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Consumer Reports Recommends Tesla's Model 3 After Braking Fix (reuters.com)
Consumer Reports said on Wednesday that it now recommends Tesla's Model 3 sedan after its latest tests showed that a firmware update improved the car's braking distance by nearly 20 feet. From a report: The magazine last week flagged "big flaws" in the car, including braking slower than a full-sized pickup truck, while also highlighting many positives. In a tweet, Mr. Musk said he really appreciates "the high quality critical feedback from @ConsumerReports. Road noise & ride comfort already addressed too. UI improvements coming via remote software update later this month."
The Slashdot crowd isn't going to like this...
They said CR was wrong but now apparently they say CR was right...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
... and over-the-air update can also break it. Or take away the "feature" once the car leaves the showroom. If it were so easy of a fix, one has to wonder why Tesla didn't recognize and fix the problem in the first place? Why did it take a third party tester to find it?
>> Consumer Reports Recommends Tesla's Model 3 After Braking Fix
I've never seen "Braking Fix" as a euphemism for "Payola" before.
CR said: Breaking distance is > 150'
Tesla said: Our testing says 133'
CR said: Same, on our first try, subsequent tries were longer.
Tesla said: Oh crap, that's probably a bug in our regen breaking stuff--thanks for pointing that out.
Tesla rolls out a fix and CR verifies the fix. It seems like everyone was well-behaved all the way around.
Is this really the first time you've ever seen a bug in a product? Or are you shorting TSLA?
Consumer Reports Recommends Tesla's Model 3 After Braking Fix
Seems counter-productive. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What happens when another firmware update breaks the fix? No pun intended. Any vehicle with this amount of change possible in firmware should be tested regularly. Tesla certainly won't let anyone know about it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Funny.... I'm not too concerned.
The owner's manual clearly states that the autopilot feature isn't supposed to be used unless you're #1 on a highway (not some smaller side road with vehicles parked along the side of it), and #2 the lines are clearly painted.
Pretty much all of the accidents people had with autopilot engaged where when they ignored these things AND didn't bother to pay attention to what was happening in front of them, or even have their hands on the wheel.
If you're too stupid to get that this technology is only a fancy cruise control with some ability to match speeds with vehicles in front of you and to stay in a lane that's well marked? Then I don't know what to tell you..... How do you manage to safely use cruise control on other cars and trucks? It's the same concept.
Wow, I thought Nerds educated themselves.
The amount of control the ECU or ABS controller has over the braking of a modern day car is stupid. It handles the amount of pressure sent to each individual brake caliper on each wheel. This allows that controller to act as an ABS controller, a traction control device and a bias adjustment all in one. To work properly it also needs to have input from the rest of the CAN BUS in the car so that it can do its job. So if you want to tweak the settings that the brake controller receives from the CAN BUS you can affect how the brakes perform.
Should it be this way? Meh, I prefer a nice physical limited slip differential to any pseudo brake magic stuff. But for most drivers who just want to get in a car and show up somewhere all while sneaking a look at their cell phone every 2 minutes, the digital stuff is fine.
Now get off my lawn.
All it means in effect is that Tesla's own testing and QA is so shoddy that it took a 3rd party to point out how dangerously bad the braking distance was. It's good that it can be rectified over the air but it doesn't absolve them putting it out in that condition to begin with. What else did they not bother to test, or allowed to slip past QA for fear of missing their targets?
It is ON by default, it reduces brake wear significantly and reduces brake heating and energy wastage significantly.
But they turned it off while testing Tesla. Why? To be "fair" to the ICE cars? To be "consistent" with earlier testing of gas cars? The test involves 60 to 0 braking hard, five times in a row with one mile of driving in between to cool.
This test is probably designed to promote disk brakes over drum brakes, by disk brake makers, by lobbying SAE to use this as the "standard".
Now EV makers should come up with a test that is impossible for ICE cars to pass because of the lack of regen braking. With ABS all braking distances are limited by the tire not the braking power. So they should do five consecutive 60 to 0, reducing the "cooling run" from 1 mile to 15 seconds. With regen EV can do it without heating the discs. ICE will set their rotors on fire.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I hope this update doesn't crash
hear! hear!!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
On the down hill drive from Pike's Peak, park service stops all the cars and checks the brake rotors for over heating. May be Tesla would have driven down from Pike's peak much safer than the ICE cars. Now they are being forced to be just as crappy for the regular legitimate use to meet an artifiicial made up test.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm assuming there's some trade between shortest stopping distance, optimal safety in anti-lock braking, Optimal safety in steering while braking, and optimal regenerative braking. One could always shorten the stopping distance of ANY car. Just put on grippier tires and detune the Antilock breaking. But the car may lose some handling while braking or slide on slippery surfaces.
it's all trades.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
With ABS all braking distances are limited by the tire not the braking power.
Considering that Tesla just reduced the braking distance with a firmware update, this statement is wrong: it is also limited by how aggressive the ABS is designed. Also, in an emergency panic stop regenerative braking is relatively inconsequential.
they [sic] software thought it is not the usual user going about normal driving. May be the car is going downhill on a long road and it is better to stop the brake from over heating.
So the Model 3 was effectively simulating brake fade?
No thanks. Good on CR for calling them on it. If Telsa thinks this is the right approach then the car needs indicate this behavior to the driver, at which point it might be considered a praiseworthy feature. But just mystifying everyone with poor performance is stupid; that just arms critics.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Of course if it plays follow the leader and the driver of the leader falls asleep and drives over a cliff, you also don't want your car to follow.
We've seen a whole lot of holier-than-thou criticism (from people who probably write shitty code day-in and day-out) that "cars shouldn't have bugs", a lot of implication that Tesla is the only manufacturer ever to have a bug found in the field, and lot of exaggeration about the magnitude of the bug, and then some clearly insane accusations that Tesla just paid off Consumer Reports--but you're the first person I've seen make a reasonable engineering criticism.
Bugs are inevitable, they are attracted to complexity. A self-driving system is going to have bugs. The infotainment system is going to have bugs.
But, the brakes should not have bugs. It's such a critical system that the code should be blindingly simple, trivial to formally verify, and the engineers should be *shocked* when there's a bug found. If not, then the system should be simplified until that's the case.
That's probably naive, because with ABS braking, auto-gen, etc.--there are probably good reasons for some complexity separating the user pushing their foot down and the brakes being engaged--but I agree that your question is the right one to pose.
Let me give a computer analogy.
Similar to what Gartner used to do to compare Windows and Linux. It will disable all strong points of Linux and then declare Windows to be the winner.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Still not clear what exactly was changed in the firmware update.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm exhausted by people thinking that autopilot isn't just a pumped up cruise control, completely ignoring the thing telling you that you still have to pay attention and not be stupid, and then proceed to be stupid and not pay attention.
Would we be hearing about someone that drive their corolla into a parked police car because they were texting? It's basically the same shit.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It has been said many times, it's human nature. If you aren't doing the driving, your attention will lapse. Being involved by steering and subtle activity in the brain when you are in control of the vehicle makes a night and day difference. It has become tiresome waiting for the right people to understand this. It's not going to change.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
"You people need to grow up and get a life." - pot kettle black.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Simple solution, don't use the autopilot if it bothers you. You've got to drive on the road with other drivers who are mad as hatters and cause stupid accidents and kill people - do you still drive on those roads or are you stuck at home?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
yes, true. But Tesla made a big mistake calling it "Autopilot" as a lot of people will think that they don't have to do anything and can sleep all the way home.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)