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Days After A Fiery Crash, a Tesla's Battery Keeps Reigniting (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Mercury News
Six days after a fiery crash on Highway 101 involving a Tesla Model X took the life of a 38-year-old San Mateo man, the car's high-voltage lithium-ion battery re-ignited while sitting in a tow yard, according to the Mountain View Fire Department... The battery reignited twice in the storage yard within a day of the accident and again six days later on March 29. Two weeks later, in an effort to avoid more fires, the NTSB and Tesla performed a battery draw down to fully de-energize it...
On the company website, Tesla wrote "the reason this crash was so severe is that the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had either been removed or crushed in a prior accident without being replaced. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash"... Tesla also reported that the vehicle's autopilot function was active at the time of the crash...
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Highway 101 crash and three other accidents also involving Teslas, including a fiery 2014 Model S crash Tuesday in Florida that killed two teenagers. Also under investigation: A Model S crashed into a fire truck near Culver City in January, and the driver reportedly said Autopilot was engaged at the time. And it is looking into a battery fire of a Model X that drove into a home's garage in Lake Forest in August.
Two hours after that story was published, a Tesla smashed into a Starbucks in Los Gatos, California.
On the company website, Tesla wrote "the reason this crash was so severe is that the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had either been removed or crushed in a prior accident without being replaced. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash"... Tesla also reported that the vehicle's autopilot function was active at the time of the crash...
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Highway 101 crash and three other accidents also involving Teslas, including a fiery 2014 Model S crash Tuesday in Florida that killed two teenagers. Also under investigation: A Model S crashed into a fire truck near Culver City in January, and the driver reportedly said Autopilot was engaged at the time. And it is looking into a battery fire of a Model X that drove into a home's garage in Lake Forest in August.
Two hours after that story was published, a Tesla smashed into a Starbucks in Los Gatos, California.
The desperate schmucks who've shorted Tesla would love nothing more than another headline but the implication here (that Li-ON is even less stable than some of us may have realized) affects Tesla only indirectly... and effects their [viable, prospective] competition equally.
Eyebrow raising but otherwise changing nothing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In any accident that hurts the integrity of the batteries, then they should be drained as standard operating procedure.
If a gas tank was leaking, then would they just let that go too?
I'm glad my non-electric car has a real park setting on the transmission. One where there is a physical cable attached to the selector that engages a pawl to lock the transmission.
Electric cars have those too. It's required by federal safety standards no matter the propulsion method.
And people "thought the car was in park" lots of times in ICE vehicles.
Can someone please provide a car analogy?
Nobody said it was safer. But they can be charged with electricity from the sun. You have to wait a long time before the sun grows plants, and they turn into oil that you can refine into gasoline.
It's required by federal safety standards
...for as long as those last.
All the by-wire stuff spooks me, I'll never buy a car that doesn't have permanent direct mechanical coupling backups for steering and brakes... Nissan's dont-worry-the-coupling-reengages-if-the-power-fails doesn't cut it, even if it can get passed the regulations.
Someone had to do it.
The battery catching fire is an interesting point. I'd be interested to know if the emergency responders initially followed the published guidelines for cooling the battery or if they stopped when they stopped seeing flames. Regardless, it's an interesting point and an important one for the future.
Regarding the rest of the OP's posting...yeah, 2 teens died in a Tesla in Florida while speeding 50-60 around a corner marked for 30 mph. Yes, a lady crashed her car into a Starbucks. Where are the headlines about some random kid who died in a pickup truck this weekend? I'll bet you $50 it happened. Or the old lady in her Ford Fiesta who ran into a parked car? I'll put $20 on that one. What, no national headlines on those ones? What gives? Or do we think miraculously owning a Tesla makes you immune to being a stupid/careless/human driver? I didn't know Musk was advertising that feature. Is Ford? Honda? Lexus?
The era of the self-crashing car.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Any energy storage system will have inherent danger, and the more concentrated it is, the worse the possible result. But you knew that.
As bad as battery fires are, they don't spread like a chemical fuel fire can and often does.
I am not very sore at the massive per-unit subsidies that Tesla's above-average wealthy customers are getting on cars
So not very sore that you described it using passive-aggressive terms. But yep, Tesla gets the same electric car tax credit that all the other battery electric vehicle car manufacturers can also take advantage of. Unless you are going to claim there is a special subsidy just for Tesla?
News flash: when the government wants something to happen, one lever they use is tax breaks. The government would like to see electric cars happen sooner, so they gave tax breaks. To everyone. Equally.
And yes, new technology is more expensive than older established technology, which in turn means that the initial customers might be more affluent. Not news.
NTSB is basically deputized to solve private sector problems at taxpayer expense. How much longer does Tesla and it's financiers get this free tax benefit?
NTSB is investigating because of the lithium ion batteries, the same battery technology used in every modern electric car. How much longer does GM (Chevy Bolt), Nissan (Leaf), VW (eGolf), Ford (Focus Electric), BMW (i3), etc. etc. get this free tax benefit?
NTSB has, over the years, spent quite a lot of time investigating gasoline car crashes. They've slowed down a lot because they've got a solid knowledge base.
So it's patently unreasonable for you to claim that this is somehow special treatment given Tesla. Tesla cars are the most popular electric cars right now, even though they are expensive; so there are crashes from time to time, just as with gasoline cars.
If the NTSB investigates a Nissan Leaf crash, will you rail against Nissan, or is Tesla just special?
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Someone give this guy a mod point. Seriously.
To expand...danheskett...the person bitching about the NTSB "solving private sector problems" on the taxpayer dime. You realize what you're complaining about is, literally, the government doing the job we pay them to do right? Are YOU going to hold a car manufacturer accountable for putting a dangerous product on the road? Were you personally going to pony up the cash to fly out to the crash site, check the forensics, go over the debris field, and make sure that what happened was a genuine accident and not the result of some guy cutting corners in the factory to improve his bottom line by 1%?
No? You weren't offering to do that? Gosh, I guess it's a good thing we all pay taxes and the NTSB does this stuff so that the rest of us have at least some slight reasonable reason to believe that manufacturers are making quality products. Yes, even Tesla...but also GM, Ford, Acura, Porsche, Kia, et al. They aren't doing those company's jobs for them. They are, quite literally, capable of shutting those companies down if they find a critical flaw in their product. That's not doing their job for them, that's keeping your disingenuous, passive aggressive, Neanderthal butt safe.
...and then hope and pray your house doesn't slam into a safety barrier at high speed while you're asleep at the wheel.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
News flash: when the government wants something to happen, one lever they use is tax breaks. The government would like to see electric cars happen sooner, so they gave tax breaks. To everyone. Equally.
