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Regen causing unintended acceleration, according to new study?

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I’m still waiting for someone—anyone—to debunk his theory that brake light faults may interact with the Bosch brake module and EV Regen to cause unintended acceleration. I’d welcome that. But all I see are people saying “well he’s been wrong in the past so he must be wrong now too,” or, “anyone considering his argument must be a short seller,” neither of which are terribly compelling.


I'm still waiting for someone --anyone-- to debunk my theory it's the ghost of Elanor Roosevelt causing unintended acceleration.

I'd welcome that.

But all I see are people saying "There's no such thing as ghosts!"

Which isn't terribly compelling.



I'm not saying he "must" be wrong because he's been wrong over and over again before- but it's certainly something you have to acknowledge and consider when looking at future claims- don't you?

Likewise you need to consider numerous people who have shown he's wrong now again including some fundamental stuff as misreading the data and logs in his own paper. Which Green and others have done THIS TIME as well.



So it might be worth considering this guy just isn't very good at this.
 
Frankly, when I see these threads like this OP started, it makes me think just how great these cars are. May sound strange, but here is my thinking.

Ever since car forums have been "a thing" many people come on the forums with the express purpose of complaining about stuff.... errr....."discussing outstanding issues" ;). Go to a typical BMW board for example, and you see people complaining about, for various models, engine issues, turbo issues, suspension issues, etc. While some of those car models have an issue, on message boards it looks magnified because people love to complain .... errr... discuss... yeah thats it.. stuff online.

On tesla forums, the things that people "discuss" are not "I have a problem with my engine and was stuck on the side of the road". Its "My car doesnt get as far theoretical range that it told me it would, even though I never drive that far". Or, "the paint on my car is horrible!", or
"Im upset that someone else paid less for this car than I did!!" or "lets discuss this theoretical unintended acceleration issue, where the most plausible explanation is that people hit the wrong pedal, but lets spend a bunch of time theorizing about this retired doctors findings".

These are the things that people on tesla boards compla.....discuss, and that tells me that there isnt much that is wrong with these cars that are what most would consider real issues.

Back to this specific thread topic. While its not out of the realm of possibility this guy is correct, and maybe this OP will feel better if they keep their own regen at low, I am not changing my own regen setting, and currently have less than zero concerns about this specific topic. While even 1 "real" unintended acceleration situation would be too much, there is a much easier explanation, which has already been given in this thread.

People who "suffer" from this unintended acceleration have a reason to lie about it, to try to get their insurance to cover an accident. Or, they are actually mistaken on what pedal they hit, where they swear they hit one pedal but didnt.

Occams razor applies here, to me at least.
 
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Cool, got it. Let’s discourage—forbid even—any future inquiries or studies (study, since this appears to be the first one raising the question) into whether brake light faults may have unintended consequences with Bosch brakes. Good things happen when corporations and regulators bury their heads in the sand and don’t follow up on safety issues raised like this one. Agreed that is the safest course of action here.
 
Cool, got it. Let’s discourage—forbid even—any future inquiries or studies

Literally nobody suggested this.

Good things happen when corporations and regulators bury their heads in the sand and don’t follow up on safety issues raised like this one.

This isn't a "safety issue"- it's an ill-informed guess, by a guy who admits he's guessing, has no evidence to support his guess, has been wrong on all his previous guesses in pretty fundamental ways, and is based on the author incorrectly reading his own data (yet again I guess?)- as pointed out by a number of experts already.


But by all means- do your own research and testing if you think he's on to something regardless of all the reasons to think he's not.
 
Don't believe I have heard about unintended acceleration unless there's a claim of hitting the brake. Any Tesla's taking off with no one on board? With only someone in the back seat? With driver present but both legs out of the door.
If there is this much unintended acceleration, I would question the frequency that this is happening only when a driver is in the seat, belted and foot on the brake.
I have problems with my coffee switching 'unintended' from the center console driver side cup holder to the passenger side cup holder. It only happens when I am not looking.
 
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Honestly, if this guy is right, Tesla should be able to fix the problem. The system just needs to be changed so that it reads both brake switches. OR, the car needs to recognize when there is a conflict between the brake switches, alert the driver, and at slow speeds disable the stability control/abs.

Those are both software fixes. Tesla is pretty good with software.

edit: I noticed in the guy's paper that he said Tesla vehicles do not do blended braking. Doesn't TACC do blended braking?
 
Disclaimer: I read a lot more, but not everything. That's a lot of text for something I'm partially but not fully into.

Honestly, there could be something here. The article obviously is not well proof-read and contains errors, but that doesn't mean it's all garbage. I think people trivialise what goes into EV control especially around near-stop situations. Those with ScanMyTesla should look at everything going on with motor torques at low speeds, especially if the front/rear axle are in different situations requiring different torque (e.g. on a smoothed slope entry, pothole, etc.). These are situations where we already know the car does some weird and surprising things. Let's not forgot Hold (as a stop mode) is actually relatively new as well for Tesla.

