MY accelerated on it’s own!

[Johnstac]

I know this is going to sound ridiculous. This is my second Tesla and while I’ve read stories of phantom acceleration, I’ve always felt they were attributable to a cause. The acceleration pedal getting stuck on the floor mat comes to mind. Today though, when this happened to me, I found no such cause. I had pulled off the street into a retail parking lot and as I approached a stop in the lot, the car suddenly surged forward with no effort from me. Fortunately there was no one around but it was scary as hell. In the time it took to get my foot on the brake, I traveled at least 30 feet. I’m so panicked right now, I don’t want to drive it. I am just so thankful there was no pedestrians or vehicles in front of me.

Edit: before anyone asks, I had not used autopilot all day.

 

[jcanoe]

Have you enabled Tesla Obstacle Aware Acceleration?

 

[DonaldBecker]

If you report it to Tesla, they may pull the vehicle logs.

The NHTSA just concluded that no incidents that were investigated were a vehicle fault.

NHTSA says drivers at fault with Tesla unintended acceleration claims

 

[glide]

Either your cruise control was enabled or you hit the pedal with your foot. Those are the only two possibilities.

 

[LevelHeaded]

Hmm, did it?

 

[Johnstac]

Either your cruise control was enabled or you hit the pedal with your foot. Those are the only two possibilities.

Way to have an open mind. I am a fan of Tesla as well but no, autopilot and cruise control had not been on all day. Let me clarify something. I rarely need to take my foot off the accelerator with regenerative braking but I certainly know the difference between having my foot lifted and the vehicle accelerating as if it was pedal to the metal.

Maybe you guys can remind me why I can’t play back my driving on the screen. When I reviewed it, it displays the vehicle being parked at my home and then the tail end of the drive when I brought the vehicle to a stop when I parked. I was sure that in the past I could review video from actual driving.

 

[glide]

Way to have an open mind. I am a fan of Tesla as well but no, autopilot and cruise control had not been on all day. Let me clarify something. I rarely need to take my foot off the accelerator with regenerative braking but I certainly know the difference between having my foot lifted and the vehicle accelerating as if it was pedal to the metal.

Maybe you guys can remind me why I can’t play back my driving on the screen. When I reviewed it, it displays the vehicle being parked at my home and then the tail end of the drive when I brought the vehicle to a stop when I parked. I was sure that in the past I could review video from actual driving.

It has nothing to do with having an open mind. The vehicle simply is not capable of doing what you claim.

The NHTSA has investigated these types of “incidents” and found as much to be true.

It is ALWAYS operator error.

 

[jcanoe]

Way to have an open mind. I am a fan of Tesla as well but no, autopilot and cruise control had not been on all day. Let me clarify something. I rarely need to take my foot off the accelerator with regenerative braking but I certainly know the difference between having my foot lifted and the vehicle accelerating as if it was pedal to the metal.

Maybe you guys can remind me why I can’t play back my driving on the screen. When I reviewed it, it displays the vehicle being parked at my home and then the tail end of the drive when I brought the vehicle to a stop when I parked. I was sure that in the past I could review video from actual driving.

You have to manually save the Dash Cam video or there has to be a triggering event such as pressing the Tesla horn button to save the Dash Cam buffer. Otherwise the buffer is overridden after 10 minutes of Dash Cam recording. A collision will also save the Dash Cam video buffer to the memory stick, MicroSD card or drive.

 

[LoudMusic]

I thought my car did that as well but I had just bumped the right stalk and engaged autopilot, which for my profile is set to 10% over the speed limit, which causes it to accelerate when enabled if you're below that speed.

 

[Needsdecaf]

It has nothing to do with having an open mind. The vehicle simply is not capable of doing what you claim.

The NHTSA has investigated these types of “incidents” and found as much to be true.

It is ALWAYS operator error.

The vehicle is most certainly CAPABLE of doing what he claimed. And yes, NHTSA found that in all cases, it was operator error. Doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been the car.

I will tell you that NHTSA and Audi both found that operator error caused their unintended acceleration issues on the mid-80’s 5000 models. I have personal experience that three times, my dad’s car had unintended acceleration with me in the car, watching.

having said that, I’m willing to bet that this case was operator error. Electronics are much better than they were 35 years ago. But I’m never willing to say “it’s impossible”.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Way to have an open mind. I am a fan of Tesla as well but no, autopilot and cruise control had not been on all day. Let me clarify something. I rarely need to take my foot off the accelerator with regenerative braking but I certainly know the difference between having my foot lifted and the vehicle accelerating as if it was pedal to the metal.

