It's unclear to me from the tweets if anyone confirmed the driver removed his foot from the accelerator. I'd absolutely love to dump on Tesla, but people often do stupid things in panic situations.
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.
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.
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.
[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.