Good Design Should Not Require Government Intervention

Tesla has been studying the issue for too long. Officials announce ban on popular Tesla feature linked to over a dozen deaths: 'You're in a box that's on fire and you can't get out'

Retractable door handles have become a defining design feature of modern electric vehicles, especially those made by Tesla. According to Mashable, the handles are at the center of new safety restrictions after being linked to fatal accidents. The design can make it difficult for drivers or first responders to open doors during emergency situations.

Just use normal, boring door handles that work in an emergency. Because there WILL be an emergency.

"Cool" isn't good design, not if it comes at the expense of safety. At least 15 deaths were tied to Tesla doors that failed to open after a crash.

"You're in a box that's on fire and you can't get out," Kevin Clouse, who was trapped in his Model 3 following a 2023 crash in Georgia, told Bloomberg.

And yes, there are manual releases from INSIDE the car. They are not easy to find, and it assumes that people inside the car are conscious, and thinking clearly, which may or may not be the case after a car crash.

In many cars today, if the airbags ever deploy, the ignition shuts off, and the doors unlock. In a Tesla the power shuts off, meaning that the doors become inoperable.

Then there is the self-driving system.

Tesla's reported safety issues aren't limited to door handles. U.S. regulators opened an investigation into the company's Full Self-Driving system after at least 736 crashes and 17 fatalities since its creation.

Read the whole thing.

How Can a Simple EV Have Problems?

EVs were sold as more reliable. The problem is that sales pitch came from people with no understanding of electro-mechanical engineering, battery technology, or electronics. Tesla makes the least reliable used cars … but who ranks first?

Well, Tesla’s reliability issues are nothing new: suspension, electronics, and build quality problems are some of the most common woes experienced by Tesla owners. But on closer examination, you realize what’s happened here. In the study, the Teslas assessed were primarily early Model S and Model X production runs, both models that were manufactured during the company's "production hell" phase between 2014 and 2019. Teslas from these batches were notorious for suspension issues, niggles with the temperature systems, to odd build-quality problems like broken door handles.

But don't worry, the authors say, that has nothing to do with current Tesla models. Really? Build quality isn't an engineering problem; it is a management issue. Manufacturing has been around for a very long time. We know how to build consistently to a spec. You just have to want to do that.

This list was generated by Consumer Reports. I'm never sure how to judge them. Are the biased against US automakers? Sometimes I feel that way. My last Ford went to well over 280,000 miles. (I have a photo of the odometer somewhere.) I was hoping for 300,000 but I just decided it wasn't worth it. And I am certain that LARGE portions of the population - even in consumer reports - has hated Elon and Co. since he endorsed President Trump.

Now CR doesn't let you have a peek at their data, unless you sign up for a year's membership. I understand completely, they have to make a living, which is probably harder today than it was 40 years ago, before the internet age become insane.

CR focuses on 20 possible "trouble areas" and compares "a car's number of problems to the average number of problems for cars of that model year" to measure reliability and generate a ranking. The magazine’s experts subsequently determine a score by weighing the reported issues based on their severity.

What are those problem areas? Your guess is as good as mine.

Click thru.

Tesla-Style Car Door Handles Are a Safety Issue

Or so say a lot of people. (It is why I won't ride in a Tesla.) Safety warnings over Tesla-style car door handles linked to deaths

Safety experts have raised concerns over the reliability of Tesla-style car door handles after they were blamed for the deaths of passengers.

Car safety officials at the United Nations have sounded the alarm following incidents of people burning to death after they were trapped in vehicles after a crash.

If you own a Tesla, make damn sure everyone in your family knows how to open the doors in an emergency. I would buy several glass-break tools and keep them in the car, if I was ever to own one, which I won't. (Not the hammer-style, the spring-loaded style.)

While there is usually (technically) some way to open the doors from the inside, that doesn't help if the people inside the car are unconscious after a crash. And even if you're not unconscious, on some models, the control can still be difficult to find.

