This thread seems a bit bizarre to me. At the risk of sounding like a Tesla apologist—I’m not, but I know there’s a fair few out there—the author has two main complaints:
1) In an emergency situation, Tesla didn’t send an emergency tow truck, but instead directed him to call 911.
Well, yeah! It’s an emergency, call 911! That’s what it’s there for. They would have dispatched his call to the appropriate highway service and gotten his car out of the road. Why the fuck didn’t he call 911 immediately, as soon as he was safe, instead of hoofing it down the road to a random work crew?
(The cherry on the top: he expresses surprise that said random work crew doesn’t have number of CHP. You know who does? The 911 dispatcher!)
2) His car died in the middle of the road for unknown reasons.
And… that’s it. Unknown car failure. Sure, it’s bad, but also not particularly unusual. Car failures happen. They’re often dangerous. Repair work is in progress and nothing else is known.
And that’s it. Most of the thread is complaining about self-inflicted inability to get emergency service in emergency situation.
> Tesla didn’t send an emergency tow truck, but instead directed him to call 911
So about 3 years ago, there was a car which got a wheel stuck in the caltrain crossing near 4th st in SF (they turned right into the tracks without completely crossing over).
We were appalled to find out that the guy in the car was on hold with the rental company & we immediately called 911.
The cops responded within 2 minutes (they were probably parked in UCSF) and stopped the trains on 22nd.
People do panic and don't always think straight on what should be done in an emergency.
So about 3 years ago, there was a car which got a wheel stuck in the CALTRAIN crossing near 4th st in SF (they turned right into the tracks without completely crossing over). We were appalled to find out that the guy in the car was on hold with the rental company & we immediately called 911.
Of course you call 911. You also call the number on the blue and white "REPORT EMERGENCY OR PROBLEM" sign that's at every US crossing and read them the crossing number on that sign. Usually it connects to the train dispatcher who controls that track, has the controls to turn signals red, and has a radio link to the locomotives. Call that number, tell them there's a car stuck on the tracks at crossing 123 456, and trains will be stopped.
DOT actually says to call that number before calling 911. The 911 dispatcher will eventually call the railroad, but there may be confusion and delay as to where the problem is. (Cops use street names and addresses, railroads use routes and milepost numbers.)
Those blue and white signs are kind of low key. Maybe too low key. It's not obvious that the blue and white sign gets you to the person who actually controls the trains.
If stuck on a crossing, get out of the vehicle, get well clear of the crossing, like 50-100 feet, and call. Then, once the train dispatcher tells you they have rail traffic stopped, efforts to extract the vehicle can begin.
The biggest one, which you missed, is the fact that the car could not be put in neutral making it impossible to push outside the lane. If my car dies on a 6 lane HW I make sure to get it to the safe lane first; I'm not staying there like dead meat waiting for some truck to hit me at 130km/h
Every car, no matter of it's running state, unless it is damaged at the mechanical components, should be able to place in neutral and pushed in situations like this.
This is my beef with these electric cars and non electric cars (but with electric parking system/shift)
After a malfunction like this, a car without a mechanical e-brake can be left in two states, both dangerous -- free rolling or locked in place.
You can always secure a manual car or a car with a parking pawl by shifting into gear or P, so I assume it's more okay to leave them in the free-rolling state if they die completely.
But you can't do the same in a Tesla which doesn't have a parking pawl, so I assume someone made the decision that a forever-locked-up Tesla is safer than a forever-free-rolling Tesla.
I also agree that should be an even-more-emergency mechanism (like a valve on the brake circuit) you could operate manually to disable the emergency lock-up, but in the case of a Tesla fiddling with that hypothetical valve would also disable your brakes completely sooo. Dunno. The car just doesn't have enough hardware.
I'm not sure what you mean by "mechanical brakes". The brakes on a Tesla are normal hydraulic car brakes that do exactly that. They work even without power (more force required, of course). But just like in many modern cars, there is no separate manual parking brake.
There's no way I'd try to push a car stuck in a highway lane. I would abandon my car and get to off the highway ASAP. That's a super dangerous situation.
It also reads like someone in a state of panic. You don’t think clearly. I’ve had worse experiences in older cars. Wind screen wiper getting taken off by a branch in a storm, bonnet flying straight up and slamming into my windscreen, brakes completely failing while going down a hill heading towards an intersection, etc. Panic solves nothing, just makes you stop thinking clearly. At least this guy’s car told him there’s a problem. My dumb mechanical cars had no idea.
