Tesla recalls Cybertrucks over accelerator crash risk
bbc.com
Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, has recalled thousands of its new Cybertrucks over safety concerns.
It is because their accelerator pedals currently risk getting trapped by the interior trim, increasing the possibility of crashes.
The BBC recently spoke to a whistleblower at the company who had raised concerns over the safety of pedals of previous Tesla models.
Tesla has been contacted for comment.
The recall affects 3,878 Cybertrucks, which cost roughly $61,000 (£48,320), made between November 2023 and April 2024.
"A trapped accelerator pedal can cause the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally, increasing the risk of a crash," the US Department of Transportation wrote in a notification of the recall.
3,878 fuglytruks is the apparently the entire fleet. That is the really big story here. The fuglytruk is a flop. Nobody wants an 80k rust bucket.
No reasonable personwants one, but apparently there are thousands of morons with too much money that want an ugly novelty truck.
I think MKBHD's (follow up?) review was probably the best take on it. He specifically did not review it as "a truck" and pretty much described it like an SUV where the trunk region is on the exterior the entire time.
Which I think is a vehicle a lot of people would want. Me and my buddies are sickos who go on multi day camping/climbing trips and would not want to leave all our crap in the open (stuff is either in a tent or locked in the car at night). But for the average person? Throw little timmy's football pads in the back or put a tarp over your fifty suitcases on the way to a hotel. And make sure you have an empty toolchest so people think you work for a living. Groceries are an issue but basically every truck I have ever had the displeasure of parking near just opens their passenger door all the way (almost always dinging the car next to them) and takes twelve minutes to load three bags.
But as an actual truck? it is dogshit. But also... Simone Giertz kind of created Truckla, the dream vehicle of every single millennial who knows what a Lowe's is: the El Camino. Form factor of a sedan/crossover but with a truckbed so we don't have to hold a hand out to keep the pipe from shooting forward and cracking the windshield when we stop. And it would have let them reuse almost the entire existing assembly line and designs.
I'm 40 and drive an 84 El Camino, you're spot on lol
This just made me think of a great feature for all these cars with sensors nowadays.
Side door ding avoidance - as the door is opened if it detects its about to hit another vehicle, it will halt the door opening.
Of course now you need all the fancy tech in the door to halt the door but think of all dings saved!
One day maybe. One day.
Having computer logic to decide if you are allowed to open your door is how you get people drowning in their cars or getting heat stroke because they started a firmware update.
That said, this is very much the kind of problem that can be solved... basically the same way cabinets solve it. A few springs to increase the resistance so that you can't slam the door open. But that probably has issues with needing to close a door REALLY fast for Reasons.
Personally? I don't really care. Cars are going to get dings and those trucknuts are too weak to do any real damage. But the audacity I have seen from some drivers who slam their door open while on the phone and take ten minutes to put four bags in the passenger foot area. All while the driver of the car they just damaged is standing there and staring at them.
I guess those are all fair points, but maybe the thing that holds it could be easily overpowered even with the computer 100% trying to stop you.
That might not be enough for a strong wind, but accidental openings maybe?
Vehicles that aren't vans should have sliding doors.
Couldn't you just line the door edge with rubber so if it dings, it bounces and there are no visible markings on either car?
You'd need rubber on the cars exterior for that to work.
The Santa Cruz is basically that. They took the Tucson and turned the trunk into a bed. I love mine, but it would be neat if it were electric.
Agreed entirely. I live my SC and describe it as "for people who could get away with an SUV or hatchback but need a bed". Like I get to have more of a car (albeit big for a car) but the messy stuff doesn't get in the cab.
My bet is on Ford doing a mav EV before Hyundai does a SC EV though. Just glad to see more tiny trucks out there.
Should just get a Chevy Avalanche since they're almost as ugly
3,878 specifically lmfao
That's how many were delivered so far. There are plenty more morons still eagerly waiting for these turds.
Tesla: Recalls are easier and cheaper if you keep sales low
Taps forehead meme
Sadly it’s more of a production problem than a demand problem. I believe there are 100s of thousands of preorders pending. They are just hard to build to any decent standard. Or apparently impossible to build to even a basic working standard.