The theory is compelling. I'd bet it's slightly more complicated given the proposed failure scenario (i.e. why isn't this being detected and alerted prior to the unintended acceleration - or did it happen to fail right then?). There is not a doubt in my mind that some unfortunate combination of failures and inputs might lead to unintended behaviour. This is actually a case where there's a lot less to go wrong with an ICE vehicle (at very least, a lot less quickly). The biggest issue I came across is that there's a supposed "several hundred millisecond delay" on the CAN bus for a safety-critical system, which simply sounds both wrong and improbable to me (but I'm no vehicle CAN expert).

If this is found to be even partly credible, Tesla needs to address it. If it can ultimately be done over the air, fantastic. If a hardware swap is needed for any reason (including firmware they don't have access to via the usual means), it's gonna look real bad for them but is ultimately a fixable problem.

Regarding all the "lol driver obviously stupid" - of course, driver error is a high probability and it's on all of our minds. No need to grandstand your superiority. We all make mistakes.

Note: Maybe it said it in a part that I didn't read, but to my understanding setting regen to "Low" won't help. If anything, setting the stop mode to Roll or Creep sounds like it might help more.
 
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This reminds me of Keef and his spamming of the NHTSA with fake reports about wheels falling off causing accidents by using pictures taken of junkyard Teslas with missing wheels :D

Sadly, I think that crazy guy was actually onto something based on the number of failed control arms we are seeing now. Tesla even has a service bulletin out for them. My service center preordered a set for our S when we booked an appt just based on our description of the car’s symptoms it was apparently common enough they didn’t need to inspect first (turns out we had a different suspension issue, but it was an interesting data point). It is really too bad that guy clogged up the system so much so early - masking the real problem that folks are seeing now.
 
This Belt character is a notorious crank who garbs his CTs in dense technobabble and has been on the same "sudden unintended acceleration" trip since the original Toyota hysteria.

To call his output a "scientific article" is in itself extreme misinformation, whether done innocently or otherwise.

Naturally there is not a speck of evidence to support his perennial nonsense.

To answer the OP's question - no, there is no precaution we need to take as no actual problem has been demonstrated by this kook Belt.
 
Cool, got it. Let’s discourage—forbid even—any future inquiries or studies (study, since this appears to be the first one raising the question) into whether brake light faults may have unintended consequences with Bosch brakes. Good things happen when corporations and regulators bury their heads in the sand and don’t follow up on safety issues raised like this one. Agreed that is the safest course of action here.

As far as regulators getting into this Brian Sparks has already submitted a SUA Defect Petition to NHTSA and they are currently reviewing that DP to decide if they should open an investigation or not. He didn't include any reason as to why it was happening just that he thought it was happening more on Teslas than other vehicles so it must be a defect and not the drivers fault. He could submit this paper to NHTSA to give them something specific to look at, but they are already looking to see if there appears to be a defect. (Even though Tesla has said that they have already reviewed almost all of the SUA events reported to NHTSA with them and that the data showed that they were all pedal misapplication events.)
 
Cool, got it. Let’s discourage—forbid even—any future inquiries or studies (study, since this appears to be the first one raising the question) into whether brake light faults may have unintended consequences with Bosch brakes. Good things happen when corporations and regulators bury their heads in the sand and don’t follow up on safety issues raised like this one. Agreed that is the safest course of action here.
Who suggested anything of the sort??

If the guy puts forth a hypothesis, it’s up to HIM to provide evidence supporting it. Now, I don’t necessarily expect him to acquire equipment and conduct a test, but he, and everyone else who reads the paper, need to acknowledge that the hypothesis is completely unsupported at the current time.

But quotes like “If the driver never pressed the accelerator pedal, why does the EDR data show that the accelerator pedal was pressed?” tend to make me discount anything the guy has to say. That’s statement has *no business* in any scientific paper.
 
If the guy puts forth a hypothesis, it’s up to HIM to provide evidence supporting it.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

If I say “the Earth is round” you would not (hopefully) say “it is flat, unless YOU prove otherwise.”

In any case thank you to the folks who read the article and at least considered what he had to say. I hope Tesla or the NHTSA do the same, as that is clearly the most prudent course of action here.
 
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

If I say “the Earth is round” you would not (hopefully) say “it is flat, unless YOU prove otherwise.”

In any case thank you to the folks who read the article and at least considered what he had to say. I hope Tesla or the NHTSA do the same, as that is clearly the most prudent course of action here.