“Instructions in owners’ manuals ... are no practical solution at an early stage of rescue,” the experts added

This is not just a theoretical issue. Tesla Model Y door handles now under federal safety scrutiny

As Hull detailed, Tesla’s door handles rely on the car’s 12 V battery to work. Should this fail, there is no way to open the doors from the outside, something that has cost lives as first responders have been unable to free occupants from burning Teslas.

As I've said many times. No one does proper systems design anymore. Or why would you design a car whose doors can't be opened if people inside are unconscious? Did Tesla think their cars would never be in crashes? Or did they just think it was cool? (Hat tip to MGUY Australia)

TDS Now Stands for Tesla Derangement Syndrome

People are crazy, and crazy people are dangerous NYC leftist sees a happy family driving in a Cybertruck, so he reacts how any unhinged lunatic would - Louder With Crowder

Imagine chasing after a car made by a company owned by a guy whose political opinions you don't like and not thinking that you are the assclown in the situation. You'd be this dinkus chasing after a Cybertruck in NYC. Whether or not he knows why he is angry is open for debate. Again, he lives in NYC. There is an above-average chance he is low-information, easily manipulated by social issues, and believes anything he sees on the Internet about people he is told to no longer like. Hence, cursing out a family in one of Elon Musk's creations.

Since Tesla vehicles have a lot of cameras, there is video of the idiot in question.

And following the trail of links to X, there is apparently an entire subreddit devoted to people who are flipping off Tesla owners. "Doing their part," or something.

This doesn't even cover the people doing actually destruction of property.

And just for fun... "People Are Crazy" by Billy Currington.

God is great,
Beer is good, and
People are crazy.

I, For One, Welcome Our Self-Driving Overlords

Tesla Motors should never have called it "Autopilot." Tesla sued by family of motorcyclist killed in Autopilot crash

The parents of a motorcyclist who was killed in a 2022 crash involving a Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot in Utah sued the electric carmaker and the vehicle's driver, claiming that the driver assistant software and other safety features are "defective and inadequate."

Landon Embry, 34, died on the scene after the Model 3 put on Autopilot at 75-80 miles per hour struck the back of his Harley Davidson motorcycle, throwing him from the bike, according to the lawsuit filed in state court in Salt Lake City last week

"Move fast and break stuff" was the tech motto a few years back. And that's fine if you're making the next version of Angry Birds, but if people can die, then that is a bad way to do business.

I don't think Tesla will suffer, because the driver will be held responsible.

Problems at Tesla

There are a couple of problems at Tesla: sales, and the vandalism of chargers.

They are in better shape than most electric vehicle manufacturers, but still having trouble with sales of at least some models. Tesla has so many unsold cars that it's storing them in an an abandoned mall parking lot

Parking lots full of Tesla vehicles are becoming impossible to ignore as the electric automaker seemingly can’t sell enough cars and trucks to match its rate of production. According to its own figures, the electric automaker produced 46,561 more vehicles than it delivered to customers during the first quarter of 2024. Where are all these cars going? Parking lots at its factories, malls and airports.

They are storing 10% of the cars they build.

In other news, criminals have noticed that Tesla charging stations have big copper cables hanging off of them. Thieves cut cables from Tesla charging stations in Vallejo, steal inside material

Thieves are targeting high-powered Tesla and other EV charging stations and stealing the heavy cable for the copper metal inside.

Not the 1st time this particular set of cables has been cut. And not the only chargers targeted.

Tesla Knew Parts Were Defective

They just didn't bother to tell anyone. Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective

Wheels falling off cars at speed. Suspensions collapsing on brand-new vehicles. Axles breaking under acceleration. Tens of thousands of customers told Tesla about a host of part failures on low-mileage cars. The automaker sought to blame drivers for vehicle ‘abuse,’ but Tesla documents show it had tracked the chronic ‘flaws’ and ‘failures’ for years.

