Tesla breaks down mid-turn and causes more than nine hours of travel chaos

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/01/tesla-model-3-breaks-down-salisbury-elon-musk-electric-cars/

by keltex • 3 years ago

48 79 3 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

hw• 3 years ago

Cars break down all the time but at least they can be moved to the side of the road. Are Teslas not able to be moved once they run out of juice? They’re heavy and even with a few folks pushing from the back, is it able to disengage the parking brake?

ndsipa_pomu5• 3 years ago

From the fine article:

The handbrakes of electric cars, and some other modern cars, are controlled electronically, unlike those of traditional petrol and diesel cars, which are mechanical. This means that the handbrake often locks when the power fails and the car cannot be pushed or towed.

This sounds like a major oversight by Tesla as there should be some override in case a vehicle breaks down in a dangerous position or is blocking something important.

zizee• 3 years ago

My diesel and my wife's petrol card both have electronic handbrakes. I'm not sure what would happen if either has a battery failure.

cle• 3 years ago

They can be towed, but it is correct that certain electrical failures can prevent the brakes from being released.

I know because this happened to me. The tow company sent a flat bed truck and used a winch to pull the car onto the platform.

It’s pretty annoying from a design perspective but it also seems like something that any competent tow company should be able to handle easily.

kube-system3• 3 years ago

That is an unhelpful quote. Yes, some cars have electronic parking brakes. It is quite common on new cars today. But they typically require being affirmatively commanded to change between their applied and unapplied states. Nothing about the general existence of electronic parking brakes explains why this particular vehicle would have one engaged mid-turn.

Saris• 3 years ago

You can still tow it even with the handbrake on, just drag it.

fuzzbazz• 3 years ago

Other car models have handbrakes and/or can be left in a gear that locks the wheels.

They should have called a parking enforcement truck that carries rollers that attach to the locked wheels, they could have moved the car pretty quickly.

simondotau2• 3 years ago

On the other hand there are also numerous premium ICE cars which, if they break down in a specific way, can’t be placed into neutral without appropriate tools. This isn’t a new EV thing.

wesleyd• 3 years ago

My understanding is that many/most modern cars [0] have an electronic parking brake, and soon enough all of them will.

Of course, a headline such as “car with electronic handbrake breaks down mid-turn…” wouldn’t have had the same clickability. I’m shocked - shocked! - to find a “news” organization sacrificing truth for outrage!

[0] E-handbrakes aren’t a great fit to a manual transmission (or are they?) but I suspect the days of manual transmissions are numbered: electric cars no more need a manual transmission than they need a buggy whip.

whalesalad• 3 years ago

California CHP would have pushed it off the road with the bull bar.

cj2• 3 years ago

Does roadside assistance (AAA, etc) not offer some kind of "I ran out of gas" service for electric cars?

Edit: As of 2022, AAA actually does have emergency mobile charging. But of course, only in select cities. https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/12/electrifying-aaa-member-ben...

eqvinox2• 3 years ago

They do (I've seen photos of assistance service cars with a bunch of batteries tacked on in the back), but it's a very new thing and not very common yet.

Also the assistance service cars are mostly petrol based still, but even for electric ones I've been told it's non-trivial to wire the existing batteries out (… safety mechanisms and whatnot), making extra battery packs the go-to.

krisoft2• 3 years ago

making extra battery packs the go-to

I mean we are not talking about charging the vehicle to full. You only need like a hand portable battery to jump start the low voltage system.

The procedure is described in the owner's manual: "In the unlikely event that Model 3 loses electrical power, you cannot access the touchscreen and are therefore unable to release the parking brake without first jump starting (see Jump Starting)."[1]

And the jump starting procedure is described here: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-3567D5F...

1: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-3DFFB07...

ChumpGPT• 3 years ago

How is this even legal? They should have just hooked it up and dragged it into the ditch.

stevehawk• 3 years ago

ya this seems like some over politeness by road crews / law enforcement.

misnome2• 3 years ago

Running out of fuel is something it’s obviously “easy” to do with other cars.

But I’m surprised that the electronics have _no_ power redundancy, there isn’t a manual release for the parking break, and running out of power causes the parking break to fail-closed?

jackmott• 3 years ago

yeah its a problem that comes up regularly, fails and can’t be rolled away. probably need legislation because so many ev fanboys pretend this isnt a problem. (i am an ev fanboy)

ndsipa_pomu5• 3 years ago

There seems to be some discrepancy as the article mentions that it ran out of power, but the owner, Mr Grigg, 57, said that the vehicle had failed despite having shown that it had several miles of charge remaining.

And yes, I'm surprised that an important component doesn't have a manual override. Imagine if the vehicle blocked access to a hospital or a busy bridge or tunnel.

Waterluvian4• 3 years ago

Fire Department would just drag it away without thinking twice.

