Unintended acceleration leads to recall of every Cybertruck produced so far Tesla has issued a recall notice for every single Cybertruck it has produced thus far, a sum of 3,878 vehicles. Today's recall notice [PDF] by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states that Cybertrucks have a defect on the accelerator pedal, which can get wedged against the interior of the car, keeping it …
Oh come on, I'm certainly no fan of Tesla or Musk, but this is ridiculous. When have they "gone rogue" and done that? Can you point to a single incident? There was a Waymo vehicle (I think) operated as an autonomous taxi that did that recently, and Tesla's self driving software still can't recognize stopped vehicles too well so it has rammed into the back of emergency vehicles on the side of the road more than once when their drivers aren't paying attention.
But "going rogue and running people over", nope, don't recall that. And even if there are one or two cases, it is far more likely driver error will do that. Some idiot is backing up and gets confused and thinks they are slamming on their brake but hit the accelerator and go through a shop window across the street.
The main vehicle I look out for are jacked up trucks (if you don't live in the US you probably don't see these very often if ever) because the driver is so high up they can't see vehicles close to them very well.
One in China drove off with the passenger inside and they couldn't cause it to break. There's probably a few more cases but I really don't remember this stuff.
Not to mention how Musk censors anything anti-Tesla on Twitter (please don't call that a conspiracy, this is Musk we're talking about), so that might be why you "never heard of it".
And I'm honestly confused about your tangent on human drivers. I never said autopilot was a bad thing. I specifically don't trust Teslas because they have almost no quality control and Musk deliberately doesn't add critical sensors like LIDAR to them and forces the developers to rely solely on cameras, which would very easily make for an AI that has no idea what it's doing. There's many reasons why Teslas are dangerous. It has nothing to do with disliking Musk or distrusting autopilots, the cars themselves are actually made in a very dangerous way and have exhibited scary behavior.
Sure, they told you that you have an ejector seat and parachute. And charged you for it. But have you tested it? Betcha a beer that if it's there at all, the ejector is installed upside down. Trigger it and it'll fire you head first into the pavement where the vehicle will then run over you. The parachute? Very high tech in concept. But in reality made out of used matchsticks by child labor on some islet you've never heard of in the Caribbean.
《Sure, they told you that you have an ejector seat and parachute. And charged you for it. But have you tested it? 》
Even if everything was installed correctly (sans soap) and is likely to work you can safely bet the vehicle's roof is not going to remove itself from the ejection trajectory until 15 second after ejection. (Hard realtime programming error. The roof is hard.) Assuming the roof was removed correctly the parachute is likely to be deployed just before ejection.
I would trust anything associated with Musk to design and build a penny farthing let alone anything with a chain and sprocket.
So, it isn't 'bulletproof', it doesn't handle off-road very well (bits fall off), the internal rear-view mirror only works when the loadbed tray is rolled open and now the pedals get jammed on by bodywork
Other than looking like you have driven out of the Spectrum garage and could be Captain Scarlet...what are the good points?
"Also don't forget the stainless steel they chose is such a cheap alloy that it will rust if it ever gets wet."
The problem isn't that it's cheap; the problem is that it's stainless steel at all; which is patently unsuitable for the job here.
PS it doesn't rust. It stains, which looks like rust but isn't. Stainless steel that... isn't.
Their unpainted steel body shells are truly 'wonderful' too. See https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/24/tesla_cybertruck_offroading_video/ and comments.
But at least the documentation is complete ...
"Unbeknownst to Levin at the time, Tesla recommends removing the wheel fairings when driving off-road. Trying to figure out how to remove them brought up another problem because no instructions are available. The Cybertruck infotainment system points owners to the Cybertruck DIY manual for instructions on removing the fairings, but the DIY manual says to consult the Tesla website."
Oh.
They really have not thought this through, have they?
This is all made a lot more spicy when you consider that:
a) no way to kill the engine quickly like pulling the keys out of barrel
b) no way to quickly get to neutral like pushing a level, instead you gotta "tap and hold"
c) you have a single point of failure in that you now rely on the brake signal to stop the car
d) dunno if you can "stop" the engine while moving, does it have a hand brake / foot brake?
e) good luck getting to neutral after Fido slips it into drive while you feet are in the air
holding half the accelerator pedal and you can see the body starting to rust.