Yes. Sort-of. The original tax credit of $7500 was (is? been a few years since I looked it up) based on the capacity of the battery. Basically, there is a credit per kWh of rated capacity and it phases out to a minimum threshold.
Amazingly coincidence, but the first generation of the Chevy Volt had a 16 kWh battery, which just so happened to allow you to claim the maximum credit. The floor was set to be exactly at the capacity of the Toyota Prius. So - buy foreign then you get a token $2500 credit. Buy American and get the whopping $7500. Go crazy and get a Nissan Leaf, like I did at the time, and all that extra battery got you bubkis with respect to federal tax credits.
If the NTSB investigates a Nissan Leaf crash, will you rail against Nissan, or is Tesla just special?
Tesla is special. Managed to wreck that Nissan Leaf 3 times. Luckily it was almost all cosmetic damage, but no NTSB rep ever contacted me... *shrug*
Yes, but we will all benefit from the electric cars eventually. As the batteries get better and the prices come down, they'll be something that most people can afford to use. Unfortunately, getting to that point is rather expensive, hence the subsidies.
In the mean time, people in places that have clean power generation benefit from the reduced emissions from the electric cars being sold.
Yes and in the future, tow truck operators may just keep the wrecked electric vehicles someplace where they can safely burn while fire crews arrive. Or, possibly have a fire suppression system in place to handle it.
If it proves to be at all common, there's probably some protocol that can be put into place to prevent re-ignition.
Yep. I don't think I know anyone who hasn't ever been involved in a car accident. If there are Tesla's on the road, they'll be in accidents. It's not worthy of headlines unless the things go up in a mushroom cloud when hit or something.
Yeah, when I rear ended someone in my Lexus, I don't recall a Mercury News headline. But maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
I think its because Tesla attracts a special kind of chimp-user, which reads no guidelines and thinks auto-pilot is like aircraft autopilot in the movies.
No, it's because Tesla keeps calling it an autopilot instead of something like Automatic Lane Control. It's not especially good at that job, either, but at least that better describes what it's meant to be.
I agree with you, 100%. However teslas are for the rich, we can't afford them, so i can see why they get picked on. Kind of like people who total their lambos. Usually makes the regional news at least.
A more important factor is probably that It is new tech. Do you remember how many creepy, misinformed FUD articles about the internet we had to endure all throughout the 90s? The internet was abducting your children, making their minds goo with extreme violent video games, seeing pornography, and hacking the planet. Now those same things are just a regular day at the office for most folks.
The exceptional becomes the norm in about 20 years always. hell, 20 years ago people who were always on their cellphones were neurotic workaholics or drug dealers. now its like easily 85% of the populace.
20 years from now there simply won't be cars without giant banks of energy in them. You can get your equality of coverage when i can buy a beater electric car basically. Until then, sexy cars get covered in the news. case closed.
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I am not Musk fanboy. If a smug and undeserved air of superiority would solve the issue, Tesla would have no problems at all. But this is hardly a Tesla-unique problem, and electric car using li-ion batteries is likely to have the same problem. This seems more like a problem with the wrecker service or scrapyard. You wouldn't leave gasoline-powered with a leaking full tank sitting around hoping it something didn't cause a spark, in fact the first thing you do is take out the (lead-acid) battery and drain the tank. There should be complete battery discharge and safing procedure before you even hook up the tow truck, and the company involved should provide for such an issue.
Or Christine...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So where's the "Honda crashes into bus!" stories?
Right here
Where are the headlines about some random kid who died in a pickup truck this weekend?
Oh please! He didn't die in the pickup truck.
Or the old lady in her Ford Fiesta who ran into a parked car?
Apparently, not a lot of old ladies drive a Ford Fiesta... but when they do, it's epic. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
> For whatever reason people make this mistake all the time
In my Dodge, if I open the door while the car is stopped, it automatically goes into park.
Humans screw up all the time. Good systems are designed so that mistakes that happen "all the time" don't cause your car to drive through a Starbucks.
> thinks auto-pilot is like aircraft autopilot in the movies. Note that real aircraft pilots only use it for mid-flight, not at or around super-busy airports
Going off on a tangent here, but modern airliners actually auto-land as common procedure. 30 years ago they didn't.
Heck, even my $250 model plane can auto-land, after automatically taking off. It uses open source software on a $30 controller board to do so.
So where's the "Honda crashes into bus!" stories?
Right here
Where are the headlines about some random kid who died in a pickup truck this weekend?
Oh please! He didn't die in the pickup truck.
Or the old lady in her Ford Fiesta who ran into a parked car?
Apparently, not a lot of old ladies drive a Ford Fiesta... but when they do, it's epic. ;)
Hah. I'd hug you if I could. You rock.
Speak for yourself. Some of us can afford a Tesla.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yeah, it's not like anyone was ever crushed to death because they failed to properly put their automatic in park properly.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I agree with you, 100%. However teslas are for the rich, we can't afford them, so i can see why they get picked on. Kind of like people who total their lambos. Usually makes the regional news at least.
People who think Teslas are "for the rich" and are "Like people [sic] with lambos" are confused about price tags.
A Tesla S starts at $75k. Ceiling around $140k.
A Lamborghini starts at $200-250k and just goes up from there with practically no ceiling (ok, of course there is...but it's high).
Yes, for some folks $75k might as well be $1M for all it matters to them, but there are tons of cars in the $75-90k price bracket, so pinning Tesla as some kind of super rich person toy that is deserving of some special media attention when someone runs it into a tree is just websites looking to sell clicks.
For instance, every single one of these cars has a starting price more expensive than a starting Tesla S (full cash price, no tax credits): Cadillac Escalade, Porsche Panamera, Lexus LX and LS Hybrid, Audi A8...etc
At least my gasoline vehicle is safe, its not got anything dangerous in it like a tank full of flammable liquid that produces explosive vapour, and its not as if self driving is something that would ever be possible on a non-electric vehicle.
Yes, correct. Then, and only then. Maybe, in light of this revelation of yours, one might see why it's counterproductive to purposefully impede the progress.
Worth mentioning that every car today has a giant tank of energy. A gas tank is in no way safe.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That is actually a new safety feature to prevent fatigue, the fire encourages you to pull over to stretch your legs and the drips stimulate the nerves in your legs to encourage blood flow.
...with Samsung. There are interesting sinergies for unconventional battery applications.
Tell me how it's less safe.
Petrol is very flammable. Ever seen a petrol car go up? It's an impressive sight.
Diesel isn't (much harder to get going) but it's incredibly slippery, which is why the authorities (fire brigade) have to come up and clean diesel spills really fast and thoroughy because coating roads in a good lubricant is also not safe.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's all electronically engaged in a Tesla. Even the emergency handbrake is electronically actuated.