It might be a better idea to have the car do an auto 911 call and report it's distress. I wonder if the 911 style system could be setup to receive such input as a simple text from advanced vehicles?
On my 2019 Tesla Model 3 it's a button near the rear mirror.
I've heard that in some cases (crash) the cars makes the call automatically (happened to a friend, after a crash he heard someone talk to him through the system to check if he was ok).
Manual transmission (think Americans call it driving “stick”). You gear down then you can use hand break when you’re slow enough. Actually, I was taught to break by gearing down instead of just applying the breaks. I still went through that intersection though, the lights were red. I had my hazards on and prayed no one ran into me.
>Use 2 (Second) to start-up on
slippery roads or to provide
additional engine braking on
downgrades.
>Use 1 (First) to provide maximum
engine braking on steep downgrades.
The weak point is the engine, not the transmission. If you're at 7,000 in fourth gear, and you command a shift to 1st gear, it will grenade your crankshaft. Some transmission control modules are smart enough to refuse to do this.
Synchromesh is a manual transmission technology and is perfectly robust to downshifting. Every auto gearbox in history has been capable of downshifting and can handle it just fine. I downshift my 50 year old C4 transmission regularly.
If you're piloting a ship or aircraft, there are multiple levels of distress call available to you; not everything needs to be called in as a mayday. But for drivers on the road, 911 has to serve as a one size fits all resource, which leads to doubt in situations like these where it is not yet necessary to send an ambulance or firefighters.
The most severe emergencies are the ones people most readily associate with calling 911, and it takes education and outreach to reassure people that it's okay to call 911 for less severe situations—before things go from bad to worse.
911 isn't going to send you ambulance/firefighters/helicopters unless needed to. I believe most of the calls they receive "there's a big trash on the road".
This isn't really a new electric car problem. My 1988 Toyota Tercel did the same thing. Transmission broke and left me completely stranded in the middle of the highway. No way to shift into neutral, no way to move the car. Super dangerous. Get extremely lucky that no one hit me and a friend nearby had a rolling jack so we could get to the shoulder.
Also happens with German cars that have electric gearboxes. Modern cars do not have a way to force them into neutral, so if you have an electrical issue or the battery dies, you need a tow truck with a crane to get you out of there.
Look a bit more. Most cars have an electronic shift lock override right next to the shift, as well as the keys being able to be popped out to reveal the actual, physical key to control it and go back into neutral.
Yep also heard about it happening to other more modern non-electric cars. Electrical failure and the car just died. If you have an electric park brake there is also no way for a driver to bring it to a stop. He can only drift until the car stops. God help you if you are on a hill.
> If you have an electric park brake there is also no way for a driver to bring it to a stop. He can only drift until the car stops.
What? The regular brakes are still hydraulic, the pedal will always work. Or did you mean that there's no way to KEEP the car stopped without someone standing on the pedal all the time? That's true, but you can always gently rest the car against the curb or road barriers or something.
Hydraulic car brakes can't be "completely dead". You step on a pedal, pedal pushes piston against hydraulic fluid, this increases pressure in the hydraulic fluid, fluid pushes a piston inside the brake caliper, piston pushes brake pads against rotor. No electricity involved.
My dad's 92 Civic had a hood latch malfunction while in the left lane going 75mph. The hood opened up, was caught in the oncoming wind, and slammed into the windshield, violently breaking it and completely obscuring his view. Fortunately he was able to pull over into the median shoulder without getting hurt or causing a collision... but he was pretty shaken.
My '01 Honda Accord had its alternator die in the middle of the highway. Fortunately I had enough momentum (and a clear path) to roll to the side of the road. But otherwise I would've been in the same situation, though I could've at least shifted to neutral (hopefully, not sure if my gearbox was electric).
Comparing complete failure of a 20+ year old car's transmission with a brand new Tesla's software going "lol no" doesn't exactly sound like a good defense for Tesla.
Additionally, as long as you're in gear and your transmission still, well, transmits, even in fourth, you can get your car going forward by playing with the clutch. Yes, you'll destroy your clutch, but then again your transmission is already broken anyways.
