Tesla steering problems attract regulator eyes for second time this year The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened another investigation into steering issues in Tesla vehicles – the second such probe the agency has launched this year. The NHTSA opened its latest investigation [PDF] after receiving 12 complaints from 2023 Tesla Model 3 and Y owners complaining of loss …
But what if that was a target. Maybe this was a green promotion mod that went wrong. So considering the Trolly Problem, if the switch gave you a choice between hitting a tree and coming to rest safely in a field (addmittedly whilst running over some none considerred targets) this would be fine. Perhaps someone introduced an inadverdant ! (not) into the final decision tree. Trivial to fix and the sort of mistake that any progammer (well not me) could make whilst recovering from a hangover.
It's more significant than the rear axle on ford explorers, the doors falling off ford escapes, failed braking on daimler trucks, tyre management systems causing deflation, people trapped in cars burning to death....
I've only gone back to april in the list of investigations the NHTSA are running....
I know - it's because you report on every tesla failure, potential or real, because people love to hate Musk, and you get "engagement"....
Maybe because Musk is promising auto pilot and not delivering ?
And several people have died because of that ?
Maybe because doors falling off cars is not exactly a death sentence ?
I'm sorry your God is taking a beating here, but he asked for it.
We need a "Poor Widdle Snowflake" icon.
You seem to think that I revere Musk, I don't.
He has done a number of things worthy of paying attention - and a number which are rather silly. But I tend to look at the individual things as individual things.
Of course doors falling off cars is all perfectly normal, and wouldn't terrify you at all, but steering goes heavy when power steering fails is about as predictable as people complaining that their water was wet.
People nowadays generally have no idea how much force it takes to steer a vehicle (hint, it's often quite alot, and it's worse with wider tyres).
People have died because of autopilot? Do you mean people have died because they couldn't operate their vehicle, or read the instructions?
Has anyone died in a vehicle that wasn't a tesla I wonder...
Pathetic why people like Musk, considering what a total arsehole he is to basically everybody he deals with.
Just ask his multiple ex-wives or i we dont want to be personal the record number of lawsuits around harassment or perhaps how he pays and treats his workers like shite.
There is a *big* difference between acknowledging that some of the things he is doing/has done are genuinely beneficial and liking the person.
Is he likeable? I've never met him, and am unlikely to do so - I've seen interviews where he certainly appears to be, and I've seen reports of behaviour which clearly isn't.
"Of course doors falling off cars is all perfectly normal, and wouldn't terrify you at all, but steering goes heavy when power steering fails is about as predictable as people complaining that their water was wet."
Just wait till steering is drive by wire, and the Gameboy controller just does nothing when the steering locks, or a hacker gets in via the satty based software upgrade system and tells all cars to accelerate to 88MPH and execute a hard turn into oncoming traffic at 7:32AM on a Wednesday. Fun fun fun.
"Maybe because Musk is promising auto pilot and not delivering ?"
I'm not seeing Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, going on a TED talk and saying HE knows more about manufacturing than anybody else on the planet.
The autopilot/fsd thing is like a record skipping. Bump, later this year, bump, later THIS year, bump, later this year, bump, fully confident, bump, confident, bump, later this year.
The decisions taken by CEOs have frequently more impact than those taken by hundreds of employees, and it can be a lot more difficult to know which are the right decisions. Some CEOs can justifiably claim that their companies have made way more money than their (considerable) total comp, directly thanks to decisions they have made. For instance, Satya Nadella has noticeably improved Microsoft after taking over from Steve Ballmer. Another example is Steve Jobs, who while being a gigantic asshole is widely considered to be responsible for Apple being the most valuable company in the world.
Of course, you have a lot of CEOs who have destroyed their companies with bad decisions — if it was straightforward to be a CEO, anybody could do it, and the pay would be much lower.
> Another example is Steve Jobs, who while being a gigantic asshole is widely considered to be responsible for Apple being the most valuable company in the world.
You gave many examples of CEOs and leadership stealing the credit for the hard work of everybody else in the company. Apple is a computer software and hardware company.
Jobs couldnt program, and he certainly couldnt design anything at any level. So please tell me how is he responsible for anything at Apple if he he would never get any entry job at Apple or anywhere else ?