Might be driver error I suppose But if Tesla "Autopilot" is, as critics assert, just conventional collision avoidance combined with lane keeping, shouldn''t the Collision Avoidance part discourage the vehicle from running into concrete lane dividers?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Until the car reignites again, just to spite people wanting to put it's fire away.
and thinks auto-pilot is like aircraft autopilot in the movies
That's probably because it is. Just like an aircraft autopilot, it doesn't handle not crashing into things either.
Ezekiel 23:20
"Do any of those other cars have the equivalent of autopilot?"
I'm told yes. At least one manufacturer (Hyundai maybe?) is aggressively advertising the wonders of its automatic braking on TV, and I think I've seen ads for lane keeping capability as well. Sorry I can't be more specific. Like most people, I tune ads out unless they are funny.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Some firefighters at least do get formal training in handling chemical spills, etc. But I imagine that it's difficult to keep the training materials up to date when technology changes. And I'm not sure what tools your local Pumper unit is supposed to use to "drain" a Tesla battery. Somehow a ax or firehose seem unlikely to be a proper fit to the problem.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
It's not. Nobody could ever claim that.
To accelerate a certain mass, you need a certain amount of force, which requires a certain amount of energy to create.
NO MATTER whether you're powering from AA batteries, nuclear fuel, people pedalling on bikes, or petroleum, that same amount of energy - to make a practical car - has to be contained within the car.
That energy, if released outside of expected parameters, is huge. Literally a bomb. There's no difference between the energy in an exploding petrol tank, and the energy in a lithium battery powering a car (in fact, the lithium battery is technically much less energy, I believe... petroleum is incredibly energy-dense which is why we use it, and why a tank of it can go longer than any Tesla charge).
It's as simple as that. What matters is... how easy is it to release unexpectedly? Shorting a petrol car's electrics might start a fire but it's unlikely to explode immediately. Petrol tanks are designed to withstand fires, obstruct people putting lighted matches into them, fuel pumps are designed to cut off if they take a jolt, etc.
The problem is not the technology, or the energy density. They are all equally as dangerous over a certain margin of error. The problem is the design. Hitting an object with the front of the car somehow damages the battery in a way that it CANNOT be safely isolated without draining the whole battery (which may take hours)? That's assuming the battery is actually intact enough for you to be able to do that by any conventional means. If that battery was "in half", say, how would you safely drain it?
The petrol tank, however, you can cover in sand / foam. You can drain it into the grass, move the car away from it and then just wait for it to evaporate.
For some reason, dealing with a petrol tank is much less scary to me than a block of hundreds of modular batteries each of which is capable of independently catching fire just because they are contacting anything metal, forming a run-away reaction at temperatures that will affect all the nearby cells. Batteries which you can't put water on (you can't do that with petrol either really, but you can at least use it as the carrier for extinguishing foam), which short on contact with metal, which don't have an "off-switch" if they are damaged. Which you can't cover in sand / foam. Which you can't drain without putting metal objects onto them (where?) and pulling current from an already-damaged battery.
Yeah, they sound more dangerous to me than a tank of flammable fluid that fire crews can just spray foam on from a distance, or drain safely into a container.
This is not a technology issue. This is a design / procedure issue. Fire crews will already have had training on how to deal with such fires. They wouldn't let some random guy tow it without thinking it was safe. And they got it wrong. Twice.
And the reason is that the design used has inherent safety problems in such an accident. Sure. It could be a really unfortunate, rare, one-off that's not countered by a simple design change. But it could also just be that the batteries need reinforcing in an isolated fireproof box with an isolator and some material that - on fire - expands and suppresses the battery's ability to keep reigniting.
But "discharging" all that energy means it has to go somewhere. You can't just short the battery to try to make it safe. Is there not a safe dummy load it could short through clearly labelled and fire crews made aware? It doesn't appear to be the case.
What we need is a material that actually stops a lithium battery from working. Something that could be released by a heat-trigger, or by fire crews. We have that for petrol and most flammables. It's fire extinguishing foam. Do we have that for batteries? No. And it seems silly to keep designing batteries on the expectation that someone will worry about that when the emergency happens.
(that Li-ON is even less stable than some of us may have realized)
what ? who youldn't ?
where they born after the 2000s ? Weren't they paying attention with the Samsung Galaxy recently ?
If anything, Sony's problem with bad quality batteries back them (and reconfirmed recently with Samsung) would have told us already that battery LiIon/LiPo battery have a certain tendency to blow up whenever you look wrong at them.
Disconnecting and removing Lithium battery from a damaged device should be standard practice.
And if a Tesla car had such a violent crash that the battery pack integrity seems compromised, not disassembling and removing them is inviting for such troubles.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The battery catching fire is an interesting point. I'd be interested to know if the emergency responders initially followed the published guidelines for cooling the battery or if they stopped when they stopped seeing flames.
As far as I've understood, the crash was this time so violent, that it damaged the integrity of the battery pack.
There might still be some conductors shorted by the deformation here and there, in such was the thermal fuse wouldn't break.
The shorted cell keeps warming and eventually get hot enough to burst into falme re-starting the fire.
A damaged battery on any gadget (not only specificially electric cars) should be considered as a potential hazard and should immediately by removed and put in a secure place (= a place where the pack wouldn't damade anything if/when it reignites).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
All the by-wire stuff spooks me, I'll never buy a car that doesn't have permanent direct mechanical coupling backups for steering and brakes.
You should instead use evidence based reasoning. If drive-by-wire is safer, based on actual data, then your "feelings" shouldn't matter.
I've never driven a car that had a special park gear.
Sounds like you have only ever had manual cars. Automatic transmissions always (AFAIK) have a park position with which a mechanical sprag engages with a toothed wheel to prevent the propellor shaft (and hence the wheels) from turning. The arrangement is provided as the equivalent of the recommended practice of leaving a manual car in gear when parked - as a last resort in case the parking brake fails for some reason like its cable breaking. What is being discussed here is how that sprag is moved - by a direct lever or cable (ie mechanically), or via an electric actuator controlled by a microchip (ie by wire).
Except the subject in those articles is the driver/victim and not the brand of the car. "4-year-old dies in fall from moving pickup", "Pair 'flee' crash after car hits bus in Rowley Regis", "Sandwich woman crashes car ..." where any news involving a Tesla car is "Tesla craches ...". Even taking into consideration the "autopilot" function, long before you know the autopilot was involved or not is the Tesla car doing the stuff.
Probably also because Musk is an attention whore with a messiah complex.
This ^^
Musk is a showman; 100 years ago he would have been running a freak show at a fairground, standing out front with lightbulbs over his costume, and with megaphone calling anyone who walked on past his booth an arsehole.