I had a combustion engine car die on me once too. Later I downloaded the fault which indicated “bad fuel”. True story.
The most amazing thing is how VW didn’t send me a rescue crew and a free show bag. And even more puzzling, I’m still unsure why it didn’t get front page HN and a million anti-VW hits. Puzzling.
I have had my (manual) car die too, but pushing it off road wasn't a problem. Starting the car when battery is down and using 2nd gear to push-start with help of strangers was possible too.
I haven't used a automatic car, do they start easily by pushing like a manual can? Guess the problem is really technology (and maturity of it.)
Almost all cars with automatic transmissions cannot be push started. If I recall correctly, that's because the hydraulic pump that allows the transmission to shift into gear is driven by the input shaft in most designs.
This happened to me (luckily not on the highway). Teslas, and probably other EVs, have a pyro fuse which physically severs the connection between the main battery and the rest of the electric system in the case of overcurrent or an accident. When that happens it completely bricks the car (to avoid nasty things like battery fires), and the fuse has to be completely replaced. The 12V system is separate, so things like lights, infotainment & door opening buttons continue to work. The pyro fuse quite literally blows up with an audible thud when this happens.
It is weird that if anything goes wrong in a Tesla it suddenly becomes international news regardless of how frequently that same thing might happen in any other make of vehicle.
Although, it’s worth noting that part of Elon/Tesla’s approach to marketing is to not pay for advertising, and rely quite significantly on social media - with Elon’s sometimes controversial Twitter central to that. One might posit that they have made themselves into the click-worthy meme company that the media now exploit?
I don't think so. Electric cars have new and interesting failure modes (e.g. not having neutral so you can't tow them) and Tesla takes a very... casual attitude to safety critical software development so people are naturally interested when it goes wrong.
I'm sure when petrol cars started breaking down and horse and carts didn't it was news too. That's why they call it news.
That does not make sense. Electric cars don't really have a concept of neutral, because they have no gears or clutch (with few exceptions, such as two-gear Taycan). Yes, the "gear selector" has N as well, but that's just software trick (like all R/N/D "gears") which lets the car to roll when you lift your foot from power pedal, instead of applying regenerative braking.
If the car detects a problem in power supply circuit, it's perfectly rationale action to engage the electric parking brake as "last wish" when the car has stopped, because there are no other mechanism to prevent the car from rolling. In most cases that's the safest option, because freely rolling car is very dangerous.
A side note: Tesla has a sort-of reduntant 12V power supply, because it has a traditional 12V battery and also a 12V DC-DC converter from the high-voltage battery pack. So in theory you can lose either of those and still safely drive the car to a stop. But there can also be a problem with the 12V circuitry itself, e.g. in chassis grounding, which can cause all kind of weird problems and even total failure. This is not an unheard problem especially among older Model S cars such the one in the picture.
Practically every single car has a freely rolling mode the operator can easily select, despite being, according to you, "very dangerous".
For an EV like a Tesla neutral would be just not energizing the motor and letting it turn freely. There are hydraulic brakes on the car, are there not? These should always be available, even when non-boosted it's just a matter of standing on the pedal. Most vehicles in addition to this have a mechanical "emergency" or "parking" brake for actuating the rear calipers mechanically. There's nothing about a Tesla precluding the same manual brake methods practically every car has had since before I was born, which are the primary ways you stop the car from rolling when in neutral. At least this way you're always able to roll a vehicle when needed, even if it's inoperable for whatever reason.
> Most vehicles in addition to this have a mechanical "emergency" or "parking" brake for actuating the rear calipers mechanically.
> Teslas are just annoying.
Well, not any more, electric parking brakes have been a thing for some time and nowadays you can find them in very mainstream cars (like the latest Škoda Octavia). So it's not just Teslas that are annoying.
> Practically every single car has a freely rolling mode the operator can easily select, despite being, according to you, "very dangerous".
Yes, because traditional cars are not free rolling by default due to their mechanics, unlike electric cars.
Tesla does the only sensible thing in the scenario of possible power failure, it applies the electronic parking brakes when the car has stopped. Yes, you may not be able to push the car, but that's less dangerous than freely rolling car. The thing with power failure is that the car must prepare for a total lost of power in any moment.