It will be interesting to see how this story develops in the next couple of years, but right now I don't believe it.
Rust marks on the panels will be environment iron chips. Fingerprints will be oils, not etching. Cosmetic pitting may be a problem for people who live within a couple of blocks of the ocean. If you wash it in bright sunshine, you will see soap and hard-water residues.
I assume there is some welding somewhere, so that should be watched for serious pitting.
I don't have a stainless steel refrigerator because I can't afford one, not because they show fingermarks worse than plastic or enamel, even though that is true, it's not a problem for any of the kitchen or industrial equipment I've used.
People are looking for a mirror finish on their new trucks. Those people should pay for the optional clear-coat. It's unrealistic and unmaintainable for exposed ss. It doesn't mean that ss is a bad choice for trucks though: there used to be a third-party option to replace the chassis of your Land Rover MKII with ss so you could run it in salt water.
The SS has dictated the strange shape of the truck, it will be interesting to see what the long-term opinion is about that too.
But wait, there's more:
door edges sharp enough to sheer vegetables and fingers.
the 'frunk' (front trunk) can entrap fingers in it's gaps. (bad panel gaps in a tesla? color me shocked. /sarcasm)
Can't wash the truck in direct sunlight
can't used 'normal' glass cleaning fluids on the windshield, because it'll damage the single, massive wiper. (which Musk didn't want to add along with the side mirrors- the NTSB 'forced' Tesla to add those little tiny critical safety equipment to the machine.)
The (forthcoming) 'battery capacity box' takes up space in the cargo bed.
Oh yeah- NO SPARE TIRE INCLUDED WITH THE VEHICLE.
If you want a spare tire, it'll take up half the bed space as well, making the two mutually exclusive, methinks.
I could go on, but I think the point is made.
If I want an electric truck at this point, I think I'll pick up a 1980's or early 90's one ton truck with a failed drivetrain and convert it to a hybrid diesel-electric power train from Edison Motors. (why that old? easy parts availability and fewer (if any) ECUs to deal with.)
"I could go on, but I think the point is made."
You forgot, strategically placed heaters for de-icing, but none on the cold, LED headlamps, which you need to clean manually. Good luck driving through a snowstorm with that.
(For those who may never have driven in snow shower/storm, you get a build up on the front of the car. Incandescent headlamps get hot and under most conditions, prevent snow build up on the lens. LED lights need heaters to prevent that)
... and pre-rusted (that is a look you know).
And as an option—a mere $1,000—pre-inserted bullet holes.
Then there's the 'kit version'—comes in a large wooden crate, assemble the Cybertruck yourself (massive street cred)—a cool $10,000 extra.
More to the point - an electric motor doesn't need multiple gears, it doesn't even need a reverse gear.
The only reason gears exist in ICE vehicles is that the ICE is unable to start from stationary (needs a clutch/torque convertor), and has a very limited working range (needs multiple gears to achieve any significant variation in speed).
An electric motor can start a vehicle from stopped, and can then spin up fast enough that you don't need any other gears.
"Well actually even with the go pedal mashed to the floor, if you hit the brake pedal that overrides the accelerator..."
One just has to hope that with a vehicle that accelerates as fast as the CT, there is time to asses the problem and stomp on the brake pedal before there's a serious accident. The 0-60mph figure for the 3 motor version is under 3 seconds (insert list of assumptions here) and it's on the list of fastest vehicles Road & Track has tested. The average person isn't experienced in that sort of performance. There's a reason why F1 drivers are put up with by teams even though they are often complete a-holes.
Remember when there were congressional hearings because something similar happened to like 3 Toyota vehicles? Now watch Xitler throw a major hissy-fit about how unfair this is and that the deep state liberal jewish cabal is out to get him and ruin his business despite the fact that this likely won't even be reported much outside of the automotive trade press.
Are they the same ones who forced Liz Truss out of the UK's Prime Minister office after a mere 49 days?
"The UK’s main economic institutions – the Treasury, Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility (a “three-headed hydra”) – come under fire for standing in the way of her project, launched not with an election mandate but a Tory party selection process."