I’m kind of amazed people tolerated this for so many hours. Traffic stoppage costs can really add up.

valdiorn• 3 years ago

indeed - I would have thought a separate battery to run the cabin and safety features would be a good idea. I would only have to be 1/100th the size of the motor batteries.

adamsb6• 3 years ago

This is the way it works, the high voltage battery is used for the motors and to feed the 12 volt battery which feeds cabin electronics.

I’m guessing by extremely unfortunate luck both batteries failed at the same time.

adql• 3 years ago

Safety-wise it's better option.

Breaking vs just rolling without working brakes.

And I really do not like trend of making brakes drive-by-wire instead of mechanical just to (presumably) save few pennies...

simondotau2• 3 years ago

The Tesla Model 3 brakes are hydraulic and the pedal is still mechanically connected to the master cylinder. It’s the parking brake which is electronically actuated, as it is with nearly all modern ICE cars.

misnome2• 3 years ago

Is it? What if it runs out of power at 70mph in the middle of a motorway? I’d have thought sudden breaking would have been the most dangerous thing to do

dimitrios1• 3 years ago

wonder if the pendulum will shift back to mechanical components being cheaper than the electrical alternatives with the ever increasing demand for electrical components.

ajross• 3 years ago

But I’m surprised that the electronics have _no_ power redundancy,

They do. All the auxilliary stuff is on a 12V bus just like on any other car, powered by a separate 12V battery. I don't know anything about the parking break per se, but this isn't remotely as simple as "the car can't be towed when the main battery is dead". We know that's not correct; this is hardly the first Tesla to run out its battery, you can find people doing this deliberately on youtube as a test!

It's some other failure that locked the brake. And it's unique enough to be notable, and it's a Tesla, so of course it's going to spend the day on the front page of HN while we all endure the incessant tut-tutting of the hacker class who think the bug is much simpler than it is.

Folks, disabled vehicles block roads all the time. Stuff breaks. Cars are complicated. Why do we not care if it's a Renault or Suzuki?

tw04• 3 years ago

There is enough battery to put it into tow mode after you "run out". Assuming he either didn't know how or perhaps you can even run through that in service mode.

imtringued2• 3 years ago

Running of electricity is incredibly difficult on an EV. Also, in what way does a parking brake or a transmission prevent towing? You lift the car onto the tow truck bed like any other tow job. It doesn't take nine hours to hire one that can do the job.

seanmcdirmid3• 3 years ago

They might not have had such flat bed tow trucks. They aren’t super common outside d cities.

nunez2• 3 years ago

Teslas have a number of features designed to prevent this situation from happening.

Below a threshold, the car's power will reduce as battery capacity decreases.

The car will also warn you several times with a modal over the entire display telling you that you're approaching zero capacity.

If you're following a route on the navigation system, it will show you a banner just above the turn by turn instructions indicating whether you need to charge or drive below a set average speed in order to reach the destination.

Additionally, there is a small reserve within the battery that allows you to stretch your remaining capacity just a bit.

The issue here (and I blame Tesla more than the driver) is that showing remaining battery capacity in miles is horrifically inaccurate, just like it is with petrol-fueled vehicles.

Percent state of charge is always the most accurate measure to go on, just like it is on phones.

I also wish Tesla would allow drivers to disable percent remaining until a threshold is reached (like 20%) to reduce capacity anxiety.

joenathanone• 3 years ago

"The Tesla Model 3 Performance is a four-wheel-drive electric car with a starting cost of £57,000 and a battery life of 41 hours."

From the article, I had no idea battery life was measured in hours, I don't even know how that would work for a car.

NickM• 3 years ago

I had no idea battery life was measured in hours

It’s not. I know a lot about EVs and I’ve owned a Tesla myself for years, and I don’t know what they’re talking about.

flutas2• 3 years ago

Yeah, no clue either. It doesn't line up with the kWh value of the packs either (82kWh iirc)

floathub2• 3 years ago

9 hours? Nobody had an extension cord?

floathub2• 3 years ago

Or a portable generator?

ourmandave2• 3 years ago

Or, as someone else mentioned, a towing service with a flatbed and a winch.

chronicsonic• 3 years ago

I assume the roads were blocked by traffic, we have narrow A roads in Britain.

HPsquared2• 3 years ago

They have a separate 12V battery that I imagine runs things like the handbrake, steering lock etc. Just like any other modern car. Probably some electrical failure in the 12V system.

sebazzz• 3 years ago

Nitpicking: Modern Tesla Model 3 have 16V batteries (and subsequently also 16V "sigarette igniter" connection instead of 12V)

ourmandave2• 3 years ago

Unanswered: Why did it take 9 hours to move it?

flutas2• 3 years ago

This is imo the real question.

I would have just instantly grabbed some go jacks / wheel dollies like some repo men use to get cars.