And yes, Tesla has hydraulic brakes which works without power just like in any car, but that does not help in the emergency situation when the car has parked been without power. No one wants to sit in the car keeping the brakes pressed while waiting for the towing.
> Yes, because traditional cars are not free rolling by default due to their mechanics, unlike electric cars.
What are you talking about?
Traditional cars have a neutral and yes it is free rolling by default.
If I don't personally set the hand brake in my mx-5 it will happily roll away, factory stock.
Edit:
And it gets even worse for an automatic transmission left in drive with the engine off. The torque converter hydraulics won't have pressure; it effectively becomes neutral. At least my manual mx-5 I can leave in 1st when off and it'll resist rolling a bit, not enough to park on an SF hill, but on level ground it'll generally hold still. But neutral in all cars is potential runaway car territory, completely unimpeded without manually setting the parking brake or for an auto explicitly putting the trans in park.
I mean that the traditional cars have either an automatic transmission with locking mechanism, or manual transmission which has significant resistance when coupled with the engine with a small gear. The traditional car is truly freely rolling only in specific configuration (neutral engaged).
Electric cars have none of that. The wheels are connected to the motor with a fixed gear, and the electric motor without power can't prevent the car from rolling. Thus you can say the system is "free rolling" by default. There are no mechanical configurations, just a fixed single one.
An automatic transmission is effectively decoupled when the engine is off despite being left in drive. Without the engine spinning, there's no functioning torque converter. So the most ubiquitous ICE configuration, the auto with a torque converter, defaults to a neutral equivalent when the engine is off and the operator doesn't explicitly put the trans in park.
Yeah, we can argue about the semantics of "by default", but the point is that the traditional drivetrain has more backup options than electric car, which must solely rely on (parking) brakes.
The axels are directly connected to the motor(s). To have a free wheeling mode, you’d have to disconnect them somehow, and I’m not sure how you would do that at all, definitely not without lots of extra parts. That problem isn’t unique to Tesla’s.
The electric drivetrain, including the motor, is in free wheeling mode by default, i.e. it has not much mechanical resistance, at least not enough to keep the car from rolling. So no need to disconnect anything. That's somewhat unique "problem" of electric cars, and it's the reason why it's critical to automatically apply the parking brake if the car may lose all the power.
The motor will simply turn freely without power, there's no need to disconnect them. Tesla is literally going out of their way to prevent the neutral equivalent from being accessible.
But should we really expect anything else from a company so desperate to eliminate steering wheels from its cars?
In the case of emergency, the car can either lock the brakes up and die, or do nothing and die. There's no other option, there's no mechanical backup, no braking pawl, no gear to shift in. Do you consider "being unable to secure the car in one place" the safer option?
Why is there not a hand lever pulling a cable attached to the rear brake calipers? There's nothing about an EV precluding this mechanism we've used forever.
>If the car detects a problem in power supply circuit, it's perfectly rationale action to engage the electric parking brake as "last wish" when the car has stopped
Perfectly rational as the default action perhaps, but Tesla should still provide a way to manually override that behavior. We have the technology.
No. If the car is in power failure mode, it means that all systems may shutdown in any moment. So if you let the user to override the very important safety feature (of applying the electronic parking brake), there's a high risk that the car would die in free-rolling mode in dangerous situation. As a manufacturer you have to make this kind of trade-offs. I'm sure Tesla has put lot of thinking into this to minimize the risks in worst-case situation (power failure). It's easy to comment in internet without knowing/seeing all the details. Many commenters here seem not to have much knowledge of the basics of electric drivetrains or Teslas.
I get the point you’re making in the context of not having a traditional gearbox with a clutch which would support neutral, but for completeness it’s worth mentioning that Teslas do have gearboxes - one for every electric motor.
One of the mind blowing downsides of electric cars I recently experienced (with Leaf) is inability to shift to neutral once the car dies. This happened to me at the middle of the intersection - many people stopped and offered to help me push the car out of the way but this wasn’t possible! How is being able to shift to neutral even when the car is completely off is not the legal requirement???
When this stuff happens, the car doesn't jam the brakes on and do an emergency stop.
You still have the cars forward momentum, which should be fine to get you to the shoulder.
Then when the car stops, it puts the break on. I'd much prefer that than not put the break on and have it roll down a hill unoccupied later and kill someone.