People are skeptical because NHTSA found all cases reported of this to be operator error. You can still file a complaint with NHTSA to investigate as another mentioned. And/or file a service request (or through chat) with Tesla to see if they can examine your logs to see what happened. Keep a record of the exact times/dates it happened and as many details as you can remember.

Maybe you guys can remind me why I can’t play back my driving on the screen. When I reviewed it, it displays the vehicle being parked at my home and then the tail end of the drive when I brought the vehicle to a stop when I parked. I was sure that in the past I could review video from actual driving.

For the dash cam, it only saves the last 10 minutes if there is a trigger (like you pressing the icon or horn, or it might in an accident, although manual does not say explicitly). It doesn't save all footage automatically. Basically it does a 60 minute loop, overwriting old footage, so if you take the USB drive out you can see footage from the last hour in the "Recent Clips" folder. "Saved Clips" would have the footage you manually saved. See page 70 in the user manual for details:
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_y_owners_manual_north_america_en.pdf

 

[gearbox]

man, some people are rude on here. It was a legitimate concern and peeps are trying to say there is NO WAY it could do that. Its a vehicle with a computer and obviously the most high-tech vehicle made. It can most certainly do what she said as computers do have problems etc..
I am glad you are okay and I appreciate you telling us your story.

 

[PagodaY]

Ask Tesla to investigate it and report back. Have them share the logs.
Please post back when you find out their findings.

 

[DS369]

I would bet that conditions that cause it have not yet been discovered, hence it's "impossible". It might be some really rare racing condition in multiple systems and there are a lot of them working together! Tesla's claim is legit because they believe it's impossible simply because they don't have a clue what to look for, especially if it's not in the logs AND because operator's error is the ONLY thing that gets logged BECAUSE it happens under normal conditions and sudden acceleration is obviously not normal and not normally logged. If someone can prove this they should get 1M$ from Tesla.

 

[DS369]

And I believe that OP is legit fan of Tesla and certainly knows what he is doing.

 

[Mike_TV]

Every unintended acceleration thread here has the same types of supporters and detractors. OP should follow the suggestions to get logs pulled and report back. Until then, I would also double-check the position of your floor mats. <ducks out>

 

[mark95476]

Sometimes I also find myself not covering the brake pedal while parking due to regen braking and hold mode. Note that you literally admitted to having your foot on the accelerator while parking.

Pedal to metal would be frightening in a parking lot.

Way to have an open mind. I am a fan of Tesla as well but no, autopilot and cruise control had not been on all day. Let me clarify something. I rarely need to take my foot off the accelerator with regenerative braking but I certainly know the difference between having my foot lifted and the vehicle accelerating as if it was pedal to the metal.

I've never had that happen. Dashcam is always enabled and it's recording everything so it should have captured your phantom acceleration event without any gaps. Make sure to save your dashcam video and copy to a computer for playback. The playback in your Tesla is choppy and has reduced quality.

If you actually captured a real unintended acceleration event in your Tesla, then you'll have people offering you a lot of money. Hold out and don't sell for cheap.

Maybe you guys can remind me why I can’t play back my driving on the screen. When I reviewed it, it displays the vehicle being parked at my home and then the tail end of the drive when I brought the vehicle to a stop when I parked. I was sure that in the past I could review video from actual driving.

 

[DonaldBecker]

The first thing uninformed people suspect is that the electronics in the 'Go' pedal failed. They imagine that there is a single sensor that can temporarily report an incorrect position and the car leaps forward.

The people that design X-by-wire (fly-by-wire, drive-by-wire) have thought of this and a zillion other possible failures.

A typical pedal position assembly will have at least two sensors, reporting in opposite directions. The control system will check for plausibility. That can be as simple as adding the two linear outputs and verifying that the sum is a narrow range, but is often much more sophisticated e.g. three sensors with non-linear outputs.

The sensors will be configured to use only part of the possible output range, and limited to using only a part of the physical range. For a sensor that can report 0 to 5000, it will only electrically report 200 to 4800 and have physical stops to report 500 to 4500. Any value outside of that range indicates a fault. With variable resistor sensors, a bias to high or low can be briefly switched in to further verify integrity.

 

[Puma2020]

@Johnstac Any update? It certainly sounds like you had an event and I am interested in the outcome.

 

[Hammerhead786]

I have a reservation for a Y, just waiting on the CVAP grant before I confirm the order. I asked for an extended overnight test drive. With one pedal driving it occurred to me that with regen doing the braking and my foot off the go pedal, my brain was being falsely lured into thinking I was doing the braking and that my foot was on the brake. I forced myself into the habit of moving my foot over the brake.

I could see how one could think that they had their foot over the brake, when in actual fact their foot was over the go pedal thus resulting in "unintended acceleration".