No one has convinced me (or will) why his conclusions in this article do not at least deserve careful examination, given what’s at stake. To flip this on its head, if you are so sure he is wrong, I think you’d look forward to having it be disproven.
I've already provided a link to someone that has been involved in SUA investigations in the past and has stated that he is willing to bet $1 million dollars that this guy is wrong.
He also seems to either get things very wrong, or has a poor attention to detail, for example he states: "Figure 4 shows the pre-crash accelerometer data. The longitudinal accelerometer data show that the vehicle had a rapid deceleration of -5 g’s from +1 g to -4 g one second before the crash. Since the Model 3’s regeneration is limited to -2 g’s (increased to -3 g’s by software update 2018.42 v9 on October 25, 2018), this higher -5 g deceleration could not have been caused by the vehicle’s regen system."
Those g numbers are all completely wrong. Tesla does not provide up to 3g's of regen deceleration. (All of those numbers appear to be off by a factory of 10.)
I'm not even sure he is correct in that Tesla is using the Bosch ESP-hev II unit. For example he says "All of these slip control functions are included in the ESP hev II modulator as software built into the modulator control unit by the brake system subcontractor, who in this case is Bosch. This software is proprietary to the modulator subcontractor and not accessible for modification by the vehicle manufacturer" But we know two things:
- Tesla has said that with the Model 3 they stopped using a third-party vehicle stability controller and developed their own in-house. (Which is why they are able to have, and improve, track mode.)
- That Tesla adjusted the ABS function very quickly after Consumer Reports released a report about poor braking performance on the Model 3.