From a review of 'Ten Years to Save The West' in that, presumably to Liz Truss somewhat to the left of Stalin, newspaper, 'The Guardian", https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/18/trussonomic-lessons-what-learned-former-pm-book-liz-truss
Ironically, while those particular ramblings about a "deep state conspiracy" from Truss- a rationalisation of her personal incompetence and utter failure to herself as much as anyone else, it can safely be assumed- don't include any overtly anti-semitic elements, she *has* just had an antisemitic quote (i.e. one falsely attributed to one of the Rothschilds) removed from that same book.
I would be inclined to believe that this wasn't intentional anti-semitism from Truss herself, but I think it's also likely that it's very much a result of the influence of the right-wing conspiracy-minded circles she's now moving in- ones which certainly do include such conspiracy-minded antisemitic extremists.
I find it ironically *way* more shocking and unbelievable in hindsight than it was when she was in power that this borderline unhinged woman was *ever* prime minister. The perverse irony is that the fact she fouled the bed quite so quickly and comprehensively may- in hindsight- have been a blessing in disguise as it pretty much forced the Tories to get rid of her quickly before she did any more damage, a bullet inadvertently dodged even if the UK electorate is still paying the economic cost.
But it's worth remembering that Truss is still very popular with large swathes of the Conservative party- remember, it was the Tory party members and no-one else who voted her into power as their first choice (over Sunak). And this makes clear why not just Truss but the party as a whole are unfit for government.
Well, the party HQ really wanted Sunak and the voters really wanted "anyone but Sunak", so it was a foregone conclusion that Truss would win and immediately be removed just like Boris was.
At least with Starmer in no 10 we're seemingly on track for some more Thatcherite economic policies, at least until the Labour militants manoeuvre him out. Rayner's tax troubles may delay that a bit.
Tragically, according to a certain editor of 'Private Eye'* Ms Truss complained that there were no experts 'on her side' of the economic debate about unfunded borrowing to cut rich people's taxes while cutting benefits from poor people. (I can only wonder why ...)
I understand the 'antisemitic quotation' was actually something wrongly attributed to Rothschild (the jewish banker) which he never actually said. It is being removed from subsequent editions, which means I will have to avoid buying it twice (which frankly will not be a problem).
*Ian Hislop, (on the latest edition of 'Have I Got News for You'), either a dreadful satirical muck-raker of the lowest order, or an upstanding paragon of virtue championing 'the little people' against misuse of power (he did campaign against the Post Office Project Horizon scandal for years before it was taken up by the mainstream press, after being alerted by Computer Weekly).
I think they're just making sure the obvious is said because they don't have anything more confident to say. Not that pressing the brake means you're necessarily out of danger from the situation it got you in, but it's more likely than anything else to result in the outcome with fewer fires.
"And maybe shift it into Neutral. It does have a Neutral, right? And it can be turned off?"
Certainly, you just need to be on the right page and able to accurately stab the correct place on the touch screen while being crushed into your seat and panicking.
"some cars have the power to overcome the brakes with ease so all you would do in those cases is just burn up the pads
Correct. But kind of 20th Century. The Cybertruck surely has regenerative braking. So over and above to some (inactive while the vehicle is moving?) mechanism (pads?, pins?, tiny robots leaping from the wheel well to install chocks?) for locking the wheels when the vehicle is powered down, it would likely be trying to use the motor both to drive the wheels as directed by the accelerator, as well as trying to suck power out of the wheels to feed back to the battery as directed by the braking circuits. I don't have the slightest idea what it'll do in that situation. Industry standard would be to display an unhelpful error code on the console then do something weird. Maybe turn on the entertainment system at full volume playing something like Funeral March of a Marionette.
《 "press the brake pedal if the accelerator ever gets stuck"
Wow. This actually had to be said. Is it just me, or is Humanity's IQ diminishing ?》
Another gem from one of the myriad alumni of the School of the Bleeding Bloody Obvious.
We seem to be in the middle of intellectual limbo craze - how low can they go albeit without the pleasant music.
The Tesla Truck is Elon's equivalent of the Ford Edsel.
"The principal reason Edsel's failure is so infamous is that Ford did not consider that failure was a possibility until after the cars had been designed and built, the dealerships established, and $400 million invested in the product's development, advertising and launch."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel#:~:text=The%20principal%20reason%20Edsel's%20failure,product's%20development%2C%20advertising%20and%20launch.
