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I suspect this is a Tesla growing pain. Young engineers with vision and enthusiasm but without all the lessons of a more experienced auto manufacturer. A rookie mistake. They probably need to make those pedals out of metal that will bend rather than break. Probably lots of bent pedals out there that most people don't even know about. Hopefully they deal with it quickly and effectively.
 
When I took the BMW performance driving school @ Thermal, the instructor said if any of us could break the brake pedal we could keep the car. It was part of his emphasis on proper emergency braking which requires really hammering the brake, much harder than the normal tepid braking one is used to. I hammered that brake pedal all day. Obviously the accelerator pedal is a bit different but still, that's concerning and disappointing. It speaks to Tesla's struggle to sign top tier suppliers IMO.
 
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Really, I can't people are making excuses for Tesla on this. Accelerator pedals should not be breaking in half. No, really, they should not be. Drivetrains have parts where wear and tear is understandable, but a rigid part of the accelerator pedal is not one of those...

Let's just call it what it is, clearly a poorly designed part.
For the money they charge for these cars, it should have been Carbon Fiber.
 
As I said...if the people who mash the pedal to go fast actually knew how to drive fast...

Don't confuse quick, firm application of throttle with standing on the accelerator.

Don't confuse a poorly designed or implemented accelerator pedal with poor driving skills/manners.

This one is on Tesla. Accelerator pedals should not be breaking like in those images - and this is not just once, but for several owners...
 
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There is a whole lot of speculation and assumptions in this thread.

Let me remind everyone that no root cause analysis has been done here. The accelerator pedal broke, but no one knows why yet. It appears that even Tesla has not reported a root cause analysis to the OP.

There is no proof or evidence at this point that the material is inadequate for the task or that the design is not sound. There are dozens of other possible causes. Maybe his pedal had a pre-existing defect in the material before it was ever installed. Maybe it was damaged during installation. Maybe it was installed incorrectly. Maybe it wasn't the correct part for his car. Maybe it was damaged at some point during the car's life prior to this incident.

No one here can possibly state that "plastic is a poor material" or "Tesla failed in the design". No one has any evidence to draw those conclusions yet.
 
Don't confuse a poorly designed or implemented accelerator pedal with poor driving skills/manners.

Lol. I've already made the suggestion that it could be an insufficient implementation on Tesla's part that facilitates the failure. Sorry.

In the great big region of grey, it's still a driver problem regardless if it's also a tesla problem. That barely a handful of people have actually broken pedals is a clear indication that even if it's an inferior design (not to mention the lack of recall or other extreme saftey-based response), you still need to be way outside the bell curve of normal operation to experience failure.

To wit: If you operate your vehicle like a knob, you're going to break things.
 
In the great big region of grey, it's still a driver problem regardless if it's also a tesla problem. That barely a handful of people have actually broken pedals is a clear indication that even if it's an inferior design (not to mention the lack of recall or other extreme saftey-based response), you still need to be way outside the bell curve of normal operation to experience failure.

The people who've broken the pedals seem to have older cars. And not all would report back here. It is too soon to say whether or not age is a major factor. If it is, this might affect even normal use and be more about miles driven than style of driving. We don't know yet.
 
I know the design of that interior section is meant to provide strength. I do wonder if plastic wasn't mainly chosen to use as part of a weight minimization reason, not necessarily cost standpoint. Given how Tesla has strived to provide the highest level of safety for it's owners I doubt they would "cheap out" on such a vital car part. I also wonder how prevalent plastic brake pedals are in new cars.
 
Wow! Having it made from plastic in the first place seems like a design flaw, I don't know if other manufactures do this or not--but regardless having that pedal made of plastic seems like a very poor choice.
Use of plastic for this assembly doesn't seem that uncommon. Unfortunately, many of the TTAC links are dead from The Complete Guide To Toyota Gas Pedals: Teardown, Pictures, Toyota's Fix, Analysis, And Commentary and even archive.org didn't help. :(

Exclusive: TTAC Takes Apart Both Toyota Gas Pedals which unfortunately doesn't have really high res pics available seem to show that both the CTS (that were the subject of the sticking accelerator recall and needed a shim fix) and Denso pedals (not recalled) both appear to have plastic shafts. These were used in millions of Toyotas.
 
There is a whole lot of speculation and assumptions in this thread.

Let me remind everyone that no root cause analysis has been done here. The accelerator pedal broke, but no one knows why yet. It appears that even Tesla has not reported a root cause analysis to the OP.

There is no proof or evidence at this point that the material is inadequate for the task or that the design is not sound. There are dozens of other possible causes. Maybe his pedal had a pre-existing defect in the material before it was ever installed. Maybe it was damaged during installation. Maybe it was installed incorrectly. Maybe it wasn't the correct part for his car. Maybe it was damaged at some point during the car's life prior to this incident.

No one here can possibly state that "plastic is a poor material" or "Tesla failed in the design". No one has any evidence to draw those conclusions yet.

Yes...and on and on. I already saw this thread used as a story on an "ev news website" making it's rounds on Reddit. I really can't believe in this year of our lord 2017, folks still actually believe reports from anonymous sources on message boards:mad:
 
When I took the BMW performance driving school @ Thermal, the instructor said if any of us could break the brake pedal we could keep the car. It was part of his emphasis on proper emergency braking which requires really hammering the brake, much harder than the normal tepid braking one is used to. I hammered that brake pedal all day. Obviously the accelerator pedal is a bit different but still, that's concerning and disappointing. It speaks to Tesla's struggle to sign top tier suppliers IMO.
Ever wondered why BMW performance school didn't say that you could keep the car if you managed to break off the gas pedal or the indicator stalk? Brake pedals are very different, as they are made to transfer mechanical force from your foot to the brake pads, even in the event that the brake booster fails and all the force for stopping a 2 ton car has to be provided by the drivers foot. As someone who has rebuilt a few cars and reviewed many designs, I will tell you that a brake pedal is orders of magnitude stronger than a gas pedal, this goes for all modern cars. Gas pedals are not designed for any strong force to be transferred, rather they are designed for fine control of a potentiometer, or a thin throttle wire as the case were in older cars.

Some cars have a stopper under the gas pedal in the floor though, so no matter how hard you press, no excessive force will be applied to the pedal arm itself. Might not be a bad idea
 
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