Tesla Cybertruck Unexpectedly Accelerates into Home with Rear Wheels Locked
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
The rear brakes locked and were dragged ~50 feet. The front axle CONTINUED pulling the Cybertruck for those 50 feet, with the brakes applied.
There is absolutely no engineering case in which this should be expected behavior.
I have to be very delicate with my brakes around town, because 15" ventilated disc brakes are great for high performance, but VERY grabby.
But at least I feel confident that they'll stop me (and keep me stopped) very quickly.
I installed the same last year, and the difference is obvious. I'm glad how "grabby" they were; a few times, it was an imminent accident without them.
I'll dispute that. Have you actually tried that? If so, your brakes are defective.
There's an easy intuitive way to visualize this. Remember that any change in speed or direction is acceleration. Braking is just acceleration with a negative sign.
The engine generates horsepower to accelerate the car from zero to some speed. While we don't usually speak of HP when talking about brakes, it is equivalent. We can also compute how many HP the brakes are producing when accelerating (with a negative sign) the car from that speed down to zero.
So: a car that has a more powerful engine than brakes would be able to accelerate from 0 to 60 (or pick some speed) faster than the time it takes to brake from 60 to zero.
Can you think of any car or truck that can accelerate faster than it can brake? Doubt it (unless the brakes are broken).
To your truck example, I have a one-ton turbo diesel truck. I hadn't tried this experiment so was curious after your comment and went for a drive. As I expected, if I hold down the brakes the truck won't budge even at full throttle. The brakes are massively more powerful than the engine.
They have to be, after all those brakes are designed to bring the full rated capacity of the truck and trailer (28,000lb) to a stop from highway speeds. The engine, while very powerful, has way less power (acceleration potential) than the brakes.
In case that is still too difficult, here's a link: https://x.com/bfreshwa/status/1803823968547217903
Edit: speaking of suppression of bad PR, HN mods nerfed this submission into the ground https://hnrankings.info/40782552/
> mods nerfed this submission into the ground
Because it's Jalopnik, known anti-EV and especially anti-Tesla page ran by Gawker. Look at all the submissions from the domain and tell me they aren't biased.
I had a look and they aren't biased. Care to point out how they are _all_ biased?
>We have reviewed logs and due to the terrain the accelerator may or may not disengage when the brake is depressed
Can it be clearer than that?
They literally say that the Cybertruck may continue pressing on the gas pedal while the driver is slamming the brake pedal. That's, like, the first thing they tell you not to do.
Additionally, the engine being able to overpower the brakes while stationary (or close to that) is not something that you commonly see in automobiles. As in: I'm not aware of any other vehicle with brakes designed that badly.
As a cherry on top, the steering wheel was also non-operational during the incident. Which is surely an innovation in drive-by-wire implementations.
I wish it was illegal to have drive by wire in brakes or steering. These are the two most vital systems in a car that I absolutely need to retain control of in order to stay alive.
All software has some bugs, so we need to acknowledge that. Brakes and steering are too vital to let them be controlled by software alone, when we know there are always some bugs in all software.
Aside from the obvious answers (planes are regulated differently from cars, getting a pilot's license requires more training, etc), let me point out that autopilots for planes existed for over a century, but we are only getting some semblance of that in cars now because flying is a much easier control problem to solve.
See, there's not many obstacles in the air.
[citation needed]
Flying is the safest mode of transportation by a large margin[1], so you'd need to fudge your metric quite a lot to arrive with that conclusion.
That's before we get into the nitty-gritty of which incidents can be attributed to the autopilot failure to avoid apples-to-oranges comparisons.
[1]https://www.cnn.com/travel/worried-about-flying-heres-what-t...
Planes don't have brakes (while flying) anyway.
No, you're not the only one.
These should be regulated like black boxes on aircraft, and mandated to be available to the NHTSA.
Let’s wait until we know more details of what happened. This could’ve been the trucks fault, or it could’ve been the driver falling asleep and blaming the truck. If this was poor design on Tesla’s fault, then yes we criticize them, however we criticize the company as a whole (including musk), not just their CEO.
I’m not sure why everyone is so entrenched and hyper fixated one way or another on one human being.
Yes, there are some unknowns here, would be great to find out all the details.