Now I understand.
It doesn't take much thinking to imagine unapproved methods on the assembly line from the company that did this:
* https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-model-y-wooden-trim
* https://www.thedrive.com/tech/36274/tesla-model-y-owners-find-cooling-system-cobbled-together-with-home-depot-grade-fake-wood
This is a culture thing. Management gives such creative thinking their approval either by looking the other way when it happens or by pushing their lines to meet production quotas by overriding QA checks.
"It doesn't take much thinking to imagine unapproved methods on the assembly line from the company that did this:
* https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-model-y-wooden-trim
* https://www.thedrive.com/tech/36274/tesla-model-y-owners-find-cooling-system-cobbled-together-with-home-depot-grade-fake-wood"
On one hand, it IS a decent fix, but on the other, it lacks the polish to be found on a very expensive new vehicle. The strap arrangement seems like it would work if the worry was that there was too much mass cantilevered out for it to last long term, but I can think of several better designs that would allow that part to be removed and replaced without needing to have an uncommon tool to replace the metal strap. This is why car companies build a fleet of pre-production vehicles and put lots of miles on them. Running out of the proper parts on an assembly line is darn near inexcusable given all of the ERP software that's deployed. It's seems extreme to fly parts to a factory with a private jet, but companies will do that since stopping a production line costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour. It just so happens that Elon has a company that owns his Gulfstream jet and there are plenty of cargo companies with cargo fitted jets for this sort of thing. It not such a large and heavy part that it would easy to put several day's supply from the vendor on a small aircraft and rush them to the factory.
Using an Oracle ERP and Microsoft's Azure cloud services with iDevice front end apps...
I mean, if we're going to fantasize about them improving quality instead of making the truck dance a tango instead of a waltz like the car, we may as well fantasize about a few things that never work miraculously working at Least This One Time!
"*I am assuming that a heavy downpour is somewhat like a car-wash, so how does this truck survive IRL? https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/20/cybertruck_car_wash_mode/"
Tesla will soon be launching a national network of Tesla Superwash stations around the country, guaranteed to be within only a 3 hour drive of any Cybertruck owner. It can wash 80% of a Cybertruck in only 15 minutes using special chemicals and a final rinse in distilled water, filtered[*] to perfection.
[*]I know, I know, but this is Tesla Marketing!
I had a similar thought. And what about driving through the salty slush that builds up on treated roads in the snowier part of the country? That stuff is loaded with electrolyte and gets all over the outside of the vehicle. It's tough enough on conventional cars; ones that don't like water are really in trouble.
Owning a Cybertruck in Arizona would be bad; owning one in Michigan would be a disaster.
They've only been able to build 3,878 of these. 250/week and they have ~2million reservations. The people on the end of that list or those that don't want all of the options are going to wait... hmmm, overflow on the calculator display..... 1500 years or did I lose the decimal place? I do that with the slide rule a lot. As far as I'm concerned, 1,500 years is the same as the heat death of the universe so we'll go with that. Tesla won't be able to fulfill current reservations on the Cybertruck before the heat death of the universe. Please spell my name correctly when you quote me.
I thought it was FSD? Should be able to do this recall with a software update. Disable the accelerator pedal and reprogram the brake pedal as a multi-function pedal. It does either braking or accelerating depending on what you happen to need at the time. It just needs a catchy name like "smart acceleration".
You mean, like the sort of thing other manufacturers have been doing for some time? Like Nissan's e-Pedal?
In an electric car, does the "brake" pedal actually have hydraulics behind it as a safety feature?
M.
(Edit: Oh, having actually finished reading the article I linked, Tesla already does the e-pedal thing :-)
There are at least two of those things here in Palm Beach County: one in Palm Beach Gardens, one in Royal Palm Beach. I go to PBG at least three times a week, and RPB at least once. I will be on the lookout for Kamikaze Rusty Stainless Steel Electric Death Mobiles with stuck accelerators. Banzai! Or, as the Musketeer is South African, Usuthu!
Exits, to Men of Harlech, to watch Zulu (and competent South Africans) again.
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