cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1030687
EDIT: This PDF contains very detailed electrical information for the EEs who wanna go through the complaint: https://www.autoevolution.com/pdf/news_attachements/breaking-nhtsa-petition-shows-tesla-s-sudden-unintended-acceleration-is-real-and-curable-217525.pdf
Last year at /r/RealTesla, a Chinese video of a car rocketing at full speed for 1+ minutes before crashing / killing a pedestrian made the rounds. We all recognized it as one of the weirder cases of “Sudden Unintended Acceleration”, and I think that particular video really changed some minds.
While a lot of SUA events are from driver-error, it began a search into why Teslas seemed to be getting more SUA above-and-beyond the industry normal. This investigation (now filed under NHTSA) suggests that the ADC could be miscalibrated during a load-dump (or other electrical surge-like) scenario.
If the ADC associated with the accelerator pedal is off, then the Tesla will have the pedal at the wrong level of acceleration until the next calibration event, which is not going to happen until over a minute later.
This is extremely similar to that Chinese runaway Tesla, and perfectly seems to explain it. I’m glad that someone seems to have gotten to the bottom of this.
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2020/INCLA-DP20001-6158.PDF
This is in response to a petition from 2019. 203 reported crashes to this issue, NHTSA rubber stamped Tesla and decided there was no problem.
Now here we are 3 years later (Jan 2020 was when NHTSA responded), and now we’re seeing more proof of this problem, and 3-more-years (including the French driver + Chinese Driver, with huge numbers of injuries + fatalities) and who knows how many unreported cases.
This problem allegedly affects all Model S, X, 3 and Y vehicles. Nothing less than a total recall on all Teslas ever made will fix this problem, as Tesla fundamentally replicated this faulty hardware across every car they’ve ever built.
The only question in my mind is if NHTSA rubber stamps Tesla again and gives them a free pass, again. US Government has been awful at this, but with this level of evidence, the Chinese Government and French Governments are likely to get involved now. Even if USA does the wrong thing, I’m hoping some country out there gets it right.
This is incredible evidence that required reverse engineering of Tesla’s sensors and the damn firmware of those chips hanging off the CAN bus. I don’t think the NHTSA can so easily brush off this complaint anymore.
Ever since I learned where the manual door release was originally placed, their claims of safety meant nothing to me.
Yes, I’m also the moderator of [email protected], FYI. I figured we need a home outside of reddit.com as /u/spez was feeling awfully pro-Elon with his statements.
Subbed, thanks.
Elaine Chao’s (aka: McConnell’s wife) Department of Transportation was a well known rubber-stamp factory too with regards to safety issues.
People also need to recognize that Republicans don’t like leaders who actually check on safety issues. We have the Democrats in power and therefore Pete Buttigieg. I’m hoping he does the right thing here.
Its hard for me to pin this solely on the Republicans when a vast majority of Tesla was built in California, and founded on our subsidies.
Dude took hella money from California then started to talk shit after he left.
Also I miss r/realtesla
I do think that Democrats turn their brains off if you say its “Green Technology”. But this is an obvious safety issue, and historically Democrats are more for keeping ya know… regulators actually regulating?
Republicans have a point about when regulations go too far and hamper innovation / etc. etc. But this safety issue got through Chao and her department in 2019 and 2020. That’s fully on them for making NHTSA incompetent in the time of need.