Who exactly credits Jobs for the success of Apple ? Morons who write articles in the media who have no credentials or understanding about anything - these are the same morons who think Kim and Kanye are genius as well.
Apples success is because a lot of people we never hear about put in a lot of effort and skills, Jobs with his big arsehole mouth contributed none of that at any level. The same is true of basically Steve and Satya.
> For instance, Satya Nadella has noticeably improved Microsoft after taking over from Steve Ballmer
Really everything is Satya ? I thought Microsoft had thousands of employees, are you telling me they did absolutely nothing - if Satya did it all why is he wasting billions paying those workers ?
> if it was straightforward to be a CEO, anybody could do it, and the pay would be much lower.
Steve Jobs and Steve Balmer had zero software skills, they only skills they had was to be aresholes, they certainly had no engineering skills.
Your claims are totally bullshit - pathetic you are the type of person who perpetuates the pathetic parasites that are cceos.. people with no skills who are over credited and overpaid just because for ZERO skills.
"Perhaps Jim doesnt say that, bit he still pays himself 100x more than the workers who actually do the job."
Go another layer deep and examine the BoD compensation committee's decision to pay that much. The CEO isn't setting his own salary at Ford like the CEO at Tesla.
Jim and he friends at his club all pay each other crazy numbers for basically nothing. Stop playing word games, we all know of all the people at Ford, Jim is the one who actally contributes the least to design and making any cars there.
If Jim didnt goto work for a month it would make no difference, all the other little people from cleaners, to assembly workers on the other hand would be missed.
I was curious about a couple of these issues.
For the Ford escapes, are you referring to PE23013? If so it's not a case of doors falling off. It is a case of failure to completely latch when closing it (meaning it could open when braking).
As for the burning death, I'm guessing you're reffering to the dodge Journey? I'm struggling to find more details other than a few journal pieces repeating the same info, but from what I can gather, it was an electrical failure that prevented unlocking the doors whereas a manual override was possible by simply pulling the pin. Something which most modern cars don't allow to do (and Teslas don't in the back seats).
It's true that Tesla's failure are sensationalized, but when you throw out the window the decades of redundancy that car makers put in their cars in order to save some bucks, you get criticized a bit harsher when said failures happen.
It's also about the frequency of the failures,
Ford or Dodge have a lot more vehicles on the road compared to Tesla, having a thousand Fords go catastrophically wrong is a tragedy but a tiny percent of a percent of the number of their cars on the road.
I'm all for a channel on El Reg which looks at all NHTSA investigations...
How would that belong? You're just butthurt because they have had more articles focused on Tesla problems and not on Ford or Toyota problems. The Register focuses articles on tech and tech adjacent news. A vehicle that's more "tech" than that of other carmakers, and which has abandoned stuff like direct linkages from the steering wheel to the tires and relies on software to translate steering wheel position to the tires is obviously more likely to have tech related issues and tech related recalls.
If Toyota hypothetically had an issue with steering rack gear slippage causing cars to run off the road that wouldn't be worthy of The Register's notice, because that would be a purely mechanical issue. There would be other websites devoted to mechanical engineering or manufacturing quality control where you might find that but not find this Tesla issue that's software related.
You'll note that The Register does post articles about other car companies when they are appropriate to the The Register's focus and audience - like when GM announced they would no longer support Apple Carplay or the Android equivalent in future vehicles. Because, you know, that's tech related. I can't remember for certain but I'm pretty sure they had a lot of articles about the whole VW dieselgate scandal. That was more "tech adjacent" since it wasn't a software problem that caused that, it was management ordering a software change for very shady reasons.
"which has abandoned stuff like direct linkages from the steering wheel to the tires"
They still use a steering rack at the moment (and even Musk reckons they're years away from implementing steer by wire) - Lexus/Toyota are running steer by wire in at least a handful of vehicles.
Multiple reports indicate the affected vehicles had been driven less than 1,000 miles, and several users mention having to reboot the vehicle's electronic systems to purge error messages and restore steering, which in some cases was only a temporary fix until the next failure
Who the fook is rebooting their cars and carrying on driving it? Can windows sysadmins afford Tesla's?
