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‘The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it’: the terrifying truth about why Tesla’s cars keep crashing (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.

At that moment, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, but he didn’t pick up. When he still hadn’t returned her call hours later – highly unusual for this devoted father – she attempted to track his car using Tesla’s app. It no longer worked. By the time police officers rang her doorbell late that night, Meier was already bracing for the worst.

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[–] 68 points 1 year ago (27 children)

Tesla tried to do it all at once instead of perfecting the electric tech first and then incrementally adding on advances. They also made change for change’s sake. There’s absolutely no reason mechanical door locks could not have been engineered to work on this car as the default method of opening and closing the door. It’s killing people.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Also, the fact that they removed Lidar sensors and just base their self driving on cameras is plainly stupid.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Technical debt.

    If you promise self driving on all cars, but cars already on the road don't have lidar then no car has lidar.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    That's not really the case, as Elon's already admitted that there are at least about a half a million Teslas with old HW3 self driving computers that need to have them upgraded to HW4 for them to have the chance at eventually get the FSD the buyers were promised. That's not even mentioning the upgraded cameras the HW4 vehicles have gotten. The reason for Musk not wanting lidar on Teslas is very simple: cost. He thinks it's too expensive and unnecessary, unlike every single other manufacturer working on the same problem.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    I mean it’s all true:

    • humans drive based on vision alone
    • moving to one type of sensor simplifies the ai
    • lidar has been much bulkier, much more expensive than other sensors.

    Most importantly, since no one has self driving yet, it’s premature to talk about that as a mistake. Let it fail or succeed on its merits. Let other self-driving attempts fail or succeed on their merits.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    "humans drive based on vision alone"

    Not quite. We use our sense of touch and direction to feel our momentum, like how hard a turn or acceleration is. We can feel steering traction changes like when tires begin to slip under acceleration/deceleration. We feel when we're starting to hydroplane. Cars are a cornucipia of touch feedback that drivers respond to.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Sure but if you make that argument, even relatively dumb cars have that as well. At least antilock brakes have been mandatory for a few years (in the US) and traction control might be as well. Both lead to immediate adjustments in driving, more quickly than any human can react.

    More automated cars must have some equivalent feedback on balance, sharpness of turns. I don’t know what it is, but they generally execute smooth comfortable turns.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    "Both lead to immediate adjustments in driving, more quickly than any human can react. "

    Again, sort of. ABS isn't quicker than humans react, it's a stopgap measure for divers without sufficient skill. It only turns on after you have fucked up and locked your breaks.

    "I don’t know what it is, but they generally execute smooth comfortable turns."

    Likely a combination of software that defines comfortable zones, including adhering to speed limits and paired with an accelerometer.

    I think we are still a very long way off from autodrive. Being able to handle changing conditions like freezing rain and black ice or a flooded road will take time.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Do you have an example of another serious company working on the problem that also has concluded that lidar is unnecessary? Because I don't.

    I'm not an expert, but as I understand it, the consensus (excluding Musk of course) seems to be that lidar is necessary for proper functioning and safety in poor visibility situations, like in rain, fog or general darkness. I think the odds are good that the judgment of an overwhelming majority of companies is more correct than the judgment of Musk alone. Particularly considering Musk's proven track record of cost cutting that puts users' lives in danger, for example not being able to manually open the doors of burning Teslas.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Lidar has strengths that complement where video has weaknesses. That seems like a good thing. However it is bulky and expensive, and not yet produced at scale. Those are bad things. Whether it really makes a difference in simplifying the machine learning, only those developers know. You have to balance the pluses and minuses, and just because one company came up with something different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

    Maybe it won’t work without lidar but maybe it will - in the meantime Tesla has saved like $1,000/car times however many million they produce. If they succeed, then they have a solid cost and scalability advantage

    The deciding point is if someone does develop general self-driving. Will those who are behind be able to swallow their pride and modify their approach?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    • When the sun shines in your eyes, do you not put on sunglasses? Cameras can't do that.

    • When you have dirt in your eyes, do you not rub it out? Cameras can't do that.

    • When something is obstructing your view, do you not move you head to the side until it is not? Cameras can't do that.

    Humans are much more than cameras and a brain.

    And even if they were, shouldn't we aim for something better than we currently have?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Waymo runs a taxi service at scale.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They don’t though. Waymo runs a few pilots in a few specific geolocked locations with essentially hand built cars at a huge loss. They also have human remote supervisions. They do seem fairly successful and maybe their slow careful rollout will eventually be at scale in the areas that need it most. Hopefully it will work.

    While it’s easy to argue Tesla hasn’t had those successes yet, they do have the “at scale” part down and are already profitable on the vehicles. They are close enough to self-driving them at they’re willing to try their own pilots with human intervention. If they succeed, they already have the scaling up done and are profitable on hardware so will quickly surpass other competitors.

    I like that different companies are taking different approaches, so we have competition. May the best technology succeed!

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    There's absolutely a reason to not engineer something you're not required to. It's called capitalism. Tesla cut every corner they could.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    No, the problem is they engineered something they didn't need to, because Musk thinks everything should be electric because it's cool. They had to then engineer a mechanical release, because it was required by law (for good reason)

    Mechanical door locks would have been cheaper. The fly by wire in the cyber truck is far more expensive, heavier, and far more dangerous than the very well polished power steering systems every other car uses

    Maybe it's something like they wanted to make more money on repairs or something... But even that they could've done better by starting from very common, cheap technology

    Let's be clear... The real problem here is that Elon Musk, opinion having idiot that he is, made decisions from on high with very little understanding of engineering

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  • [+] -7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Musk thinks everything should be electric because it's cool.