That's more than Ford F150 lighting sold in the same starting period back in 2022,and its more than GM sold of the Silverado EV that started months earlier.
Ramps aren't linear and start slow.
Ramps gonna start real slow with a recall
The stop sale is already over.
The F150 EV is not exactly a success.
I mean in the grand scheme of things you're right, but clearly the CyberTruck is doing better than the non fugly trucks in the same time frame.
It'll be awhile longer though before we actually know how it's going to do.
It's ok they will send out a firmware update to make the brake the accelerator and the accelerator the brake.
Or move the pedals to the touch screen. So convenient!
Nah, just make it voice controlled.
“Faster. Faster. Slower. Slower. Slower! Stop! STOP! STO-“
I question whether or not Tesla will be around in 3 years. The Cybertruck has been one giant cash sink that has delivered a giant rusty lemon. They cancelled their latest consumer grade car. Their next product is robo-taxis and that's with a history of driver death from their self-driving tech. And the major car brands have caught up or are at Tesla's heels.
Tesla still has advantages like an extensive charger network and the appearance of FSD on the horizon to general consumers. People that follow EV closely know there are better options, but they're a minority.
Not to mention the fact that places like Lemmy give the company and its CEO never-ending free press and coverage.
It's been on the horizon for the last 7 years or so.
Thus why I specifically said appearance and also mentioned it was for the uninformed.
I don't believe FSD is anywhere close to commercially viable for Tesla.
Reality doesn't matter when you're selling an idea or image. Its really easy to get lost in our nerd bubble and think everyone else reads about this stuff every day.
Yeah, I think fully self-driving cars are pretty much impossible unless all vehicles on the road are fsd, and reporting information to a single central network.
There's just too many interconnected variables that can cause cascading newton like chains of cause and effect. For example something as simple as a little bit of rain vs a moderate amount of rain has drastically different effects on the coefficient of friction of the tires and road.
In other words, impossible forever because there are plenty of legitimate road users that will never be self-driving, such as bicycles.
"legitimate road users" "such as bicycles"
Not recognized in America.
eyes bike, webcam, raspberrypi, powerbank, and some actuators
Hold my beer.
On a more serious note, there are some prototype self driving e-bikes, and due to the lower speed and mass they are probably much safer than Tesla's murderbots.
I gotta admit, I've heard of those before, but they don't make any damn sense to me as anything but a novelty/experiment so I ignored them.
To be fair, that "advantage" shouldn't even exist.
We shouldn't have different chargers for cars just like we don't have different gas stations.
Thankfully lots of upcoming vehicles will be adopting the Tesla charging standard (it's better).
Sure?
That doesn't affect reality though.
I don't think they're a minority of people that have considered buying an EV and don't impulse spend tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle though.
It doesn't matter to them if the person who wasn't going to buy an EV doesn't buy a Tesla. It matters if the person who was going to buy an EV doesn't buy a Tesla.
Its not an impulse spend, its a lengthy history of hearing that Teslas are THE option for EV.
Normies who have seen or heard of Teslas for well over a decade now aren't going to be easily swayed by an upstart company or the latest Nissan Leaf.
Elon's image after Twitter in my opinion has done way more to dissuade potential buyers than anything Tesla itself or other car manufacturers have done.
I've talked to plenty of normies about this, from what I've seen whatever advantage Tesla had is pretty much gone between the stories of EVs burning down buildings, EV range anxiety, etc.
The "normies" just want a good car that's going to get them from point A to B ... and most "normies" shop around a bit before dropping 30, 40, or 50k on a car.
If they're buying Tesla it's because a friend they trust bought one and likes it. Most normies have way too many doubts about EVs and Tesla to really have brand loyalty.
What EV cars are these normie friends of yours buying instead? As in actually purchased, not plan to purchase.
My normie friends haven't bought any EV cars because they don't think they're ready and I'm inclined to agree really.
Then why do their opinions matter? They aren't in the market for any EV, as you said in an earlier post.
My normie friends with EV have bought teslas and I don't know anyone except EV nerds that have bought any other manufacturer since the first gen Leaf.