Because if they admitted that the parts were defective, they would have been required to redesign and recall the cars, and that would cost money, probably a lot of money.

The records and interviews reveal for the first time that the automaker has long known far more about the frequency and extent of the defects than it has disclosed to consumers and safety regulators.

Oops. Not telling safety regulators might be a major problem, especially if accidents were involved.

Click thru for details on things like repair costs that Tesla refused to cover. We will cover one example that was highlighted by article. From Defector: You’re Supposed To Be Glad Your Tesla Is A Brittle Heap Of Junk

A guy with a relatively new Tesla Model 3 was charged $4,400 to replace the power steering and the related wiring harness because the car went through a car wash. He was shocked because he had never heard of a car damaged to that extent, and in that fashion, by a car wash.

Lundeen [the driver] said he was so shocked by the manager’s frank explanation of Tesla’s part failures that he wrote it down: “All I can tell you,” the Tesla manager said, “is we’re not a 100-year-old company like GM and Ford. We haven’t worked all the bugs out yet.”

    — Reuters

And then the Author at Defector, Albert Burneko, notes that the engineers at Ford, Toyota, wherever are NOT 100 years old. They didn't learn how to build a car that can take on a car wash from first hand experience. Then why is it that Tesla can't build a car-wash-proof car?

The reason those companies, and not Tesla, know how to build cars that (in general) can drive from here to there without dropping a wheel or bursting into flames is not that they are staffed by a bunch of centenarian Lore Wizards who learned the secrets of auto manufacture back in nineteen-aught-dickity and now hide this sacred knowledge in a walled mountaintop abbey. What those car companies know about building cars is collective industry knowledge. It is best practice. It is, that is to say, Out There. It can be had by any car company that wants it.

What keeps Tesla from having that knowledge, then, isn't that the company is too young to have acquired it, or that it simply cannot be had except by learning it from scratch. The knowledge can be had in the person of any number of far-less-than-100-years-old engineers Tesla could hire; moreover it can be had by reverse-engineering a frickin' Miata. The reason Tesla hasn't "worked all the bugs out yet" is that the company is run by people who hold established best practice in ideological contempt, and is defined by a tech-industry culture that fetishizes innovation and regards product quality as a third-order concern. There simply isn't as much investment money and credulous tech-media adulation to suck up in the promise of iterating on what already works. You must reinvent, almost literally in this case, the wheel—this time, apparently on the premise of "...and what if it sucked?"

Both articles are worth a look. (Hat tip to Earthbound Misfit.)

Your Car Is Spying On You. Well, If It's a Tesla It Is

Probably other cars with cameras are also spying on you as well, but this story is about Tesla. Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

Tesla assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy "is and will always be enormously important to us." The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are "designed from the ground up to protect your privacy."

But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers' car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.

One guy was completely naked as he approached his Tesla. That video was uploaded by these employees.

"We could see inside people's garages and their private properties," said another former employee. "Let's say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things."

Tesla didn't respond to detailed questions sent to the company for this report.

One of the people with "unique things" in their garages was Elon Musk. He owns the Lotus Esprit sub from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

The people who worked with this "data" and were invading everyone's privacy, with a few exceptions, didn't see anything wrong. "No one expects privacy anymore," or something equally stupid seems to be the prevailing idea at Tesla, and maybe in Big Tech as well.

There is a lot more of this nonsense, including you being filmed if you don't own a Tesla, but just happen to be near one. More privacy invasions, and the non-response by governments. Except for China which has banned Tesla automobiles in certain areas.

Welcome to the Panoptican.

Another Tesla Autopilot Crash

Another instance of Autopilot swerving into a concrete barrier. A Tesla driver watched in horror as another Tesla burst into flames after hitting a barrier

[Kaplan] got out and spoke to the driver of the crashed Tesla, who was not injured in the incident. The driver told Kaplan he had his 2018 Model X in Autopilot but "it suddenly veered hard to the left and stopped against the wall." 