> This could’ve been the trucks fault, or it could’ve been the driver falling asleep and blaming the truck.
But based on the facts known so far, we know this is not it. The driver was braking hard given the locked rear wheels.
For example I'm really interested in how they determined that the "back" tires were locked.
The back axle has 2x the power of the front in the Cyberbeast. The suspicious part is the the driver said the steering was non-responsive.
Without better information, I suspect either user or system failure with full throttle and brakes causing the front wheels to lock up (because they have more brake force and half HP) causing the loss of steering and back wheels overpowering brakes.
In just about any vaguely modern car hitting the brakes will disengage the throttle. In just about any car the brakes should be able to overpower the engine. There is no situation in which a car should be moving if you hit the brakes and the gas simultaneously.
Even if this is user error, there's something clearly wrong with how the car behaved in this situation.
Whatever he's getting, he brought it on himself.
The behaviour of using a screen with submenus to setup things while you're driving is madness if you think about it. We're not allowed to use our touch screen phones while driving but are allowed to use a touch screen bolted-on touch screen.
I own a Tesla Model 3, and have ranted about how awful its touchscreen only control is bad for ages, but the Ford is significantly worse. Just today, the truck’s UI bugged out in such a way that half the exterior lights were blinking, while a period bell sound would blast every few seconds. A message on the screen complained that the car “needed to be running to…” with the rest cut off by a nondescript grey square.
I know, by observation, on my Prius that "panic stop" brake pressure disconnects the hybrid system due to all the noise that the contactors make when this happens, vs. lighter braking within the regeneration limits. Braking and power never ever fight one another though. I've tried "power braking" the Prius, like you can with a normal automatic transmission car to load the engine, and it just doesn't do anything at all.
This article about the physically stuck pedals says that "Thankfully the truck cuts acceleration when you press the brake pedal..." but this seems to show otherwise.
https://jalopnik.com/tesla-cybertruck-slippery-pedal-recall-...
On a manual ICE vehicle it makes some sense to since you need to hold some brake while raising engine RPM for until the clutch engages. Not really sure what reason there would be on an electric vehicle to command the main motors to accelerate while brakes are applied.
"2024 Tesla Cybertruck Dual Motor Foundation Series Specifications
0-60 MPH 3.8 sec
BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 126 ft"
Car accelerated ~~2/3 of the way on the video~~ Edit after re-watching: car was floored downhill with slight wheelspin for 8 seconds, it was slowing down when you can hear screaming tires for less than 2 seconds. Looks to me like it was fully braking after all, after someone decided to floor brand new 4 second to 60 EV vehicle into a building and shat his pants.
> Thankfully the truck cuts acceleration when you press the brake pedal, so hopefully there weren’t any injuries caused as a result of the issue.
Oopsie!
>due to the terrain the accelerator may or may not disengage when the brake is depressed
People will be people, so any other option seems like the height of arrogance.
...which is not something that happened in this case in any way, as far as we know.
According to Tesla, "due to the terrain the accelerator may or may not disengage when the brake is depressed".
Not "due to the driver holding down both pedals", but "due to the terrain".
(The driver clearly says that he was not holding down both pedals, too).
I wonder if this was a malfunction of the system that detects the car being on a slope which caused it to accelerate forward despite the brake being pressed?
Having driven a many different cars, I suspect without as much experience with manual transmissions or regenerative brakes, it is much more likely for a driver to panic stomp the gas.
Therefore the smaller rear brakes were able to lock up the more powerful rear motor driven axle (there were ~50 foot skid marks from the rear tires).
Why were the more powerful front brakes not able to overpower the weaker front motor?
This is unacceptable engineering. Stop blaming the driver and apologizing for Tesla.
Did the driver have their foot hard down on the brake pedal?
Were they using both feet and applying brake and accelerator at the same time?
These seem like obvious basic questions that this motoring journalist has failed to ask.
We will have to wait for keen YouTubers to answer these questions for us I guess LOL
Such is the modern world!
>Did the driver have their foot hard down on the brake pedal?
Yes, this is how you get the skid marks 50 ft long.
You can also hear it in the video.
>Were they using both feet and applying brake and accelerator at the same time?
No. The vehicle accelerated on its own, and wasn't responding to the steering controls as well while the unintended acceleration.
