Tesla recalls almost half a million electric cars over safety issues | Hacker News Reader

Tesla recalls almost half a million electric cars over safety issues

reuters.com

80 pointsgnicholas46 comments

Dupe of ongoing discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29741424

This sounds like a substantial fraction of all Tesla cars in the world...

I believe it is equivalent to half the number of cars they produced this year. As WSB noted TSLA was barely hit today.

Based on https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-v... (which doesn't include Q4) it's probably about 20% of the total cars ever delivered.

Since when is TSLA reflective of the company performance

"As WSB noted"? Lol

One impact this will have is to lengthen the already-long repair delays that Tesla owners have to deal with.

Unorthodox opinion: would it not have been safer-in-net to keep those recalled cars on the road to prevent repair delays? Now maybe-possibly ineffectual recall repairs will swarm facilities, while owners with real, serious car issues will be forced to keep driving them. Another reason why car over-regulation hurts the driver most of all!

> Now maybe-possibly ineffectual recall repairs will swarm facilities

One of these involves the frunk potentially opening itself on the highway. That's a pretty serious issue, and probably significantly more dangerous than most of the repairs that need to be made.

> Another reason why car over-regulation hurts the driver most of all!

This isn't car over-regulation. Tesla does not have the capacity to repair all of their vehicles in a timely manner, and will not make the repair manual available for reasonable prices so that 3rd party shops could do the repairs.

You know who can fix my Dodge if the dealer is backed up with warranty stuff? Every other mechanic shop on the planet.

Tesla shipped a faulty product, Tesla doesn't have the repair facilities to rectify that, and now Tesla owners are suffering because of it.

It is in no way the government's fault for not wanting people driving around 2 ton hunks of metal at 70 mph when a piece of it might randomly obstruct their vision at any point. That seems an eminently reasonable requirement to me.

I think we can allow adult car owners to decide on their own what is a genuine hazard and what is scaremongering.

No that’s literally what minimum safety standards are for, because we can’t expect consumers to do that effectively. And while imperfect they’ve been demonstrated over many decades to improve safety and public welfare. Also because if your front hood pops up and you swerve and crash your car, it puts other road users in danger not just your adult car owning sef.

Uh, you do realize that a collision requires, at a minimum, two rigid objects?

Yeah, and any adult can also decide to drive without license, and drunk as well, because they are responsible human beings. Oh wait

Just like guns and alcohol, right? You're refusing to actually think about this.

In general, roads are shared between multiple adults.

When one adult is being a dangerous moron, the other adults can create systems to prevent said moron from being on the road. This is how regulation is born.

So the decision was never the moron’s to make in the first place.

"But officer, i decided that i don't need headlights in the dark. I can sense the road".

Shall we allow also drunk adult car owners to decide on their own what is a genuine hazard and what is scaremongering ?

How is this over-regulation?

It creates gross inefficiency by forcing repair shops to "fix" a statistically unlikely flaw, while genuinely dangerous problems that Tesla owners are already aware of get pushed to the back of the line.

Well, they should not have created low-quality cars in the first place?

Someone’s hood or frunk opening is a genuinely dangerous problem.

And we have regulation because not all adults know how dangerous the problem is.

What does statistically likely even mean? The fact that the recall happened means it is a liability worth addressing.

> For Model S vehicles, latch problems may lead a front trunk to open "without warning and obstruct the driver’s visibility, increasing the risk of a crash," Tesla said.

"increasing the risk of a crash" is an optimistic description of what would happen if the frunk opened while driving. Even if the loss of visibility didn't directly cause an accident, the distraction/confusion/anxiety could easily cause a crash indirectly.

I guess this is one instance where you're much better off in FSD mode, since the computer's vision wouldn't be obstructed by the open frunk, nor would it 'freak out' the same way a human driver would. Of course, you'd still have to have the driver take over in order to pull the car over, but at least you could do so when it was safe to do so (assuming you could resist the urge/reflex to mash the brake pedal when the frunk popped open).

"The wheels falling off might have a small detrimental impact on the drivability of the vehicle"

"The wheels falling off does not impact the vehicle's drivability, because if the wheels fall off it is no longer a vehicle"

At risk of being pedantic, Teslas' front facing cameras are located behind the windshield and would be obstructed by an open trunk just the same as a human driver's vision would be.

Yes, but it can be expected that Tesla thoroughly tested the cornercase of sudden loss of vision of the cameras.

Yeah - sound a warning, shake the steering wheel, and delete any record that self driving mode was engaged.

Can it? I'm not sure it can be expected Tesla has thoroughly tested anything from their 'FSD' before pushing it out to their testers/customers.

There’s a YT video of a guy taping over the cams one by one. The car performs still pretty impressively even with most cameras blocked.

(I was pointed to this video because I, too had been skeptical after seeing normal “navigate on autopilot” disable itself due to one camera being blinded by the sun. Apparently, FSD is much better at handling such situations.)

Pretty sure I've seen that video and it totally oversold itself. Other drivers tried the same:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=92&v=yKgBakJc8ZY&f...

That's AP 2 hardware and computer... Not sure what it proves about AP HW 3 at all, or even AP 2.5.

Right, I forgot that Tesla threw out every single line of code, every single model, and crushed all AP2 cars when AP 2.5 came around. Same again for AP 3.

(Those of us who live in reality like to use the concept of inference)

Nope, I meant this one (FSD/HW 3): https://youtu.be/77cbSy-rBEQ

This is way more realistic than the original video, but yeah once the main sensor is blocked it starts driving erratically (even more so than usual)

Not sure if that's exactly unexpected...

Appreciate the correction! I wondered if this was the case when I wrote my comment, but figured the cameras were in the front grille. I guess putting the cameras higher up gives better perspective and reduces the chance of splashed mud/water that would obscure their view.

I've seen what an unlatched hood can do at highway speeds. It will rip the hood right off the dampers and smash the windshield. FSD won't help you.

Hood will almost certainly stay on, which is arguably less convenient.

Hmmm, but possibly better for the cars following ... a hood detached from a car at highway speed is the closest thing I can imagine to a UFO Robot Grandizer Single Harken (for those that were kids in the '70's):

https://mazingerzgreatkaiser.fandom.com/wiki/Grendizer#Weapo...

Heh, reminds me of front-facing “suicide doors” on cars that were so named (in part) because the air at highway speeds pushes said doors further open when cracked (or even before).

I guess these Teslas have “suicide frunks”!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_door#Disadvantages

Was that a A fully unlatched hood or one that is caught by the manual safety latch?

I’ve seen many cars accidentally driven with the hood open but caught by the safety latch at highway speeds.

I imagine either regulations and/or good engineering makes it safe to drive with an open but latched hood considering that you can pop the hood while driving by accident.

To put this in perspective, Tesla has sold about 2 million cars total. They are recalling a quarter of all the cars they ever sold.

I don’t know why the title rounded to a 500,000, the real number from the article is 200,000. Still though, 10% is a lot.

The recall covers 475k cars in the US, and around 200k in China: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/tesla-recall-china-...

European recall is forthcoming I suppose

Oops, I misread the article. Thanks for the correction.

Responsible thing to do from Tesla, it seems really minor problem too.

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