I like paragraph 7,8. It looks like he may have been trying to make it look like there is a problem.
A self-diagnostic system did show evidence of repeated applications of the accelerator and brake pedals, Toyota said.
“The data from the diagnostics test indicated that the accelerator and the brake had been rapidly pressed, alternately back and forth, 250 times,” Mike Michels, vice president of corporate communications for Toyota Motor Sales USA, told a press conference.
I took the liberty of highlighting a critical word. Looks like the cars ‘computer’ told on him.
The Prius gets good gas mileage because it uses regenerative braking, which is quite different than braking on a normal car. With regenerative braking, the electric motor segment that is attached to the gas engine effectively switches polarity, trying to drive the shaft in the opposite direction. To prevent binding, you need to reduce power on the gas engine (otherwise the gas engine will try to drive the shaft forwards and the electric motor will try to drive it backwards – resulting in not much movement and a moderate amount of gas consumption)
More info and partially OT:
The strength of the regenerative braking is determined by the strength of the field coil within the electric motor segment. Current generated by forcing the motor backwards is dumped into the lithium ion batteries for re-use when accelerating later. This is why hybrids tend to get better city gas mileage than highway. Traditional cars get better highway mileage than city.