Jack up all the wheels and roll it to the side.

imtringued2• 3 years ago

There is also the option to just tow the car.

https://uploads.tff-forum.de/original/3X/d/7/d7427f37fb68ce3...

saberience• 3 years ago

Why is this even news? How often does “any” car break down across the UK or USA or Europe and cause a traffic jam?

I’ll answer this question, because the media hates Elon Musk and deeply desires that Tesla fails. Despite Tesla pushing forward the “green agenda” and hence liberal left movement more than any other single company or person.

I have a feeling the New York Times, Guardian etc, would be drinking champagne if Tesla went bankrupt. I don’t understand it honestly.

eastbound2• 3 years ago

Good point, I remember the smear campaign against a french car manufacturer for its cruise control (“I couldn’t stop it anymore, it went 200km/h through the toll booth” and 2-3 similar), when clearly it must have been competitors hyping or mounting an incident.

But Musk was popular in late-2021. It’s when he became the world’s first individual fortune in early-2022 that he started to be described as a stupid person. Why?

rsynnott• 3 years ago

Some of us have been Elon-sceptical for rather longer than that.

ndsipa_pomu5• 3 years ago

Why do you think this is being politicised?

The Telegraph is often referred to as The Torygraph due to its fandom of the Conservative Party and is generally right wing biased. As I'm not a fan of it, I had a look for other sources and found The Sun (also right wing) and The Daily Mail (infamously right wing and often referred to as The Daily Heil due to their support of Hitler and Nazism before WWII).

Personally, I'm a lefty cyclist and so tend to notice a lot of car related stories where they end up being driven into houses, shops, walls, schools etc. and the UK press doesn't seem biased against Teslas in my view though that might well be different if they were allowed to be driven "autonomously" over here.

teknopaul• 3 years ago

This is not about electric power it's about electric hand breaks.

Low quality mechanics is the norm in 70000 vehicles because of greed. Not technology issues. A decent hand break is known to humanity.

Invictus0• 3 years ago

brakes

Waterluvian4• 3 years ago

In a way it’s both.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

Excellent plot device for a crime or spy movie!

zaroth2• 3 years ago

It’s amazing that this is considered “news”. My ex owned a Volvo S40 that had an electric wheel lock that failed in a way that required the car to be dragged onto a flatbed. Car refused to unlock the wheel or switch into neutral gear when the key was inserted.

Failures cause cars to be stuck all the time. The issue here was the failed response, not the failed car.

Doubly embarrassing that HN thinks this is front page worthy. It’s pure unintellectual click/rage-bait. Oh no, look what those gosh darn Teslas are doing now!

The human fear of new technology is the only remarkable thing about this story. That, and perhaps, the fact that some place in the UK couldn’t find a tow truck with a winch for 9 hours to clear a busy highway.

orwin2• 3 years ago

It's not 2010. Back in the days this type of error (as well as speed regulator not disengaging...) happened often in low-quality cars. Nowadays, it seems like even 'luxury' cars are low-quality, and Tesla, for better or for worse, started the trend.

zaroth2• 3 years ago

BMW famously degraded the quality of their parts to squeeze out every last dollar of margins. They pushed the envelope too far in putting plastics in place of metal engine parts, and has one of the worse reliability ratings because of it.

Tesla certainly didn’t start the trend, nor is there strong evidence that they are even following that trend. We’ll need to wait another few years to see how things play out with Model 3 / Model Y to know the long-term reliability, but after 5 years, Model 3 owners rate their own cars very highly in the long running Bloomberg study [1]

[1] https://archive.is/dagIR

ChoGGi• 3 years ago

"This means that the handbrake often locks when the power fails and the car cannot be pushed or towed."

In nine hours they couldn't throw on some wheel chocks and push it out of the way?

nunez2• 3 years ago

People run out of gas and cause chaos on their local roads all of the time. Nothing to see here.

Daviey• 3 years ago

Last year I had the opposite problem!

Ended up stranded on a motorway less than 2 miles from home in a Tesla Model X. The Supercharger I'd planned on using was down due to a regional power outage, and even though the dash indicated I'd make it, the charge vanished quicker than I'd expected.

It was a cold night, which probably didn't help with the battery drain. Had to pull over on an uphill incline and activated "tow mode" just before the car's display went off, as i'd worried they wouldn't be able to move the car. However, this meant I had to keep my food on the brake pedal to stop it rolling backwards and it's surprisingly tough to keep the car stationary on a slope with a brake pedal that's no longer power-assisted.

Ended up waiting a good hour and a half for recovery, foot stuck on this heavy brake the whole time. It's moments like these you really miss a manual handbrake. High-tech is all well and good until you're left stuck on the side of the motorway, in the cold winter.

Tesla breaks down mid-turn and causes more than nine hours of travel chaos

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