I was having issues with Carplay trying to take over from the radio even when nothing was playing and no apps were running. I'd see a message "unknown artist" "unknown song" instead of the usual artist/song information, and there was no audio. Not every time but most of the time. I had to manually switch back to the radio which required a single touch on the touchscreen - so obviously it was nothing major, just a tiny bit annoying. I sought help on a Facebook group for that vehicle type and someone suggested I should reboot the MMI and provided instructions on how to do that. I did so, but it didn't help.
Turned out iOS 16.6 fixed it, as it hasn't happened since I updated my phone.
But I agree, rebooting a car's entertainment system is very different from rebooting the entire car in the hope that fixes an issue in something as critical as steering! If that had worked to fix the Tesla's issue, I would feel like I needed to reboot the car every I time I started it "just in case".
"But I agree, rebooting a car's entertainment system is very different from rebooting the entire car in the hope that fixes an issue in something as critical as steering!"
The issue is not "power assist" but the hardware for FSD/Autopilot. I've never had power steering in a car fail on me. I've driven a car where the power steering wasn't working at the yard and it's just harder to steer, but it isn't trying to go the other way. Granted, rebooting is easier than replacing some hoses, but there's a way to inspect the hoses periodically and swap them out when they start to get brittle. There's no way Tesla is going to show you any of their code.
The issue with no linkage is that the computer can just ignore or override you. Do tesla have those toy steering wheels like the old batmobile in the USA? You're not going to turn that without two strong hands if there's an issue, but even if you forced it, it's literally not connected.
How this works in the UK, where there's a law that says cars can't have fly-by-wire steering, nor those stupid dangerous steering wheels, I don't know.
"Tesla steering is perfectly normal rack-and-pinion power assisted steering, nothing more. "
Look at is again. Years ago Elon was claiming that every Tesla vehicle being shipped has all of the hardware necessary for Full Self Driving. There's considerably more involved over rack and pinion power assisted steering to do that.
I'd really love to buy a wrecked model 3 and layout the electrical on some plywood and have a go at reverse engineering it. There are some people that have done that and can supply services that Tesla isn't happy about. In the US, that sort of thing is a felony so those people can't do normal advertising. They can charge heaps for what they do.
I had a mysterious and sudden power steering failure on a 2006 (VW) SEAT Ibiza. Had to continue driving the 103 miles home, it was OK in a straight line or on gentle curves, but maneuvering was a bit heavy on the handlebars. Eventually traced the fault to a broken connector in the wiring loom, I can only assume that it had been struck by a stone or some debris thrown up under the front of the car. Once fixed, all was perfect again.
I've never had power steering in a car fail on me
You've obviously never driven a second-hand Citroen XM..
TLDR: The power steering hydraulics share a common reservoir with the suspension and, when the suspension breaks [1] it also takes out the power steering and brake servos..
[1] Which it will. 1990's French build quality and all that. 3 times for us in nearly a year of owning one..
I've never had power steering in a car fail on me.
You've never had the engine die on you without warning while driving and had to muscle the steering wheel to pull off to the side of the road? You must not have owned the obligatory junker as a teenager!
Steering on corners you can take at 40mph is fine. Slower corners require planning: select the gear you will need to exit the corner in advance because you will need both hands on the wheel. I stopped to read the instruction manual which said the vehicle is safe to drive without power steering. When I started up again power steering was restored. It failed every two or three months until the problem was identified and fixed during an MOT. Stopping the engine and restarting worked as a temporary fix and is worth trying - but seriously, stop the car somewhere safe. If you want to try it while moving please ensure you have a straight clear path to the edge of a cliff in case the steering lock engages. I would not like to bet on the servo brakes without the engine running. (I have also had the master beak servo explode on a different vehicle: as long as the engine is turning you may still get some delayed help with the brakes but the engine may stall.)
When Tesla announced some new models would be fitted with a steering yoke I thought something very rude. A 1,200kg ICE car is hard enough to control when power steering fails. I would expect a 2000kg electric vehicle to be more difficult. Making the steering wheel into a stylish shape is just asking for trouble.
I once nearly crashed my GF's father's brand new 1964 Pontiac Catalina. It had only done about 1000 miles, and he had never opened it up whilst running it in. He offered me a drive in it as I was well impressed, and suggested I open it up to see how well it would perform.