Trouble is, these days it is not just the good publicity that gets the coverage he seeks : the bad news gets the high publicity too.
Tesla is special. Managed to wreck that Nissan Leaf 3 times. Luckily it was almost all cosmetic damage, but no NTSB rep ever contacted me... *shrug*
If you think the NTSB investigates ordinary crashes much less fender benders then the only person special here is you.
Well, let's see, I have had a car suffer complete electrical failure while driving it before. Because it had a mechanical linkage between the steering wheel and the front end, I just pulled over. Because the brakes were a simple hydraulic link, I was able to stop.
I also had a brake failure once. Because the emergency brake was a simple cable link between pedal and the brakes, I was able to stop safely.
Drive by wire would have been a problem in either event.
Two hours after that story was published, a Tesla smashed into a Starbucks in Los Gatos, California.
For some reason this almost made me spit my coffee (not Starbucks) out laughing. That was not an expected ending to the article.
I see. So will this be used in the flamethrower?
Not with the previous release of AP2. It filtered out stationary objects to avoid spurious detections of hazards that were actually on the edges of the road.
The latest version - ironically, right before the accident (Tesla updates have a slow rollout process, so the driver almost certainly hadn't gotten it yet) - no longer appears to filter out stationary objects.
The big question is: why are we still talking about this accident that happened months ago? 3300 people die per day in car accidents. There's virtually no news in any of them, but every time it's a Tesla (AP or not), it's huge news. Which creates a misleading perception, given that Teslas have such a low rate of fatalities per mile (a point that's on this site frequently used against Tesla in arguing that Autopilot doesn't actually make a driver safer - the argument is that the vehicles are physically safer to begin with, so you can't credit that to Autopilot).
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
The reason the crash was so severe was because that fucking tree wouldn't move out of the way.
In my Dodge, if I open the door while the car is stopped, it automatically goes into park.
If I were you, I wouldn't crow too loudly about FCA safety features.
Good systems are designed so that mistakes that happen "all the time" don't cause your car to drive through a Starbucks.
If only FCA cared about drivers of vehicles other than your Dodge.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes and in the future, tow truck operators may just keep the wrecked electric vehicles someplace where they can safely burn while fire crews arrive. Or, possibly have a fire suppression system in place to handle it.
The fire suppression system in question is an absolute shitload of water. You have to cool the fire to put it out.
If it proves to be at all common, there's probably some protocol that can be put into place to prevent re-ignition.
The packs are going to have to be redesigned with a self-discharge feature that works even when they are damaged.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Searching electric vehicle ems training brings up quite a few resources from DOE, NFPA, and many other organizations. 15 years after the widespread introduction of the Prius as the first modern electric car to sell in large volumes I expect all certified safety organizations have procedures in place for handling electric vehicle accidents.
Here's a good summary from the DOE: https://www.energy.gov/sites/p...
The real question is will you #standwithher in prison?
I still miss computers having a power button that isn't a suggestion.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Collision avoidance that only avoids running into moving objects ... interesting concept that. Don't recall Elon telling us about that. Doubtless slipped his mind.
"3300 people die per day in car accidents." More like 90 a day in the US. Maybe 500 a day worldwide? Call it 700 or 800 if we include motorcycles and motorscooters? But Vespas don't come with "Autopilot"
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
There are 100 million ICE cars on the road in USA. And NTSB reports there are 500 vehicular fires that kill 100 people every day.
Since 1 on 800 vehicles on the road are Tesla, we should expect around 0.625 Tesla fire every day or about 18 fires a month or 60 Tesla fires in the first quarter of 2018.
Since every Tesla fire gets national news coverage, I would assume at most two fires happened in that period.
I would conclude Tesla prevented 58 vehicular fires in the first quarter of 2018.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You're making an assumption with zero data available to back it up.
The linked story was a picture of the rear end of a Tesla sticking out of a Starbucks. There was no accompanying text (at the time of me writing this) other than the factual statement that someone parked their Tesla inside of a Starbucks. So you assumed that someone activated Autopilot and it drove into a building straight away, rather than someone selected the wrong gear and absent-mindedly stabbed the accelerator, which happens all the damn time for some reason regardless of the badge on the car.
Someone does this in an Audi and it would barely make Facebook. But because it's a Tesla it will be national news. Yeah, and there's no press bias at all.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
> electric car using li-ion batteries is likely to have the same problem
Even RC cars, I have seen small LiPo pack catching fire, it's impressive, even a small 2S the size of a cigarette pack can burn down your house. Lot of video on youtube of battery fire.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
We all know that brake hydraulic lines never corrode and fail, vomiting poisonous chemicals all over the road, right when you're building pressure in the lines (e.g. braking). And parking brake cables never get water into their jacket, rusting the cable - weakening it's tensile strength and causing it to expand in the jacket freezing it in place through friction - causing the cable to snap the next time you try to use the handbrake. - I've personally had that happen on three different vehicles from three different manufacturers. Oh, and some parking brake systems are a cable that runs to the rear brake calipers to manually add pressure to the brake piston - if you have no hydraulic pressure in the line, the parking brake is useless as well - VW did this on about 11 years worth of Jettas, Golfs, Cabrios; it's a common failure.
Your simple mechanical systems aren't as foolproof as you think.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
"we need a large autonomous barge to pick up garbage from tourist towns on the great lakes."
Sounds like you need pigs.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Fuck, and me without mod points...
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
It's well known among Tesla owners.
Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day.
Were you unaware that Tesla sells vehicles worldwide?
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
Because Tesla has the shiny, new technology of the future. It seems important to pay attention.
You mean one that engages the transmission body into a loaded state and may break it if the electronic controls decide to engage the clutch pack anyway?
My manual-transmission car used physical linkages to pull bits and pieces of the transmission around under human-only power, since the force required is so small as to not benefit from any sort of power shifting mumbo jumbo. My electric car, as with a non-electric automatic transmission, uses a computer controller to disengage the clutch from the electric motor when parked.
Automatic transmissions in gasoline and diesel vehicles use a set of clutches managed by computer algorithms to shift automatically. It's not like there's an electronic switch that energizes one clutch and de-energizes another when you pull the shifter into D or P; it just registers an input with a computer.
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What is your point? The parking/emergency brake is a secondary backup for the hydraulic brake system. The likelihood of both failing simultaneously is quite low.
"Your simple mechanical systems aren't as foolproof as you think." No one said they are foolproof. The discussion here is that the system still works (somewhat) even with no electrical power. In addition, mechanical systems tend to fail slowly and give noticeable indications of problems well before actual failure. Electrical and software failures can be sudden, e.g. a connector fails (common) or a bug.
