In a dramatic showdown at [Toyota’s] U.S. sales headquarters in Torrance, Calif., engineers from Exponent, a consulting firm hired by the embattled automaker, re-created and said they refuted an experiment conducted by an Illinois engineering professor that had shown how an induced electronic short could cause Toyota vehicles to suddenly race out of control.
“This demonstration is completely unrealistic,” Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said. “The vehicle’s electronics were rewired and re-engineered in multiple ways, in a specific sequence, under conditions that are impossible to occur in the real world without visible evidence.”