As I pressed the gas pedal, the linkage jammed wide open, and I went through Sutter, Illinois at speeds of up to 110 MPH with my foot firmly on the brake pedal and black smoke issuing from the drums. Eventually I switched off the ignition (no steering lock in those far off days) and started to slow down on compression.
Then I did a silly thing, I knocked it into Neutral, so no power brakes or power steering. I was then confronted with a left/right zigzag under a railroad bridge, but managed to bail out through a field gate and across the field. The cop who was chasing me was not impressed, a .38 looks HUGE when it's only inches from your nose, but GF's Dad, who was an ex-Mayor of Sutter, defused the situation by saying "It's OK Bubba, put your pop gun away, this young man has just saved my life".
Popped the hood and unlocked the throttle linkage, had to ask GF for a Bobby Pin to replace the missing split pin, and was rewarded with a Police escort back through the town to the Dad's farm.
In the heat of a situation like that it's sometimes difficult to think your way out of it, because you're so busy trying not to die.
My whale-like Rover 820 stalled on a hairpin bend once, which meant the power steering failed and it nearly threw me off a cliff. I couldn't change down a gear to keep the steering on because I was grappling with the wheel saying 'ohfuckohfuckohfuck'.
Well, I was only 16 at the time, and as noted in NXM's post, I was shitting hot bricks as I fought not to hit anything on the way through the village. My father said afterwards that he felt a huge surge of relief when he saw me reach for the ignition switch.
Growing up, my first three cars didn't even have power steering. Two of them didn't have power brakes either.
Back then I took a job where I had to occasionally drive the company van somewhere. It had both power steering and power brakes. People would not ride with me in the van because I was giving them whiplash when I applied the brakes and I would steer too sharply.
The first vehicle I ever drove (and started learning to drive on) was a large diesel tractor. It had no power steering or power brakes either. I remember being about 13 at the time, and having to stand on the stiff clutch pedal with both feet to be able to shift the thing. It also had separate brake pedals for each back wheel.
I did for a while. I had a 2005 Xtype, and if you pulled onto a fast road when it was cold, and tried to accurate upto 70 too fast, the variable turbocharger linkage wouldn't respond in time, and at about 65mph the car would go into limp mode. The fix was to turn the ignition off, then back on.
Difference is this was in a car that had covered over 295,000 miles, not brand new. This was also the reason that car was retired, although when I sold it to a scrap yard, it stayed on the road for another 3 years according to the DVLA.
Dear Tesla Owner,
By now you are familiar with our new Tesla Full Steering Security system. Theft is now impossible with auto disabled steering and the convenient demountable steering wheel.
You may have noticed you account has now been debited the subscription for this enhanced function.
This is, incidentally, why I don't trust the move toward drive-by-wire that tesla has pioneered and so many others are copying. Advocates keep pointing to aircraft fly-by-wire systems as proof that there's nothing wrong with the idea, but quite apart from a number of notable issues that fly-by-wire has had in the past, there's one fundamental difference between aircraft and cars: in an aircraft, there are three computers, which constantly compare notes and reject any apparently spurious inputs. They are built to tolerances that far exceed the specifications (just don't mention the 737 max) and are robust enough to handle at least one of those computers just up and dying.
A ford or a tesla, or any other car, is built to the lowest cost to maximise profit, and these manufacturers are not above making potentially lethal design decisions if they think it'll save them more money than they'd lose in the ensuing lawsuits. All drive-by-wire does is ensure that, when a fault occurs - and it will - my car will suddenly not respond to any of my inputs, and might additionally decide that it's actually a spaceship and launch itself into a ravine.
And don't get me started on the touchscreen console fad. It's entirely cost driven and ignores more than a century of advances in ergonomics.
"aircraft fly-by-wire systems"
Most passenger aircraft are too large to actuate the control surfaces with wire ropes and running hydraulic lines is its own can of worms. Having a triple redundant system isn't totally perfect, but pretty darn close and the industry safety record shows that it's 'good enough'.
Cars are still small enough to be controllable with mechanical linkages, but I much prefer the power assist. My old VW bus was a chore to drive. I expect the new ID.Buzz is much easier.