Viperidaenz is talking about the parking/emergency brake, not some auto parking system.
If the coupling is some kind of spring-loaded clamp which is disengaged by solenoid force, then it requires constant power to stay disengaged. A power failure would re-engage it. You'd have to wire the entire power flow to your drive-by-wire system in series to ensure catastrophic failure and re-engage the mechanical linkage--which is doable.
I've actually considered the same for microwaves: have a high-power linkage inside the microwave door latch, such that the latch must engage (hot terminal inside the latch, not the door). Because the latch arm rocks, disengagement cuts power both inside the door itself (arm goes downward, pulling a connecting terminal) and inside the microwave body (the hook at the end of the latch arm goes upward when opening, disconnecting from the hot terminal inside).
In this way, you must mechanically alter the microwave oven to have it open while powering the magnetron. It's not a logical switch, but rather a break in the power circuit path.
That's how you design dangerous systems.
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The problem is that the car is basically built around the battery.
I agree, we could even say, that you basically are buying a giant battery from Tesla, and for that price, they throw in a car bolted on it for cheap.
(Given the relative price).
It's even more noticeable with manufacturer where the car and the battery can by sold separately (e.g.: Renault - the 45kWh battery costs around 10k EUR)
It is installed into the vehicle partially with adhesives,
Maybe in the latest models? (the platform used to build model 3 upon, maybe ? I haven't been following that in details)
But older platfroms where designed with battery swapping in mind, I've read. Supposedly, once the shield is disassembled, the battery module should be coming out relatively easily). I'll have to find back 3rd party sources.
Similarly a lot of other cars have also been planned with battery swapping. Most manufacturer though the idea seemed logical.
which is why Tesla probably never actually swapped a single customer battery.
I though it was the general lack of interest from the public which caused manufacturers of e-cars such as Telsa to drop the idea of battery swaps.
Already back the first Tesla, but nowadays nearly all electric vehicle (except for the cheapest alternative entry-level in the range) have batteries that enable the driver to driver for at least 2-3 hours in a row. By which time taking a break is *extremely strongly* recommended. (Or even mandatory for professional drivers in some European jurisdictions - such as FR and CH, at least). And thus leaving the car plugged-in for half an hour or an hour while taking a leak, having a coffee, eating something or even taking a power-nap is perfectly acceptable for most drivers of e-cars, thus the general lack of interested for swap by owners.
Only the marginal "drive 8 hours straight without a stop ! go pee in a plastic bottle !!!" insane crowd would be clamoring for fast swaps.
Here's Elon Musk wrap-up about the abandoned battery swap : they invited 100 clients to test the battery swaps, only 5 them did swap battery and each only swapped once, no-one trying again. (Okay, it's not a third party's analysis, it's Elon himself and he might be telling whatever is needed to make the investors happy and confident).
But, you can find similar analysis about consumer battery swap from every single other company which did consider the idea.
Renault-Nissan CEO similarly reporting they're dropping swaps, also due to lack of interest from the public.
General sum-up about the trend.
Note that this is specific for consumer cars.
In some professional settings, battery swaps make actually entirely sense.
Buses and vans are such things : it makes more sense to swap the driver and the batteries while the remaining of the giant vehicle is used on the next shift (with a fresh rested new driver and a new fully charged battery pack).
Instead of having the drivers napping in a hammock and the giant fricking vehicle staying plugged into a charger.
(They didn't actually swap the battery in their stage demonstration, either; Tesla has literally never shown a single battery swap.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
- 1.16 : bolt un-screwer visible.
- 1.30 : lower shield + battery assembly being visibly lowered.
- 2.00 : lower shield + battery assembly being visibly raised.
Did they do an actual full blown battery swap ? Probably not. (Elon doesn't even mention how the disconnect/reconnect the batteries from the liquid cooling loop. Redundant Zero-spill Quick-disconnect valves, perhaps ?)
But they proved that it's not impossib
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Hah. I'd hug you if I could. You rock.
Huh. That's an interesting response. Usually when I give people links to stories about children dying, people tell me that I'm "sick" and to "get help". Glad to see I'm winning you people over. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I think that this is the least likely to be related to a drive by wire and will probably come down to driver error. For whatever reason people make this mistake all the time - they jam the wrong pedal, make the wrong drive mode selection, etc.
Pedal errors do happen, but this particular kind is a rare bird indeed according to this study:
Before leaving the serious error category, it should be mentioned that there were only two instances in which the subject depressed the accelerator instead of the brake. In both cases the subject recognized the error immediately and made a correction. There were no instances, in other words, in which the subject persisted in mistaking the accelerator for the brake.
And in this particular situation, the driver would have had to keep that pedal jammed for a long time and through lots of chaos. Look at the setup where the accident happened. The car had to first jump the curb, which takes a lot of force and gives the driver plenty of feedback that something is very wrong, and then still managed to run across the entire sidewalk area and hit the building with enough force to embed itself almost fully through the wall.
Given all that and the fact that we're talking about a car that has full control of its faculties and regularly makes bad "decisions" about how to use them, Occam says it most likely wasn't the driver.
The battery catching fire is an interesting point. I'd be interested to know if the emergency responders initially followed the published guidelines for cooling the battery or if they stopped when they stopped seeing flames. Regardless, it's an interesting point and an important one for the future.
Regarding the rest of the OP's posting...yeah, 2 teens died in a Tesla in Florida while speeding 50-60 around a corner marked for 30 mph. Yes, a lady crashed her car into a Starbucks. Where are the headlines about some random kid who died in a pickup truck this weekend? I'll bet you $50 it happened. Or the old lady in her Ford Fiesta who ran into a parked car? I'll put $20 on that one. What, no national headlines on those ones? What gives? Or do we think miraculously owning a Tesla makes you immune to being a stupid/careless/human driver? I didn't know Musk was advertising that feature. Is Ford? Honda? Lexus?
Where are the headlines about those other Tesla stories you're complaining about? Because I sure didn't see them here on slashdot. The first I heard of them was as valid context provided to this story, which is a pretty standard practice.
This story is news and headline worthy, because it shows that an EV battery in a crashed vehicle is more dangerous and volatile that people realize, and it requires special equipment and expertise to deal with. Right now I'm wondering about the life-cycle of these batteries, Teslas will eventually become junkers, what's going to happen in 20 or 30 years when some teenager is trying to charge the battery in their grandfather's old Tesla?
I stole this Sig
Leave it to a Slashdot regular to recommend treating an electrical fire with water.
Leave it to an anonymous coward to comment when they know jack about shit. Lots and lots of water is exactly how you put out lithium battery fires. (The notion that the lithium in the battery will catch fire when exposed to water is absurd, it's not free.)