There are some more details of the crash, and then this.

Kaplan bought his Tesla about four months ago with 6,000 miles on the clock but said: "It has been a complete disappointment – software notwithstanding, the fit and finish are miserable."

I'm wondering if this article means the MSN (and all of the Left) is out to destroy all things associated with Elon Musk.

Sparky Cars and Battery Problems

Sounds like a design flaw in 2013 and 14 model years. Tesla owner says he’s locked out after battery died, replacement costs $26K

Mario Zelaya posted a video on TikTok saying his "piece of trash" Model S died and that the car is locked, preventing him from being able to get inside. The caption on the video reads: "$26K for a new battery. Locked out of car. Recalls are needed."

He said he purchased the car in 2013 but said models from that year and 2014 have issues with fluid from the air conditioning system leaking onto the battery.

He's Canadian, and has gotten Transport Canada involved. They are going to do an investigation, apparently.

He has some brutal things to say about the car and the car company.

And he isn't the only one who has a problem with Tesla.

Some Tesla owners have voiced concerns about the vehicle in recent months. A group of owners in Norway went on a hunger strike in August in an effort to get CEO Elon Musk’s attention about a long series of problems they claim to have with their vehicles.

Hat tip to Green Jihad and Pirate's Cove.

Sparky Cars Gonna Spark

The post I had Saturday, about Tesla Motors and doors that won't open, sent me looking for other info. It didn't take long to find some.

Strange, but I guess problems with electric cars are not of national interest, because I don't remember seeing any of these stories. Several Tesla Fires in a Few Days Bring Back Concerns About EV Safety - autoevolution

May 14th. A Tesla caught fire while parked in front of a home (a relative of the car's owner). No crash. Not charging. Just parked.

Ruiz told the source that his car was insured by Tesla, but that he could not contact anyone until May 16. When the company sent him a Tesla Road Assistance vehicle to collect his burned EV, the representative said he could not transport it because the ashes would go everywhere on the freeway. The Tesla customer will only get a new car in October and is now using a rental.

May 20th. Vancouver. A guy was driving when his eight-month Tesla shut down. The electronic locks stop working. He kicked out the windows when smoke started coming out of the vents.

Although the car has a manual release, the Model Y owner said it is not “entirely intuitive” and that he just wanted to escape the car. Now that his car is a write-off, he has to look for a replacement, but decided not to buy another Tesla.

May 22nd. Coral Gables, Florida at the Tesla Motors service center. A video was posted to F*c*book showing a Model S in flames.

May 23rd. Brooklyn, Illinois. Tesla catches fire on Route 3 in Brooklyn, Illinois. The two people in the car were able to get out.

The woman told police the man had bought the car within the past week.

Both of the linked articles above were sourced from www.tesla-fire.com. You can find individual news articles on the 3 stories at the top. And more. That is just the month of May.

I know that internal combustion engines have problems, and the gas-powered vehicles do catch fire. They don't often lock the doors and make it a puzzle of how to get out in an emergency.

And it isn't just Tesla, of course. Here is a link to a video of a fire in an electric-vehicle parking lot in India from a week or two ago. Delhi: Fire in Jamia Nagar’s metro parking burns down nearly 100 vehicles

Why Does Tesla Make It a Puzzle to Open Doors in an Emergency?

This seems like a pretty wacky way to design a product that can kill you. Tesla Model Y Driver Kicked His Way Out After Tesla Randomly Burst Into Flames

“I literally just pulled up to the stop, put on my left sign, and then all of a sudden it said ‘Error! Error!’ And then all of a sudden I see smoking, and I’m like oh my God, what the f#@k!” said Jutha. “I couldn’t even open it; everything’s electric, so everything stopped. [The] door couldn’t open, I couldn’t put the window down, so I just said ‘Alright, I’m going to kick through it.”

