Massive recall of Tesla cars!

Sorry, but I'm going to write again about Tesla cars…

It's been reported fairly widely on various news sites (here, here, and here, for example), that Tesla has been forced to recall over a million cars in China.

There's a “defect” that was identified by the Chinese regulator. Some of the details are confusing. Specifically, the defect relates to the operation of the accelerator pedal. Normally, when you take your foot off the accelerator pedal, the car engages regenerative braking to take the car's kinetic energy and direct it back into the battery, which causes the car to slow down. I've also seen details, from the news articles, that the complaint is that there's no way to set the intensity of the regenerative braking.

I drive this way myself - it's very convenient, and I use the actual brake pedal fairly infrequently (which has the side benefit of vastly increasing the life of the car's brake pads). However, the level of regenerative braking does depend on how charged the battery is. If it's at or near 100% charge, it's not possible to put more energy into the battery, therefore regenerative braking is ineffective. In this situation, the actual brakes must be used.

It appears, also, that because of the relative silence of EVs, that it's possible that drivers can think they're pressing on the brake when they're actually pressing the accelerator. It's theorised that the sound of a revving engine in a non-EV car provides at least some clue to the driver that they're not braking. Anyway, there are some specific examples where crashes or fatal accidents have happened when the cars have been travelling at excessive speeds, and (from telemetry and video evidence) the brake pedal wasn't engaged. So, it does appear that there's potential for drivers to become confused, especially when panicked.

Incidentally, such incidents aren't limited to EVs. A study was done way back in 1989 related to sudden acceleration in cars, concluding that drivers thought they were pressing the brake pedal when, in fact, they were pressing the accelerator pedal.

When is a recall not a recall?

The thing is that Tesla will likely address this defect by putting out a software update to the cars. These happen relatively frequently, and add new features and address minor bugs in the software. In the time that I've owned my Tesla, I've seen over a dozen new updates arrive over wi-fi and get installed on the car. So the car's software is quite different and improved from when I first bought the car.

This does seem to be a bit of a media beat-up on Tesla, probably due to it being run by Elon Musk, who it seems is a thoroughly bad character. I think it's media bias, or at least taking any opportunity to fan the flames of hate. Just the usual click-bait approach to sensational journalism we're used to seeing.

As I've said in the past, I don't own a Tesla because I'm a Elon Musk “fanboi” but purely for the CO2 emissions reduction benefits from driving an EV. But, for those who can't bear to send any money Musk's way, there are now plenty of other options in the EV market. As of this writing, there are about 75,000 EV and PHEV cars on the road. It's under 2% of the fleet, but new car registrations are increasingly in favour of lower and zero emissions vehicles.