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ walked on water. Maybe you were thinking of Elijah, or maybe those three dudes in the furnace?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Eh, even in non-electric cars people can make this mistake. I can recall years ago when I was picking up my car from the mechanic and they had left it in drive or something with no emergency break set, so when I turned the key the car lurched forward into the one in front of it.
So, planning to never get on an airplane ever again?
Electrically, not electronically.
There's not much practical difference between "locking pins engaged by a hunk of metal" and "locking pins engaged by an electric motor". There's still a physical locking mechanism.
Electrically-actuated is actually becoming common on ICE vehicles. The car can detect the circuit is broken or the motor is dead. It can't detect that a physical actuator has broken.
Not that I disbelieve you, but exactly what, if anything, does this autopilot thingee actually do other than warn you occasionally that your hands belong on the wheel? I think I could probably design a keep_your_hands_on_the_wheel_stupid warning system that costs less that $3000 and still have a healthy profit margin.
The material at https://www.tesla.com/autopilo... says " "Automatic Emergency Braking Designed to detect objects that the car may impact and applies the brakes accordingly" But in the fine print, it warns me that some capabilities may not be available -- apparently because my local regulators don't want my car avoiding accidents. And I infer that many of the promised capabilities actually haven't shipped yet.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
There's just under a billion cars in the world, meaning that fatal accidents per year average over 1 in every 1000 vehicles.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
Hey, I like the shorts. Thanks to them I was able to buy TSLA at $267. Like most people, I'm generally fond of individuals who choose to give me their money.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
I think you have that entirely backwards. An important part of budgeting is not wasting money.
I'm glad my non-electric car has a real park setting on the transmission. One where there is a physical cable attached to the selector that engages a pawl to lock the transmission.
Well, shit. There goes that argument.
There is no such thing as an infallible system. Doesn't exist. Period.
I've personally had the nut holding the shift linkage arm to the shaft come loose. Felt the detents as it shifted from drive to park, just happened to miss the last one where it didn't click from R to P because of the loose nut. Luckily I was on a flat surface. I didn't even find out till I went to leave the next day and the damn thing wouldn't shift.
Ship has sailed, time to jump on the euphemism merry go round, like the 'tards.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But note well, the total electrical failure is a single point of failure for brakes and steering when you have drive by wire. Otherwise, there are three independent systems that can keep you from crashing (4 or 5 if you count downshifting and slamming the transmission in park).
How likely would you consider the simultaneous failure of 3 independent systems vs. one?
Sure, there is no reason an EV has to be drive by wire. My complaint isn't about EV, it's about any vehicle dependent on drive by wire
It will take at least 20 years for the data to be in.
Right now, drive by wire cars are still relatively new. Sure their are stats, but they are _easily_ manipulated. e.g. Tesla safety stats.
Personally, I'll consider drive by wire when the car makers bring their dev efforts up to FAA standards. None have a history of pure competence.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
My complaint is that too many cars have no backup if the electrical system goes out. You lose steering, shifting, and regular and parking brake all in one shot.
On older cars, steering, main brake, shifting, and parking brake are independent systems. Yopu are MUCH MUCH less likely to have 4 failures at the same time than one.
Two hydraulic circuits plus a cable e-brake.
It's not foolproof, but it has no single point of failure.
Using VW as an example? All that proves is you buy SHITTY cars. Water cooled VWs have always sucked balls, never more than today. Even my German relatives have finally admitted that VW is on the 'never again' list. If you know Germans, you know that didn't come easy.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I would NEVER get into an airplane who's software was developed by the car industry. NEVER.
When the car industry adopts the FAA's commercial aviation software validation process, I'll consider it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In short, this is a known characteristic of this type of system.
The situation is where you are following another vehicle going about your same speed. It moves out of the way and there is a fire truck (or some other stationary object) direct ahead and stopped. The system doesn't recognize the stopped object and in fact will accelerate back to the programmed cruise speed instead of stopping.
So this is one (of many!) reasons the Autopilot & similar systems say that the driver must remain continually aware ready to re-take control of the vehicle at any moment.
The problem with this scenario is--as nearly every autopilot crash so far has demonstrated--that this goes 100% counter to human nature.
Once the autopilot has driving a few hundred or a few thousand miles successfully, the human driver starts to trust it more and more, and tune out more and more. Monitoring a very good autopilot system is b-o-r-i-n-g and, interestingly, the better the system the more boring it becomes.
Any human in this situation is going to tune out for lengthy periods of time.
Instead of human plus automated driving adding together to achieve a system that is safer than either alone (which seems to be the case for currently available collision avoidance systems which never take control of the vehicle except in rare collision situations) you end up with a system that combines the worst characteristics of human and automated driving.
The human zones out way too often (again, a predictable outcome of this type of system) while the Level 2 automated system has many, many blind spots.
Actually I do. A 1960 with push button shift. Didn't have a park gear that you could use (it was in the trans, but the 'linkage' never engaged it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And in this particular situation, the driver would have had to keep that pedal jammed for a long time and through lots of chaos. Look at the setup where the accident happened. The car had to first jump the curb, which takes a lot of force and gives the driver plenty of feedback that something is very wrong, and then still managed to run across the entire sidewalk area and hit the building with enough force to embed itself almost fully through the wall.
I think you seriously over-estimate people's abilities to correct themselves, and how long it takes these events to unfold
In most pedal errors, the first instinct is to press harder on the pedal. Remember, the person generally thinks they have their foot on the brake, now the car is moving -- better push on that "brake" pedal harder.
In addition to that confused impulse, the car (which is under heavy or full acceleration at this point) can traverse quite some distance before you can even physically react. At 10 mph you cover 14.6 feet per second -- so in the time it takes for you to recognize what's wrong, remove your foot from the accelerator, and begin pushing on the brake, reasonably about 2 seconds, you've already covered 30+ feet -- but by the end of that 2 seconds you're already moving at 20 mph or more (or have already crashed into a stationary object).
A few years back, as my wife finished parking our car, the parked car opposite suddenly lurched over the curb, across an embankment that is wider than the sidewalk you referenced, over another curb, and into the front end of our car. The driver, an older gentleman in his 80s, was understandably horrified. It was a clear case of mistaking the gas and brake while getting ready to leave, as well as mistaking forward and reverse. Nobody was hurt, but our car was totalled, and the gentleman never drove again. The point to the story is, these things happen faster than you imagine.
Bill, your lack of engineering sense is showing.
Gadgetified cars have smart cruise control, auto emergency braking and lane assist. So yes they have 'autopilot' and have the sense to name it appropriately.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, my damn cat chewed up a 1S pack wiring and shorted it. I was lucky the house didn't burn.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He might send a SWAT team to your house...