This fear of being trapped in a Tesla is common. Everything, including the doors, is connected to an intricate electrical system that fails in the event of a fire. It stands to reason that the electronically controlled doors might suffer, leading to panic. Thankfully, Teslas have a (somewhat) hidden mechanical door control. Jutha couldn’t find the switch quickly enough and thus made his own exit.

In at least one model, you need to climb into the back seat to find the emergency/manual door release.

Brilliant design. NOT!

I know, this incident actually happened in May, but it was too good a story to pass up.

Tesla Hack Enables the Stealing of Cars

When did it become a bother to use a key? Hackers can steal your Tesla Model 3, Y using new Bluetooth attack

Mechanical keys have their problems, but Bluetooth has mostly been a security disaster from the outset.

Security researchers at the NCC Group have developed a tool to carry out a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) relay attack that bypasses all existing protections to authenticate on target devices.

BLE technology is used in a wide spectrum of products, from electronics like laptops, mobile phones, smart locks, and building access control systems to cars like Tesla Model 3 and Model Y.

And of course Tesla uses Bluetooth Low Energy as a the basis for an "entry system." Locks are an antiquated technology, beneath the view of Tesla engineers. They don't design locks. They design Entry Systems™.

Tesla is not the only company to have this particular fault. Kwikset brand's line of Kevo "smart locks" can also be overridden. And probably a whole bunch of other stuff that uses the same tech.

Here is the icing on the proverbial cake.

The Bluetooth Core Specification warns device makers about relay attacks and notes that proximity-based authentication shouldn’t be used for valuable assets.

I would say that securing my home and my car are two "valuable assets" and a higher grade of security is warranted. But hey, I'm not a Tesla Motors engineer.

This proves once again that engineers don't read specifications before blindly heading out to build something they think will be neato using the latest bit of tech they saw in their favorite magazine or saw on their favorite website or whatever. (It's the tech all the cool kids are using!)

The "Progressive" Environment at Tesla

Just another tech firm that doesn't get it. Tesla sexual harassment lawsuits multiply as 6 more women sue Musk-led firm | Ars Technica

Also, I would like to note that groping is assault, and the police should be called. Also, I firmly believe in non-proportional theory of response. You lay your hands on me, and I will break your arm. (Something I could have actually done in my youth.)

Six more women sued Tesla yesterday, alleging that the company failed to stop rampant sexual harassment at factory facilities in Fremont, California, and service centers in the Los Angeles area.

The lawsuits are similar to one filed last month by employee Jessica Barraza, who alleged that she and other women working in the carmaker's Fremont factory have been subjected to "nightmarish conditions of rampant sexual harassment," including offensive comments, propositions, and "frequent groping on the factory floor." Barraza alleged that managers and human resources personnel failed to protect her even though she complained repeatedly.

The most telling section of the article is titled “Misconduct reflects an attitude at the top.” Go read the whole thing.

This Design Makes Perfect Sense

Or maybe not. Some Tesla owners unable to unlock cars due to server errors

Because nothing says First Class System Design like assuming everything will always work.

While some Tesla models can be unlocked using the phone over Bluetooth, via key card, or via key fobs, other models do not have the "Phone Key" feature and can only be opened via the app.

"Not for model s or x - they don’t have the phone key feature .. should have saved 60k and bought the model s," stated another owner on the Teslamotorsclub forum.

This is right up there with "You can't open the doors after a crash, without crawling into the back seat and looking for the manual override."

Tesla Battery Fire in Australia

Imagine my surprise that a lithium-ion battery can catch fire. Massive Tesla battery on fire at renewable energy plant in Australia

A 13-metric-ton lithium battery caught fire on Friday at the renewable energy plant, called the Victorian Big Battery, near Geelong, about 50 miles from Melbourne. The blaze then spread to an adjacent battery bank, Australia's ABC reports, but has since been contained.

A toxic smoke warning has been issued in the area. Fire crews will have to wait up to 24 hours for the blaze to die down.