I have a Fiat Panda which has an electric power steering system. And that failed on me while driving down a country road and turning a corner and I was lucky that I was able to turn the wheel enough to keep the car on the road. But it was still very scary and im relatively young and quite a strong guy.
I think that if it had happened to some OAP whose reactions times are slower and maybe not as strong to wrestle with the wheel, it could have resulted in the car going off the road.
Pah! As a youngin' I had an old pickup truck from when they were still built like tanks and lived in a climate where it would get cold and snow during the winter. One time, as I was trying to take a corner, the engine cut out. I was cutting across an oncoming lane of traffic, with someone coming naturally and in a city known for doing a piss poor job of plowing the streets. I had to yank the wheel with everything I had to barely make the corner and then try to restart the engine so I could make it the remaining couple dozen yards to the parking lot.
for the life of me I can not imagine why anyone would want to replace a perfectly simple reliable steering mechanism such as rack and pinion (normally enhanced with a parallel hydraulic "power assist") with some electronic delusion controlled by software coded by retards that can't even spell engineer let alone understand that discipline's basic principles. Off the top of my head I would think we might be considering a safety critical system here.
Anything to do with Musk - he that never fails... to disappoint.
An interesting observation regarding electric 'power assist' systems where a motor drives the steering column: the rack appears to suffer much more wear, particularly where the pinion bears upon it, than it does in a hydraulic assist system. I assume the difference is because the first is basically leaning harder on the wheel and increases the load on the pinion/rack gear, while the latter reduces the pressure required on gearing because the assistance is provided to the rack.
Probably not an issue for the first owner, unless you're like me and tend to keep cars for hundreds of thousands of miles,
It's not an issue for the next owner either. A new rack os not a hard install. I had to replace a hydraulic rack on my pickup just a couple of weeks ago which was pretty much two mounting bolts, two hydraulic lines and two pinned nuts to replace it. An electric rack is the samez only instead of hydraulic lines there are power plugs plus the need to calibrate the computer to the new rack. A front end alignment is then necessary. Eaay peasy. The hard part is paying for it - my rack was about 500USD new, not rebuilt, while electric racks push 1000USD.
Hmm. Last one I changed was a normal non-powered rack (all the power coming from the steering column), so just the usual contortions to find the mounting bolts, track rod ends, and the steering connection. Actually easier than a hydraulic type, no messy fluid, but as you say, they're not a cheap part in either flavour.
When you say 'electric rack' does that have the servo inside the rack itself? And not on the steering column, as I described?
I know El Reg is the last place you will expect to see maintenance advice, but I have just scrapped my Panda and I have a fix for that problem and it's, quite frankly, very odd. It works though.
Your battery is flat. Seriously, pull the battery and put in on a charger and the problem will go away. If it comes back, invest in a new battery.
Also, make sure it's got enough current.
Scrapped Panda because back axle rusted out, service quote was £1000+!
"We love our Tesla but why and how [do] these things pass their quality checks?"
Do you love it to death?
Hey, it worked fine at the factory when it was driven onto the delivery truck. Tesla is famous for sending out beta product and having customers test software patches. I remember there was a braking issue with the model 3 where is took too long to come to a complete stop. Tesla sent out an update in a day or two. I find that really odd since it would take longer than that to do proper testing to make sure than modifications didn't have unintended consequences like putting the car into a spin when trying to brake on an icy surface. Just days after a car spontaneously burst into flames in an underground car park in China, there was a battery controller update. The car hadn't yet been removed and examined. One explanation could be that they knew there was a setting that was pushing some boundaries and pulled it back or doing something, anything, and making a big PR announcement was more important that sorting out the root cause. The pack may have been damaged which led to the failure rather than software needing to be changed but just like politicians, Elon may have thought that it was more important to take action right away than to take the time to come up with the correct action.
"Five reports indicate an inability to steer the vehicle. Seven additional reports cite loss of power steering resulting in increased effort to control the vehicle," the NHTSA said in its investigation document.
So a new Tesla is about as easy to control as my 17 year old banger with a failing power steering pump?
There are definitely more of these. I've seen it in person. Steering failed on my driveway. Locked up. On a brand new Tesla.
Of course steering did work when tow truck arrived. Apparently they changed steering gear assy or something similar.
Nope, I don't own a Tesla.
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