental car must be getting up there in terms of abuse by both customers and the maintenance people.
Let me put it this way, Mr. Andy. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
Hal 9000
The RPM bump after throttle lift is probably the torque converter unlocking. My E150 does the same thing. The RPM hold is probably trying to keep the drivetrain from shuddering every time you take your foot off the pedal. My E150 does that too, but not so much that it is noticeable. It is annoying to those of us that want to use engine braking.
Don't you know the plebes don't actually want to know there is an engine under the hood. Anything that interferes with their texting has to be suppressed. You wouldn't want them to accidentally hit the wrong key, would you?
carzan
HalfDork
4/14/12 7:44 a.m.
I've rented quite a few econobox cars, recently and must say the Corolla was, by far, the most unpleasant experience of them all for the very reasons you describe. It would also downshift on hills with the cruise control on that didn't cause the other cars to downshift. Furthermore, I could take those same hills at the same speed without the cruise control engaged and it didn't downshift. Weird
The other cars were Mazda3s, Accents and Versas. The Versa had squirrely steering, but was otherwise tolerable. The Mazdas and Hyundais were great and the Hyundais had over 40,000 miles on them. .
The downshift on hills in cruise but not when under meat control happens with my Trooper also.
The converter unlock is probably the 200 RPM bump, as Toyman said. The other, hmmm, not so sure. On Kia Sephias a few years back, there was a complaint about a shudder on deceleration but it was only the manual transmission cars. I drove one and felt it; you let off the throttle, the car would decelerate for maybe a second and a half then there was a gentle jerk feel. It accelerated smoothly, though. The tech dept said that was a programmed in fuel cut, under the right conditions the ECM shut the injectors off for both emissions and fuel mileage reasons.
And Toyman, it's 'plebs', not 'plebes'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebs The Naval Academy would have you drawn and quartered for that.
Or it could be 'proles'. As in 'the proletariat'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proles
Yeah, that's better. It's a bad day that you don't learn something, right?
In reply to Curmudgeon:
Tech was blowing smoke. Most cars do that and have been for some time.
so.. in so many ways Toyota has outdone GM? Not only where they the Number 1 manufactorer for a while, but have managed to capture the "disconnected soul" of the overboosted steering and brakes GMs of yesteryear? Even GM figured out that those were a bad idea
In reply to mad_machine:
Build good cars for a few decades, get complacent, engage in shameless profit taking for a few decades, get bailed out, rinse, wash, repeat. GM did it, Ford did it, Chrysler did it, Toyota did it, Honda did it, all those companies that ended up being British Leyland did it, hell, even Ferrari did it.
Hyundai/Kia is going to do the same thing in 20 years.
When did Ford get bailed out?
And other companies doing it doesnt make it ok. Holding these people to task for their products is a good thing.
BobOfTheFuture wrote:
When did Ford get bailed out?
And other companies doing it doesnt make it ok. Holding these people to task for their products is a good thing.
They didn't, they just got close.
Never said it was okay but, for a variety of philosophical reasons, I don't think right or wrong matters very much when you are talking about competitive groups.
The torque convertor unlock and bumping the rpms bothers me. I've never seen that. OK, I've never watched the tach that closely, but let me say I've never felt that and therefore never watched the tach.
RossD
UltraDork
4/16/12 7:14 a.m.
I had a Chevy Aveo last year as a rental car. I got it with 5 miles on it. The throttle response was terrible, but by the time we put 1000 miles on it, it acted more 'normal'. No huge pauses between when I put my foot down and when the engine would start spinning faster. It was actually scary the first time I tried to pull out with some sort of vigor, the car rolled into the closest lane of traffic and we had to wait for the engine to decide to play along. My buddy started yelling at me to keep driving! I yelled back "I'm trying!"
