Tesla Cybertruck Unexpectedly Accelerates into Home with Rear Wheels Locked

It's quite obvious no-one is reading the article.

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.

If you click through to the article about the slippery pedals, this poorly aged sentence appears:

> 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!

I think, if someone is holding down both the accellerator and brakes, there is only one safe resolution of that dillemma. And it’s the one that doesn’t involve the car turning into a ballistic projectile.

People will be people, so any other option seems like the height of arrogance.

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.

The more electronics and software involved, the more errors like that will occur. I expect it to worsen as the car gets older, with fewer updates and available parts. The only exception is strict testing, similar to what is done with commercial airplanes.

Tesla in 2020[0]:

>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-...

More evidence about the failure of engineering standards at Tesla. It's actually very sad - they genuinely seemed to be doing great stuff before (regardless of manufacturing issues).

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.

AFAIK the brakes on most if not all vehicles are more powerful than the engine, and the front ones more so than the rear. To have the rear brakes locked up while the front gets presumably overpowered by the motor is a very odd situation, perhaps best described as a "reverse burnout".

Not sure how regenerative braking works if it doesn't disengage the accelerator when the brakes are pressed. Yes in this case the brakepads would be used, but I'd also expect the motor to be off.

While Apple is spiritually a Japanese company, Tesla is no doubt spiritually a Chinese company. There are pros and cons to both.

This brings new meaning to "Move fast and break things".

“The truck’s brake didn’t disengage the accelerator pedal.” So the driver did indeed stomp the gas. Why is this even a headline.

Update: hijacking my own comment to say that the HN mods have nerfed this story submission into the ground: https://hnrankings.info/40782552/

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.

TLDR after watching Video clip: "I accelerated my 3 ton 4 seconds to 60 EV tank downhill for 8 seconds and was shocked it didnt stop in the 2 seconds I was actually applying brakes"

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...

Imagine telling the homeowner to recover damage from their insurance company.

How is the insurance company liable for a faulty product?

The insurance company should recover their costs from Tesla.

Jalopnik is a pretty well known Tesla FUD website. Not sure how I'm the first one to point this out. Take everything on that site with a grain of salt.

The driver is a big time tweeter and 'teasing' the video release, but after a month, nothing: https://x.com/bfreshwa/status/1793996219317891282