Let me try restarting this conversation because IMO it's off the rails of my point and has nothing to do with what "my friends" think.
Most people do not buy a new car without looking at options. When people do care, they'll ask Google what the best EVs are of XYZ year and go try some cars out. They're not going to "just go buy a Tesla because that's the name they've associated with EVs."
Most people are also not buying EVs at this point.
When this average people do care and they start seriously looking at buying an EV, "Tesla" having the brand Tesla is not going to help them very much, if at all.
Put differently, any advantage Tesla has exists with the average Joe because the average Joe don't have skin in the game. "Tesla" may have word association with "EV", but word association alone isn't enough to justify a 30, 40, 50, etc thousand dollar purchase.
I don't know why you're so intent on giving this perspective when you don't know anyone actually following it.
I'd argue the lease business carries them big time. But 2nd hand leases don't generate money for them .. they might get some spare change from subscriptions but their support has to carry over to older vehicles no longer providing profit.
This is a bit off topic, but the $61K RWD trim is "available in 2025", so the recalled vehicles are either the $80K AWD trim or $100K Cyberbeast trim.
The entire fleet, 80 to 100 thousand dollar vehicles, being recalled because they cheapef out on the fucking accelerator.
If it was GM or Chrysler, I would also assume the stupid decision to glue a flat piece of metal to another flat piece of metal that people are going to stomp on was because glue is cheap.
This, unfortunately, is a Musk run company, so the real reason was likely hubris. Someone's over engineered solution getting axed for cost is the least likely reason. It's more likely that the man child in charge (or a hand picked manchildlett crony) thought welding / mechanical fasteners were beneath them and that the glue was actually a sufficient and elegant solution to maintain clean design or some other form over function reason.
I have two comments which I shall illustrate with the following images:
Thanks to the innovative dome design The Homer has better visibility than most cars on the market
Yeah but it's murder in the sun. Half your gas is gonna go to trying to keep the temperature in that thing under "sweltering."
Better hope Springfield doesn't get hailstorms though...
I'm a Canyonero man myself.
The Canyonero at least looked like a plausible vehicle.
That episode was from 1998. If you showed someone a picture of a Cybertruck in 1998 and said that was an actual truck in 2024, they'd ask you when the nuclear war happened.
The cybertruck legit looks like a video game from '98 that couldn't render enough polygons
Ya the Cybertruck does looks straight out of a dystopian future. Maybe it'll be popular when it's safe to come out of the vaults in 200 years.
The people of the Fallout universe scoff at our feeble electric trucks as they cruise around in their nuclear powered mini-cars.
The greatest trick Tesla ever pulled was convincing the world it was a car company and not a meme stock.
This headline is definitely a perfect encapsulation of the current state of all things Musk-related.
what do you expect when you buy a memewagon. f’ing numpties, all of them, everyone involved from elmo down to the buyer.
Truly worthy of its title of WankPanzer. Although I would apply that to most lifted short-bed pickup trucks to be honest.
Love that there are so many apt nicknames for the techbrodozer.
Who would have expected such a cheaply made hunk of steel to have safety issues?
Aren't those things almost double the weight of a typical truck? That and 100% torque from a dead stop (because electric) is horrifying if it accelerates unintentionally. I always see this one guy cruising around every weekend in a dense shopping mall near me just to show it off. I can't imagine if that thing plows into a busy shopping area.
Roughly three metric tonnes, which is twice a decent-sized hatchback like a current Ford Focus
You should see the NTSB’s crash tests of it!
. . . cause there aren’t any. And what there is from Tesla is a goddamned nightmare.
...or twice a decently-sized pickup truck like a '90s Ford Ranger, for that matter!
Other articles are reporting that they used soap as a “lubricant”.
Like they’re Beoing.
Thr most innovative car manufacturer in the world. They are just pioneering new accelerator behavior. Musk truly is the visionary of the generation.
I fell asleep behind the wheel for maybe four seconds one time (the dreaded double clopen) and have had infrequent nightmares of being trapped in a vehicle that is uncontrollably accelerating ever since
The great thing about living in the future is that your dreams are daily becoming a reality