Tesla's response was that "due to the terrain the accelerator may or may not disengage when the brake is depressed".
>These seem like obvious basic questions that this motoring journalist has failed to ask.
Because they have very obvious basic answers unless one is hell-bent on blaming the victim (who, by the way, has a driver license).
>We will have to wait for keen YouTubers to answer these questions for us I guess LOL
Indeed. Because Tesla has dissolved its PR department years ago, and won't answer to inquiries from the press.
I'll wait for NHTSA to answer these questions, but you do you.
[1] Went to Wikipedia to get a link; and indeed, it seems like the NHTA estimated in 2015 that it's responsible for 16k collisions per year: https://web.archive.org/web/20161226060428/https://www.nhtsa...
Article says rear wheels were locked up, which implies heavy brake pressure.
Why the fronts weren't also locked up is an open question, but in any properly engineered car that should be impossible. The front brakes are always larger and more powerful, so if enough braking force is being applied to lock the rears, the front wheels should also.
The point being that there is a extremely simple explanation for this accident that people are willfully ignoring because of the manufacturer of the vehicle.
Can you share that extremely simple explanation, if you know it?
That could be.
> and stomped on the brakes to stop the car
So, why didn't the car stop? Why did it keep driving forward with only one axle locked up by the brakes?
> Why do you believe this one twitter user over me?
Well because he was there and you were not.
Again, you're citing facts not really in evidence. If you want to believe a two-tweet conspiracy without confirmation, I can't stop you. I'm saying that it's probably not the truth and that a routine loss of control is a better explanation.
Loss of control is not routine. It is something that should never ever happen.
There might've been some amount of driver error involved, sure, but that statement sends shivers down my spine. Either of "the accelerator always/never disengages when the brake is depressed" is sane. The idea that it may or may not, depending on external factors outside the driver's control, is just plain terrifying.
We should probably wait for some fact checking before getting outraged
Because electric cars have phenomenal torque, it's not possible to make brakes big enough to stop the car against full application of the accelerator. So they have to have disconnects.
The emergency brake or the brake brake?
Maybe you just mean the wheels need not move?
I’m almost positive I would just drag the rear end of my car, a boring VW diesel. Did this in some gravel not paying attention, recently.
How does this test work in a manual?
Standing on the brake while letting out the clutch to see if it stalls is a way to tell if the clutch is dead.
This test won't work at all for a FWD car. The parking brake locks the rear wheels but the front tires are free to rotate under engine power and since on a FWD car most of the weight is on the front axle, the car will happily slide the ligthly loaded locked rear wheels along for the ride.
That’s what is not clear.
Traditional ICE cars with auto transmissions allow you to do this, by design.
But you’d have to have a front wheel drive car and engage the parking brake / handbrake to lock the rear wheels like that.
Which is not possible in a Tesla.
For a Tesla to have locked the rear wheels whilst the front wheels continue to drag the car forward, does, on the surface seem like a failure in software or electronics somewhere.
I should test what happens in my Tesla :-)
(Side note: I wish Musk would just leave Tesla so we can all feel less shitty about owning them :-/ )
The article claims the driver mentioned "unresponsive steering", but that doesn't make much sense as the vehicle pretty clearly follows the road (to the right). It's not like one would turn at the bottom of the dip (into the ditch).
I can't blame anyone with such little information.
One of the few times time there was a problem (Toyota), it was discovered that engineers were grossly incompetent with their ECU code.
This is basically a "solved problem" and we now have brake by wire and steer by wire. Mercedes has been doing both for what, ten years or more?
Electronic throttle controls is still safe because if the code hits a bug and the throttle becomes uncontrollable you can still use the brakes to stop the car.
But if you also have drive by wire braking system, you can have a big problem.
>Likewise, applying the brake pedal simultaneously with the accelerator pedal will override the accelerator pedal input and cut off motor torque, and regardless of the torque, sustained braking will stop the car.
This is quite a stronger statement than: "the accelerator may or may not disengage when the brake is depressed". The former statement is true in my experience with my Model 3: if you press the brake and the accelerator at once, you get a notice on the screen saying that it's not going to let you be an idiot. I wonder why the Cybertruck (seemingly) doesn't behave the same way.