Because whatever else lithium-ion batteries are, they are quite toxic.

This is reminicent of the lithium-ion battery fire in Illinois, that happened earlier in July.

It took a while but I did find a video. Sky News Australia has a video, that covered the incident. Sky News mentioned that it didn't get much media attention, especially given the warnings about toxic fumes.

Sparky Cars Gonna Spark

Because that is what they do. Tesla Model S Plaid catches fire and briefly traps owner after electronic door handles fail, attorneys say - The Washington Post

And the door handles are electric. When a fire starts the door handles don't work. There is an "emergency release." You had better know where it is.

It happened outside Philadelphia days after the man took delivery of the model that Tesla has hailed as the world’s quickest production car. Tesla said it delivered the first 25 vehicles in June after its CEO, Elon Musk, held a glitzy media event in Fremont, Calif

I also would not park one in my garage. Because once they catch fire, they are very hard to extinguish.

“With the Teslas, you’ve got to just put copious amounts of water on it,” [Charles McGarvey, chief fire officer of the Lower Merion Township Fire Department] said. “After that, you’ve got to sit 45 minutes, an hour, [and] once it stops smoking you can release it to second responders. We had it towed to a location that was secured.”

That sounds fine. (Hat tip to Proof Positive.)

Tesla Crash and Locked Doors

This seems like a bad bit of design to me, but what do I know? Fatal Tesla Model S crash unlikely to involve Autopilot, according to NTSB | Ars Technica

When the NTSB started looking at this crash, they blamed autopilot. That doesn't seem to have been a factor. Other design problems...

A crash, a battery damaged, power cut. Once the power is cut, the doors do not open as per usual.

Tesla uses IP-based electronic door locks that fail if the car loses power (as it would have in this crash). In an emergency that cuts power to the car, the rear doors of a Model S can only be opened using a plastic tab found in the rear footwell.

Because of course the door locks are primarily electronic with manual release as an afterthought. What could go wrong?

Two people died in the fire.

Tesla Crash Kills Two

Investigators say no one was driving. Elon Musk claims autopilot was not used in fiery Tesla crash that killed 2 people in The Woodlands - ABC13 Houston

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday it has sent a Special Crash Investigation team to The Woodlands to look into the Saturday night crash of the electric car.

Investigators are "100% sure" that no one was driving the 2019 Tesla Model S that ran off a suburban parkway, hit a tree and burst into flames, killing two men inside, Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said.

But they're still trying to determine whether the electric car was operating on Tesla's Autopilot driver-assist system, or if the company's "Full Self-Driving Capability" system was in use.

It took 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire.

Hat tip to Watts Up With That? In which it is noted...

The lithium in Tesla batteries creates a fire which is far more dangerous than a gasoline fire, and almost impossible to extinguish. Think twice before you park a Tesla in your home garage – if the battery ignites, and firefighters cannot extinguish the blaze, you could lose the house.

Even if your house structure survives the fire, acute exposure to the smoke and lithium contamination of the house and surrounds could be an issue – lithium poisoning can cause long term dementia like neurological problems (pyramidal cell dysfunction), along with problems with speech and muscle weakness.

Lets just say if I see a big Lithium fire, I’m not planning to hang around and breath in the smoke.

I, For One, Welcome Our Self-driving Overlords

Tesla's "autopilot" strikes again. Tesla On Autopilot Plows Into Michigan State Trooper's Patrol Car

It seems that Tesla still can't recognize emergency flashing lights.

Michigan State Police (MSP) investigates why a 22-year-old, operating a Tesla on Autopilot, early Wednesday morning, plowed into the back of a trooper's vehicle on I-96 near Waverly Rd. in Eaton County, according to local news affiliate WLNS 6.

At the time of the incident, the trooper was responding to a car versus deer traffic crash and had its emergency lights on before the electric vehicle smacked the back of the cruiser.

As opposed to several recent Tesla "autopilot" accidents, no one was injured.