    I strongly disagree. Things are getting more and more electric across all manufacturing because it is cheap. A single touch screen that drops in place under a snap on bezel with a premade cable harness and some programming time is so much faster and cheaper than designing, installing, wiring, coding, and testing physical buttons or mechanical linkages. PCBs can be tested in a negligible amount of time.

    Mechanical door locks would have been cheaper.

    No. Sorry, but no. The locks were going to be electrically operated no matter what. But the inclusion of standard mechanical components would increase the cost significantly.

    very common, cheap technology

    Yes, but that would be electrical components. It's not very intuitive, I agree. But cost is the sole reason things are becoming more "electronic". Electronics are extremely cheap compared to their analog ancestors. And not only that, but since very few mfrs are using off the shelf mechanical components, they are now less supplied and harder to get. So their cost is going up. Electronics are going down.

    I don't know the engineering endeavors that he may or may not have been directly involved with. I'm not entirely sure what "from on high" means, but I would presume you are referring to his net value and authority. In that case, I would say he is no different than literally any other CEO. He made decisions that made him a profit. That's what they do. GE is a great test case for this. Nearly destroyed the company in the long term so that board members see a small financial gain in the short term, then dump the carcass on the next guy. It's just money. That's all.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Yes, electronics are very cheap... But remember the part where they also have a mechanical mechanism? They have two systems, where most cars have this very simple lock that connects to a tiny motor assembly. It's literally a piece of plastic and a few wires

    The tablet thing is true, they've changed cars to computerize everything, and once you've done that you can connect everything over a network. Every button needs to do back to a chip to become a digital signal, so before you had these complex one-off wiring harnesses for everything

    But the tablet thing is again, common. It makes sense, it's just worse

    But Elon is a unique case. Elon likes to actually make decisions, because he thinks he's Tony Stark. He actually goes down into teams and hangs out, and they have to just work around whatever decisions he makes. It's present in all of his companies, but you can see it most in Twitter, because they didn't have time to build a team to strategically distract him when he comes to visit

    This absolute idiot has spent the last month trying to get grok to be a literal Nazi. First, he added a bunch of white genocide to the prompt, making it change the topic to that from any question for a few days.

    Now it's responding all confused, and saying things like "I never gave Jeffrey Epstein tours of spaceX or Tesla" when asked it Elon did it. Seems to me they fed Elon's tweets in the RAG system in a amateur way

    He micromanages and meddles constantly... That's what he does at his companies

    For a counterexample, Jeff Bezos. He was heavily involved in the fire phone, and had some genuinely cool ideas... But the priorities were all wrong, so it flopped. He learned his lesson

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    By your logic then, capitalism is great, because that means no one would've engineered these crazy locks but instead just used the tried and true ones.

    Wait. That's not what happened?

    Oh.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    engineered these crazy locks

    I would joke that since they don't work then I doubt any engineering went into them at all. But I know that isn't true.

    So I wonder if you could elaborate on what you mean by "crazy locks"? I did a lot of work investigating the manufacturing equipment and their use, so I remember a bit about their components, design, and assembly; but I did not work with those directly so I could be missing something entirely. I don't remember there being anything groundbreaking about the mechanics of the door locks. But the general build always felt... "thinner". Most manufacturers stay away from minimum standards by at least the standard deviation or two, so if the required gauge was 18 ± 1, a typical mfr would use 20+. Tesla would use 18. On the nose. That was a lot more common in automotive but even hyundai/kia used wide margins for safety. All that to say, I have a hard time believing the door locks were so complex that a sizable investment would be anything other than reinventing the wheel, but even moreso that it was even worth the superfluous cost.

    One of the last jobs I had there was a machine that they picked up third hand and cobbled together with some very sketchy safety systems that wildly failed requirements. I was there for days and it was one of the more extensive reports I've ever made on a single installation. The control system was designed by the onsite engineers and passed flawlessly. But they had a lot to do to get the equipment usable.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I stopped reading when you suggested 20 gauge was heavier than 18 gauge.

    Rookie mistake you can't come back from.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Lol, I saw that after I sent it, but was absolutely not confident enough to change it. I don't work in that field any more so that is not the only thing about materials that you probably know better than me. And I'm sorry for the wall of text. My bad.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    In this crash, part of the blame was on retracting handles on the outside, not the interior locks. If the handle is retracted, it’s tough to open the door from the outside.

    • model s has electrically presented handles. The car has to be somewhat functional for the handles to extend …. I haven’t heard of extend on emergency or extend on power lost, or any other failsafe
    • model 3/y door handles are not electrical. You have to press on one end to extend the other. You may or may not like them, but at least they don’t have that failure case of what happens when the car loses power
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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    No. Window retracting on door opening is no different than other cars with frameless windows. Most lowering the window may damage the weatherstripping but is no impediment to door opening.

    True that the door latch itself is just a solenoid. I actually forgot the the outside handles don’t do anything but give you something to pull on.

    The worst part of the manual door release is that it’s different on each model. For mine, the front door manual release is easily accessible to the point I have to tell people not to use it. Back door is a problem though

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