In most countries (not the USA), speeds are lower in each lane towards the shoulder. That way, as you lose speed, you can seemlessly change towards the shoulder.
It's the same thing I would do if I had an underpowered and heavily laden car or truck and came to a big hill that the car could only get up at 40 mph - change lanes towards the shoulder so that people with more powerful cars can overtake.
It has a bunch of safety benefits too, like knowing people always will be passing you on only one side, making driving more predictable, and hence safer.
Exactly. The critical part is to realize the situation as a driver and react immediately, i.e. steer the car to safe place (e.g. shoulder) before losing too much momentum.
My BMW Z4 shut down in the middle of a busy 8 lane road in my town. Temperature sensor went out and the engine shuts off when this happens. I have never been honked and yelled at some many times in my life. Nothing I could do. I had to wait for a tow. It was daytime so it could have been worse.
Recently I had to talk a friend out of hastily buying a new car after having her boyfriend's Prius abruptly lose all power on her in the middle of heavy traffic on the 5 (CA).
Turns out this is a common thing with his generation of Prius, something about the motor controller inverter thingy overheating.
How is this any different than any other car having a mechanical problem "in the middle of a highway"? Cars break down all the time. Using the term "locks up" makes it sound like the car is running Window 95 and it just got the blue screen of death. For all we know this could be a mechanical issue that led the car to not start. Even if it's a computer related issue to use the term "locks up" is still pretty uncalled for. There are computer modules in almost any modern car that control the engine and other mechanical aspect of the car that can and do fail regularly leading to all sorts of failures, but nobody says their car "locks up" when that happens.
From my reading the issue is not that the car stopped working but it actually locked up so you can't push it to the side. I hope we get more info what was the cause, would be hilarious if it was some multimedia issue.
The car is "locked up" on purpose, because it applies parking brakes for safety reasons.
It's not a multimedia issue (infotainment). There's a separate driving computer with sufficient redundancy functionality. It's likely a problem with 12V power if the critical functionality freezes.
You can even reboot the infotainment system (the main screen) when driving and the car drivers perfectly fine.
You can't provide manual override for electronically controlled system in the case of power failure. To disengage an electronic parking brake, at least in Teslas, you need power. If there's a serious problem in power supply (of 12V power), the computer must put the car in the likely safest configuration and shutdown to prevent any kind of erratical behaviour.
Anyway, in an unlikely situation that the driver fails to pull off safely in case of critical system failure (remember, steering and brakes always work), and the car stops on lane, you probably don't want to risk your life by pushing the car. For a towing truck the parking brake is not much a problem.
>you probably don't want to risk your life by pushing the car.
Does the car come with emergency sings to place on the road so you don't kill others with an abandoned car in middle of the street? (I am not sure if in US first aid kit and emergency stuff(signs,fire extinguisher) are mandatory)
Maybe, soem rare issue that affects you inthe midle of a high way so you get stuck and can't put the car on neutral and coast to the side.
But to be fair we would need to know why this was the safest thing that a Tesla could do, hopefully we will get more info that is not quickly DMCA.
And before someone would label me some anti-Tesla something, I was also critique of Uber self driving and I am a big critique of other big tech giants so if you label me you need a more generic term.
Oky, what the heck! This is one of my biggest nightmares as a driver, those at Tesla should be made responsible for this type of behaviour from their product.
I know any car may die in the middle of the highway but from what the guy writes he couldn't put it in neutral so that he couldn't push it over to the side of the highway. That's a big no-no. Again, Tesla must be held accountable.
1) In an emergency situation, Tesla didn’t send an emergency tow truck, but instead directed him to call 911.
Well, yeah! It’s an emergency, call 911! That’s what it’s there for. They would have dispatched his call to the appropriate highway service and gotten his car out of the road. Why the fuck didn’t he call 911 immediately, as soon as he was safe, instead of hoofing it down the road to a random work crew?
(The cherry on the top: he expresses surprise that said random work crew doesn’t have number of CHP. You know who does? The 911 dispatcher!)
2) His car died in the middle of the road for unknown reasons.
And… that’s it. Unknown car failure. Sure, it’s bad, but also not particularly unusual. Car failures happen. They’re often dangerous. Repair work is in progress and nothing else is known.
And that’s it. Most of the thread is complaining about self-inflicted inability to get emergency service in emergency situation.