The accident is more a sign that EMS personnel and scrap yard employee training is going to have to be updated for the handling and management of large automotive lithium ion batteries. Not just for Teslas but for other electric cars and possibly in the future urban VTOL vehicles as well.
Yeah, when I rear ended someone in my Lexus, I don't recall a Mercury News headline. But maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
Obviously not, if you rear ended someone... or for that matter, if you bought a Lexus
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's required by federal safety standards
...for as long as those last.
They are not going away. Even CAFE is probably not going away. The automakers are supposedly going to ask Trump not to blow it away, just to delay it a bit. Five, maybe ten years tops. That will give them an entire additional produce cycle to meet goals. But they still have to make vehicles with improved emissions for the global market, so it wouldn't save them a single penny in design money if Trump were to eliminate the CAFE requirements completely. No automaker wants to make a separate powertrain just for one country, that's expensive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Except you were worried about an electrical failure, not a software failure. But the goalposts do look nice in their new location.
Well, let's see, I have had a car suffer complete electrical failure while driving it before. Because it had a mechanical linkage between the steering wheel and the front end, I just pulled over.
Try this experiment: connect an electric motor to an electric generator. Turn the generator. What happens to the motor shaft?
Because the brakes were a simple hydraulic link, I was able to stop.
Brake-by-wire systems in use on road cars today actually have a hydraulic system. When the system is working, it modulates braking pressure. When it isn't, you have normal hydraulic brakes. Odds are the brake proportion is wrong in that case, but you can still stop the vehicle.
I also had a brake failure once. Because the emergency brake was a simple cable link between pedal and the brakes, I was able to stop safely.
Yes, EPBs are complete horseshit. There should always be a cable or linkage on the parking brake. They could be electrically assisted, for customers that need that.
Drive by wire would have been a problem in either event.
Nah, only the second one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you think favoritism doesn't play a role in selecting boards of directors in any corporation, I have a bridge to sell you.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you can't afford $1,200 a month on a car payment (an approximate payment on a $70k loan) while making $140k a year...well I was going to say you're pretty shitty at budgeting. But that's completely untrue. You might have plenty of other things that you budget your money on. But given that your take home should be at least $7-8k a month, you should be able, if you chose, to cover the cost of that car.
I'm not saying you should. I'm not saying it's the most prudent use of your money. But for you to arbitrarily imply that that's out of someone's price range, or "foolish" implies your priorities are the right ones. Spoiler: They're not...they're just yours, and that's fine.
...all of which are pretty rare.
I guess that totally depends on where you live. If you live in a major metropolitan area, not even a "super rich one" (Pittsburgh, Boston, Houston, San Diego, Nashville, etc) they're not particularly rare. Sure, they're rarer than Honda Civics, but that's bell curve economics for you...the more expensive a car is the fewer you'll see. But Tesla hardly exists in some rarified airspace uninhabited by other manufacturers.
But the original point stands...Teslas are no more "for the rich" than any of those other cars I mentioned. When was the last time you saw a national headline about someone wrecking their Lexus, Porsche, Cadillac, etc? I practically guarantee they get wrecked with pretty much equal frequency.
I'm sure there are things in your budget I'd consider "wasteful" and I'm sure there are things in mine that you'd consider wasteful.
A household "budget" by definition is "an estimate of income and expenditure for a set period of time" and if you run yours and you can afford something while meeting the other obligations that you need/should cover, then that's a successful budget. Whether it is irresponsible is a much bigger question that every family/city/country has to decide independently and as a unit.
Also, totally not the point of the original post which was about disproportionate coverage of Tesla compared to other similarly priced vehicles (and far disproportionate compared to less expensive ones).
I was only responding to the person who said that the car being considered "expensive" means that you're bad at budgeting. Whether you can afford it in your budget or not isn't the point at all.
Also, totally not the point of the original post which was about disproportionate coverage of Tesla compared to other similarly priced vehicles (and far disproportionate compared to less expensive ones).
Doesn't really matter. I wasn't responding to your original post.
First: Not me.
Second: No he isn't, he's worried about 'drive by wire' calling that 'electrical failure' is a reading comprehension fail. Given the history (look into the software in Toyota's that has been examined in some detail...ignore the 1 week NASA look) software is exactly what he should be worried about.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Try this experiment: connect an electric motor to an electric generator. Turn the generator. What happens to the motor shaft?
Now, YOU try this. Dead short the positive and negative together. Try spinning that motor enough to generate a measurable voltage in the electrical system.
Brake-by-wire systems in use on road cars today actually have a hydraulic system. When the system is working, it modulates braking pressure. When it isn't, you have normal hydraulic brakes. Odds are the brake proportion is wrong in that case, but you can still stop the vehicle.
That is anti-lock brakes, not drive by wire.
I assume you also engaged the parking brake too.
Duh. That's why I said "let me guess"
If I had data to go on it wouldn't be guessing.
Well, TBH, if it were plausible on an engineering/cost level, I might be just fine with a rheostat/variable-capacitor-based backup braking system on PM motors, as long as there still was a pad-based cable controlled e-brake for the last 5mph. (Try this experiment, short a stepper motor, then notice how hard it is to turn.) Of course, dumping all the waste heat without a disk or drum is a bit of a challenge in that case, even if you could get it to work at the currents/voltages involved in stopping a multi-ton car from highway speeds.
I can trust very simple analogue electronics for emergencies, but trusting an active control system to work in a pinch is something I'm simply not inclined to do.
Someone had to do it.
I think you seriously over-estimate people's abilities to correct themselves, and how long it takes these events to unfold
I'm not estimating anything -- I cited to and quoted from a study that found pedal errors aplenty, but zero incidences of this particular one.
In most pedal errors, the first instinct is to press harder on the pedal. Remember, the person generally thinks they have their foot on the brake, now the car is moving -- better push on that "brake" pedal harder.
This is a well-worn idea that the study explicitly found not to be true for people pushing the accelerator instead of the brake. Your anecdote suggesting otherwise concerned an octogenarian that clearly shouldn't have been driving a car at all. There's no evidence the driver in this situation was impaired at all, much less to that extreme degree.
The problem I have with this solution (which is basically the Nissan one) is that you are relying on the spring/clutch to not wedge up and just sit there (or in the case of a meshing system rather than a clutch, fail to interlock.) This has to work flawlessly under conditions that may include abrupt jolts due to collisions or terrain. An assembly that stays assembled is less likely to have those problems, and already has decades of in-the-field testing behind it.
Someone had to do it.
That is anti-lock brakes, not drive by wire.
