Long Term Testing Question

I would have put this thread in a "General Tacoma" subsection but there doesn't seem to be one so I thought this might be the next best section. My question is pretty simple really. Does anyone know if Toyota keeps, drives and otherwise daily uses their trucks to determine the long term issues that crop up with any given vehicle be it a Tacoma or a Camry? To my mind it would make sense to have about 1000 or so said vehicles of each model (generation) that are essentially daily drivers so that over time Toyota can keep track of what happens to a vehicle as it ages. What are the common problems that pop up? This would enable them to better engineer future vehicles to address common problems that owners experience without having to rely on the testimony of customers who show up at a dealership service center saying something like "My transmission acts like a squirrel on crack." Why is it gear hunting and if Toyota had direct access to a wide range of daily driver trucks it would seem to me that they could more quickly identify and address issues like this as they come up.

Let me try to give an example of what I mean. I've watched the YouTube videos of rudedogii in which he covers the amount of play in the front driver side axle of his 2010 4WD Tacoma. This resulted in a loud hum and apparently some vibration and as it turns out is directly attributed to a pretty loose fitting spider gear. There is a company (East Coast Gear I think it was) that makes something of a fix by way of a tighter fitting bearing. It seems to me that if Toyota had a number of long term essentially "test" trucks that they were putting 70, 80, 100 thousand miles on that these things would show up as a common issue and they could better engineer future vehicles to address these sort of issues. I would think that Toyota doesn't want Tacoma owners (or any model owners) to have to contend with something like a loose fitting and noisy axle shaft on a vehicle with less than 60K on the odometer. I think it's obvious to most of us that an axle shaft that is wobbling around like that is going to wear out faster. Rudedogii stated that the Toyota dealership basically told him that the amount of play was normal and they couldn't do anything. ARB of course makes a locking diff that eliminates the issue.

This is just one of numerous sort of things that I think would enable Toyota to better engineer future vehicles and constantly improve the product as it were. Or heck maybe Toyota already does this and I'm just whistling in the wind here. At any rate, I don't know nearly as much about Toyota or how they do things as some of you here do so I figured I would just put the question out there and see what kind of feedback I get. Thanks.

 

They give some top executives and other employees vehicles to drive, however at most someone might have a said vehicle for 3 years. They get most of their info from the repair orders in the dealerships. Perhaps the engineering teams keep and test the mules they used preproduction, or maybe a few afterwards. I'm not sure. Even if so I highly doubt they run any that long themselves

 

Toyota monitors repairs made to vehicles (in and out of warranty) through its dealerships. There is no need for internal, long term test vehicles.

 

Okay, now I'm going to play devil's advocate a bit. Take for instance the current rash of Tacoma owners that are reporting that the automatic transmission is constantly shifting gears or shifts hard. Most of these owners when they go to the service departments are being told "that's normal, nothing we can do". So the trucks in essence are not repaired. Now I know that Toyota is aware of the issue but it seems to me that it would be a lot easier for Toyota to have a quicker and more accurate understanding of the problem if they had forty or fifty in house people that were driving the same number of trucks day to day. For that matter the test vehicles don't even have to be directly run and owned by Toyota engineers. Maybe Toyota should consider a nationwide active feedback program. Let's say Toyota makes an agreement with say 100 to 200 customers per year and the conditions of that agreement are that the customer agrees to keep the vehicle they are about to buy to 100K miles and that during the period of their ownership they report every issue they have, no matter how small, directly to Toyota, not to a dealership. In addition they report every time they have any sort of maintenance they have done, no matter how insignificant. In addition they keep a log of their gas mileage and any other aspects of operating the vehicle that are noteworthy but do not rise to the level of a service call. In exchange Toyota pays the participants a stipend of say $100 to $200 a month in exchange for the constant and detailed feedback as well as having the vehicle available for inspection by Toyota engineers when they deem it necessary. Making the program nationwide ensures that they get feedback of vehicles in a variety of operating environments. Just food for thought but that seems like it might be more effective than reading over some repair tickets from dealerships.

 

A couple of days ago Toyota sent me a customer survey. There was 2 parts. One for the engineering and the other for the quality control department. The engineering questions covered most of the problems showing up on this site. The quality control questions included the engineering questions and the whole rest of the truck. So at least as an owner of a 2016 they have asked for my input and have recieved my concerns and personal issues. This is all about their Iso process so we will see where it goes.

 

Well that's good news. I've bought 17 brand new vehicles over the years to include some Toyota's and never received anything like that. A step in the right direction I'd say.

 

A fleet of 1,000 for testing eh?

That certainly wouldn't eat into the bottom line.

 

I'm assuming that all warranty work is paid for by Toyota corporate, not the dealer.

If that premise is correct, then all issues covered under warranty would be entered into a database as the dealers bill for their shop time. It'd be easy for Toyota to look at every trending issue. And since these issues cost the corporation money, it'd only make sense to attempt a fix.

Let's just say that Toyota sees a failure rate for the TPM system of 8% during warranty and it's projected to cost them $X over the next year. They'll redesign the sending unit (or whatever) and include the new model in production to save cost and increase profit.

It'd be ludicrous to operate in any other fashion and stay competitive.

SB

 

if they did 1000 per model, $35k Average per model X 1000 = 35Million per model. lol

 

1000 test vehicles over the course of a generation is what I posted. So for instance if you have a 5 year model generation that's 200 trucks a year and that certainly doesn't eat into the bottom line especially if they use the customer based approach that I laid out. Just food for thought anyway. You wouldn't want 1000 trucks from 1 year and nothing the next.

To my mind it would make sense to have about 1000 or so said vehicles of each model (generation) that are essentially daily drivers so that over time Toyota can keep track of what happens to a vehicle as it ages.

 

That's true but warranty claims do not always give Toyota the best overall picture. Take for instance the guy who had a loose bed mounting bolt that was causing his bed to rattle and there was literally about 3/16 inch play / gap between the bed and the mount. He took it to Toyota and the dealership told him they wouldn't do anything because, get this, he had a camper shell. So in that case a warranty claim / repair is never filed and Toyota never knows about the issue, whereas if Toyota had a direct to the customer program where the customer is reporting everything that happens with their truck / car directly to Toyota, no matter how sleight, it would give them a better overall picture of trending problems would it not?

 

That is how it works. However some times they try to turn a blind eye to the problems. Toyota isn't as bad as some and while I wont name names for the worst offenders, they all do it. If you turn a blind eye for issues and odd it off as normal you save even more money. Sure it can have a great effect on your business in the long run but isn't that what bailouts are for?