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Key US lawmakers looking into Toyota's problems with sudden, deadly spikes in speed asked the company Friday for documents backing up its position that electronic defects were not to blame.
Representatives Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak, top Democrats on a key House committee looking into the Japanese auto giant's woes, made the request in a letter to the embattled company's top US executive.
"We do not understand the basis for Toyota's repeated assertions that it is 'confident' there are no electronic defects contributing to incidents of sudden unintended acceleration," they wrote.
The lawmakers' letter to Toyota Motor Sales USA president James Lentz said the firm has yet to share documents conclusively documenting its position that such flaws are not behind speed surges blamed for some 50 US deaths.
Waxman and Stupak also requested that Toyota make any officials who have personal knowledge of Toyota's efforts to test its vehicles available for transcribed interviews by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
They also sought detailed quarterly reports on claims of sudden unintended acceleration and detailed information on the installation of brake override systems designed to slow vehicles and on so-called 'black-box' data from cars and trucks involved in accidents.
Toyota said in a statement that it would cooperate.
"Toyota is quickly investigating verifiable complaints of unintended acceleration and we are doing everything we can to ensure that our customers are confident in their vehicles and the remedies," the company said.
The letter came after US regulators said late Thursday that they had received more than 60 complaints from Toyota owners reporting they experienced sudden unintended acceleration despite having their vehicle repaired by a Toyota dealer as part of a recall of millions of cars and trucks.
"We are determined to get to the bottom of this," said David Strickland, who heads the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
NHTSA is reaching out to each one and has asked Toyota to provide information about any complaints it has received from customers, said US Department of Transportation spokeswoman Olivia Alair.
If it appears that a remedy provided by Toyota is not addressing the problem it was intended to fix, NHTSA has the authority to order Toyota to provide a different solution, she said.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Edolphus Towns, a Democrat, wrote to Strickland to ask for details of NHTSA's response to the reports of post-repair problems.
Towns requested that the agency compile a monthly report that documents the complaints, including model and year and a brief description, as well as the steps NHTSA took to investigate the incident and the results.