You're right and you're wrong. It's how all the brake by wire systems on the market work. They do their own computer-controlled braking, the amount of which is based on hydraulic pressure and all of which is provided by the ABS system unless the electronics fail. Then a solenoid turns off, a valve opens, and your foot is hydraulically connected to the brakes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I assume you also engaged the parking brake too.
Ha ha, funny guy. It was a 1976 Silverado being driven in 1998. It hadn't had a parking brake for 10 years by the time I got it.
That's primarily because cars like Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt/Bolt are not nearly as fast or aggressive as Teslas. So people don't drive them as foolishly and the accidents they get in are less likely to cause catastrophic damage to the battery pack. It's more an issue that "supercars" capable of driving very fast have a tendency of getting into more spectacular wrecks when those wrecks do occur.
An at least marginally interesting question would be, should the government get into the business of regulating availability or use of such "supercars?" Should you need, for example, a special driver's license rider to purchase a car capable of 4s 0-60? Insurance companies already charge a premium for such cars. Perhaps municipalities should consider it if it becomes a problem as more and more electric powertrains make such impressive acceleration attainable for the average driver.
3 Hours Later another Tesla was given a speeding ticket, and in a completely separate incident a Tesla was given a failure to blink ticket!
Do we really need a news story for every driver of a Tesla in the world who breaks the law?
I'm not happy with it, but I'm also educated and experienced enough with how business and economics work to realize that this is an emergent behavior inherent to the system that "The Wealthy" didn't plan or pay for. They may be smarter about using it to their advantage than you but their advantage is more about timing than birthright. So, no, you're wrong in thinking that I take for granted that society has to be structured in this fashion. In fact, quite the opposite. What differs between me and you in this regard is just that I'm smart enough to recognize that this is the situation correcting itself, while you've been brainwashed into biting the hands that feed you.
The article you linked to mentioned there was a recall. "The changes are designed to automatically prevent the vehicle from moving under certain circumstances, even if the driver doesn't select 'park'", the article said. That's precisely the change I posted about.
Even if he was forced to resign or impeached, the next President will pardon him, just like happened with Nixon.
These people all stick together, shit after Trump leaves office, he'll be best friends with Hillary again, which isn't surprising as they're birds of a feather.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Actually the brakes are usually 2 systems as well. I lost my back brakes once, pedal went down a lot further but the truck stopped just about as well and after I crimped the rear brake line, I carefully drove home.
Another time the idler pulley for the serpentine belt seized up as I was making a turn, if there had been traffic, I would have hit it as unexpected heavy steering meant swinging wide. Couldn't believe how hard that was to drive the last mile on a winding road home.
I'll add that with the foot activated parking brake, I'd hate to try to stop with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
How would a car with corroded brake lines or a rusty handbrake cable pass inspection?
By living somewhere where there are no inspections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
There's usually a switch to prevent starting in any gear besides P or N. Even manuals usually have a switch hooked up to the clutch pedal to prevent starting in gear.
It's actually more common (or was) for that switch to screw up and prevent starting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Surprised it even started as that usually fucks up the neutral safety switch first.
I had a stick shift come out of the transmission once, fun driving 20 miles stuck in first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
In my Dodge, if I open the door while the car is stopped, it automatically goes into park.
That only became a "feature" after dodge killed Sulu.
I own a Dodge which originally had the new-type shifter without the auto-park ability. It was a known problem; my local dealership informed me a month before his death that Dodge was aware of multiple accidents occurring due to vehicles not going into park properly and "a fix is being developed" but wouldn't go into effect for another year.
After the publicity surrounding his death they fast-tracked and pushed out a software fix maybe a month later.
Correcting my own comment: they killed Chekov, not Sulu.
The standard response is drive-by-wire is safe because airplanes do it.
The reality is that airplanes undergo regular mechanical checks by certified mechanics. Private cars have no such safety checks.
That's why drive-by-wire isn't as safe as engineers and zealots think. I want to see it working in a 20-year-old vehicle that's undergone "normal' (close to zero) maintenance.
The reason drive-by-wire will fail in private cars is because of FAA rules, but not the design rules. You cannot design that well. Period.
The FAA safety check rules are what makes drive-by-work in airplanes--looking for issues after every 40 hours of flight time.
Let's see how well drive-by-wire works in a 20-year-old Tesla with minimal maintenance.
That does make a difference. Typically, auto mechanics don't have more than a continuity checker, so they can't say if the control wire is solid or hanging by a thread. assuming any maintenance is even happening.
After the publicity surrounding his death they fast-tracked and pushed out a software fix maybe a month later.
Is that why Slashdot doesn't yet have a software fix allowing us to edit comments for a few minutes after posting to correct minor errors?
On the contrary, a good system that notices mistakes like that should be able to tell that your attention is flagging, and intentionally drives your car through the Starbucks, probably to pick up a latte.
Most countries might, but one huge market - California - does not.
Unless you have a (perhaps older) Citroen, with a common hydro-pneumatic system powering your steering, brakes, and suspension.
IIRC, if that fails, you lose power assist, but still have manual steering and brakes.
According to the article that I read, It was a 2012 without autopilot.
The solenoid mechanism would tend to return to its lowest energy state when jolted, rather than wedge up due to vibration. It would have to be physically-damaged to fail.
A clutching mechanism only has to close. A gear meshing system is generally fine because they interlock well: when one part turns, it shifts to interlock. Helical and spiral-tooth spur gears tend to slip and connect more-easily than dog gears. In a steering system, you also have slow movement, so little chance of teeth skipping and gear grinding.
Generally, the failure modes which would prevent interlock are also modes which would jam the gears if constantly meshed; although you're certainly adding another mechanical action that could fail.
I would place more concern on the drive-by-wire software failing than on the mechanical system.
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Mental lapses and over confident is a human nature. I recently helped my uncle installing the new rack and bumper he ordered from 4WheelOnline for his 2001 Dodge Ram. For some reason he doesn't like the EV's and fancy features that supposed to do everything he should be checking on the vehicle.
As I read your comment, the quote at the bottom of the page is:
Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable. -- Gilb
How do you figure?
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If you were as smart as you think you are you'd be ruthlessly putting yourself on the correct side of that divide for the sake of your offspring because it will be nearly impossible to cross it by the time a child born today has grandchildren unless something major changes.
Please explain your stance that the problem is correcting itself. I think this is denial so you don't have to man up.
Yes, I should have said that they lost power assist. And I don't know how the suspension reacted.
However, I would not call it 'manual steering and brakes', as that term usually refers to a system which has no power assist from the start. Losing both would be a handful, and it seems that common failures would be more common than separate ones,
I haven't driven a Citroen, but I have been driving a car when the engine stalled suddenly, meaning power steering and brakes went out. I wouldn't say it handled well, but it handled well enough to come to a safe stop on the side of the road.