Look, I can’t tell if you’re truly concerned about this or you have some other motivation for starting this discussion. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re truly concerned. That said, that is exactly how this works. The guy puts forth a hypothesis, especially one that seems unlikely and rather controversial, then yes it is up tp him to provide supporting evidence. So using your example, since most people accept that the earth is in fact round, if someone came out and said “No, the earth is actually flat” then it would be up to that person to prove his hypothesis to the rest of us. If someone said to me “The earth is flat unless you prove otherwise” I would walk away while saying “ok boomer” and not worry about it because I am confident the earth is round and don’t feel the need to waste my time proving it. That’s more or less what’s going on here with the author of the study. He says Tesla has a problem with SUA and offers nothing more than a hypothesis with no real hard evidence to support his claim. I am quite confident this is a non-issue so I won’t waste my time trying to disprove the other person’s unsubstantiated hypothesis. If he or someone else comes up with some compelling evidence to support the claim then I’ll start paying attention.

As for NHTSA, they have a history of looking very hard at Tesla. Some might say the agency even provides more scrutiny for Tesla than for other automakers, although I have no evidence to support that claim so I won’t ask anyone to disprove it. A quick google search shows that NHTSA did acknowledge back in January that several owners and third parties have made claims of SUA against Tesla. At that time they were “considering the claims” to determine their validity and whether or not they would warrant a full investigation. If by now, 5 months later, they haven’t launched an investigation yet, well to me that speaks volumes regarding the validity of the claims.
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At that time they were “considering the claims” to determine their validity and whether or not they would warrant a full investigation. If by now, 5 months later, they haven’t launched an investigation yet, well to me that speaks volumes regarding the validity of the claims.

They are still in the "considering" phase of that defect petition. (I've seen one where it took them ~7 years to complete their "considering" before they finally declined the defect petition. The oldest outstanding one right now is just under 2 years old.)
 
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I suspect that this is much less likely to happen to people who grew up driving manual transmissions and are thus much more used to the separation of controls and foot inputs...

Yep, many people confuse the pedals. Especially when they are slowing down by regen with their foot over the accelerator and think I need to slow down more, so I need to push on the pedal... But the wrong one.
 
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

If I say “the Earth is round” you would not (hopefully) say “it is flat, unless YOU prove otherwise.”

In any case thank you to the folks who read the article and at least considered what he had to say. I hope Tesla or the NHTSA do the same, as that is clearly the most prudent course of action here.
Uh, yes, that’s *exactly* how the scientific method works. If you’re not joking you’re extraordinarily clueless.
 
Uh, yes, that’s *exactly* how the scientific method works. If you’re not joking you’re extraordinarily clueless.

Nope.

You are saying that in order for a hypothesis to be true, it must be proven *specifically* by the person who thought up said hypothesis. I am saying that neither the hypothesis nor science cares *who* proves or disproves a hypothesis. Hence I don’t find arguments of “well this scientist needs to prove his hypothesis, if not we should just ignore the hypothesis” terribly compelling.

Case in point:

“The name of 16th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus became a household word because he proposed that the Earth revolves around the sun. But the man who finally gathered scientific proof of that theory was English astronomer James Bradley.”

Proving Copernicus Right | Science | AAAS

According to your flawed understanding of science, Copernicus should have kept his dumb hypothesis to himself and just buzzed off. I’m glad he didn’t!
 
Nope.

You are saying that in order for a hypothesis to be true, it must be proven *specifically* by the person who thought up said hypothesis. I am saying that neither the hypothesis nor science cares *who* proves or disproves a hypothesis. Hence I don’t find arguments of “well this scientist needs to prove his hypothesis, if not we should just ignore the hypothesis” terribly compelling.

Case in point:

“The name of 16th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus became a household word because he proposed that the Earth revolves around the sun. But the man who finally gathered scientific proof of that theory was English astronomer James Bradley.”

Proving Copernicus Right | Science | AAAS

According to your flawed understanding of science, Copernicus should have kept his dumb hypothesis to himself and just buzzed off. I’m glad he didn’t!
Ok, let me clarify because you took me too literally and I will concede that could have been because of what I wrote (although I believe I said I didn’t expect the retired engineer to necessarily conduct the test).

One can put forth a hypothesis, but if NOBODY can provide any evidence to support it, and the underlying assumptions the hypothesis is based on seem faulty (as do the engineer’s assumptions that have been pointed out) then it’s not going to have any credibility.

So a better framing of your hypothetical question would be If you say “the Earth is round” I would say “The Earth appears to be flat. What assumptions are you making to base your statement on?” If you say, “Well, just because.” Then don’t expect anyone to take you seriously.
 
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Honestly, if this guy is right, Tesla should be able to fix the problem. The system just needs to be changed so that it reads both brake switches. OR, the car needs to recognize when there is a conflict between the brake switches, alert the driver, and at slow speeds disable the stability control/abs.

Those are both software fixes. Tesla is pretty good with software.

edit: I noticed in the guy's paper that he said Tesla vehicles do not do blended braking. Doesn't TACC do blended braking?
I think blended braking is when hitting the brake pedal the initial travel is regen like some hybrids and EVs but in Teslas the brake pedal always activates friction braking. We had a plug in hybrid Mercedes with blended braking.