[0] https://www.tesla.com/blog/no-unintended-acceleration-tesla-...
As an aside - it's hard enough being a bicyclist in the US with all these absurd-ly large trucks prowling the streets whose drivers can't see bicyclists either in front of their hoods or in their side mirrors. Now we have this moronic vehicle which adds in faulty controls and sharp pointy body panels that'll slice through you when you hit them.
On a psychological level, I fear there's something deeply wrong in the US as they lose their global hegemony. I respect the second-amendment and all that, but what civilized country markets a vehicle as being "civil war" ready and "bullet proof" ? Sheer insanity.
You can feel that the brakes are what's holding you, but never do you feel that they're about to fail and you're about to floor ~520hp unexpectedly.
In this case the Tesla was able to overpower its more powerful brakes and drag the car forward. That should never happen.
- user has depressed brake
- user has depressed accelerator
... and needs to pick a priority between these two inputs, I am available for consulting.
I had a 1980's car in which the ECU had a sense line to the brake light circuit, and if the brakes were applied, engine power was instantly, and dramatically, cut.
Every drive-by-wire-throttle car I've ever driven - and DBWT cars have been around since the late nineties, do the same thing - press the brake, the ECU goes to idle immediately - sometimes in sports cars it's after a few seconds. There is zero reason for this pavement queen to be set up to permit left-foot-braking under throttle, especially when it is so heavy and powerful.
The federal government and EU regulators need to find some balls, fast, and reign in Musk. Every single idea he's had to "revolutionize" cars - beyond going electric, not really his 'idea' - has been asinine. In some cases he's pioneered Stupid and the auto industry shrugged and followed right along because regulators let him:
* going backwards at least twenty years in pedestrian crash safety by making a flat-nosed vehicle whose body panels can deflect a sledgehammer blow, instead of crumpling when hit by a person's body
* self-driving and lane-keeping cruise control with no radar has caused numerous crashes (thanks to "phantom braking" when the car freaks out and thinks something is in the road) and when the car doesn't see something because of dirt, sunlight, or water on the cameras - has killed dozens (by low estimate) of people...both occupants, law enforcement, and the public and that's just the well-publicized cases. I'm betting the actual numbers are more like thousands. Dual camera systems simply are not sufficient because even the very best pro photo digital cameras are still worse than the human eye in resolution and dynamic range.
* yolk steering wheels, though at least they kinda sorta addressed that with the variable ratio steering in the CT. There is an astounding lack of hubris to look at a fucking steering wheel and say "I can do better!" - especially when "better" has been tried before at various times and was a miserable failures. Musk looked at F1/Indy and said to himself "SEE? BETTER!" and forgot that those are being used by people who are at the absolute pinnacle of driving skill and rarely have to do anything approaching a sharp turn.
* no indicator stalks...putting the most commonly used control on the car is now a moving target and can have any rotation
* vehicle controls on a screen that depending on the Tesla model, anything on the road is impossible to see while you're looking at the control, which you have to do because there are no physical controls or even haptics.
Did I leave anything out?
In short:
- No self/autonomous vehicle tech without radar and some sort of LIDAR to supplement cameras - No steering yolks - Sheet metal must crumple appropriately in a collision with another car or a pedestrian - Indicator stalks required - Speed and basic indicators must be in front of the driver. Want to do it via a HUD? Fine.
It was easily doing 60 at the bottom, but kept accelerating uphill for couple more seconds, probably to 80 before he started braking. No car would stop in those 50 feet. It wouldnt make it even if he started braking just after crossing the bottom.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g29674610/best-stoppin...
How is the insurance company liable for a faulty product?
The insurance company should recover their costs from Tesla.
That is exactly how these things work in the US.
> The insurance company should recover their costs from Tesla.
These two things are not mutually exclusive.
The driver is a big time tweeter and 'teasing' the video release, but after a month, nothing: https://x.com/bfreshwa/status/1793996219317891282
They might not take all Tesla press releases as gospel, that does not make it a FUD site.
Tesla Fanboys will always amaze me.
You won't see me putting my family in a Tesla and this article certainly isn't the only reason why. Plenty of similar incidents to choose from. I prefer not to get beheaded by my car because it decides to drive through a semi at 70mph.
Aside from them posting the video five days ago