Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[MissingInAction 24765]

9 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

Are you saying it's bad I drive a Ram and my wife drives a Subaru?

There's a 70% chance.

[Covri 6229]

The year is 2049, Guadaloopy emerges from his cyber tree house and descends his cyber ladder. Today is the day he proclaims for the 7,169th day in a row. As he approaches his investment vehicle he whispers loudly into its door, go out and drive, make me money while I stay at home! The model S slowly starts to drive forward as Guadaloopy looks on proudly, when suddenly the Tesla spins around, shimmy’s, and shits itself before collapsing to the ground once again. Disappointed,  he turns to head towards his cyber ladder and mutters to himself, tomorrow, maybe Elonbot v4.20 will finally fix the cyber incontinence bug that has plagued his Tesla for 5 years….

 

[Chopper 17126]

3 hours ago, Guadaloopy said:

Don't be disingenuous.  Was there a problem with this at one time?  Yes.  Has it been addressed?  Yes.

Your linked article lumps all driver assist functions in with the FSD designation which is false equivalence.  I'm sure a reporter could do an article on accidents that occurred in Fords that had cruise control or lane assist engaged, but there aren't any clicks in that.

People are scared of the future.  I get it.  When someone pushes boundaries, folks pay closer attention.  That's what has been happening with Tesla.

Consumer safety groups consistently choose Tesla vehicles as some of the safest on the roads, yet Tesla's are a menace to our highways.  

 

Trying to meet somewhere in the middle...I get it's in your financial interest to be a Tesla cheerleader and that you seem to be genuinely into the technology of "autopilot."

Driving is not a difficult activity. However it's both tedious and unpredictable. I'm sure Tesla with cameras only can do just fine with driving in ideal conditions. Well-lit, no precipitation, no sun glare...and the fact a driver doesn't mind becoming a beta-testing version of a driving instructor each time they use it. The driver not only babysits the autodriver they also have to respond to prompts from Tesla, and keep aware for the unexpected, unpredictable activity ahead, behind, and on either side. Also I note the route you described seems like one you've taken hundreds if not thousands of time in the past. I think you're an extreme outlier from any joy you're getting from the tech of autopilot but if you think it's going to scale immensely you're going to be sadly disappointed.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Chopper

[High Plains Drifter 10970]

1 hour ago, Pam Cummings said:

I saw a cybertruck the other day. Looked like a giant piece of shit. Dude driving it looked like a complete clown. No surprise there.

 

Anybody remember Google Glass? I bet that dude was a Glasshole also. 

 

[Guadaloopy 10903]

39 minutes ago, Covri said:

The year is 2049, Guadaloopy emerges from his cyber tree house and descends his cyber ladder. Today is the day he proclaims for the 7,169th day in a row. As he approaches his investment vehicle he whispers loudly into its door, go out and drive, make me money while I stay at home! The model S slowly starts to drive forward as Guadaloopy looks on proudly, when suddenly the Tesla spins around, shimmy’s, and shits itself before collapsing to the ground once again. Disappointed,  he turns to head towards his cyber ladder and mutters to himself, tomorrow, maybe Elonbot v4.20 will finally fix the cyber incontinence bug that has plagued his Tesla for 5 years….

 

 

[Guadaloopy 10903]

38 minutes ago, Chopper said:

I get it's in your financial interest to be a Tesla cheerleader

Other than the $8000 flyer I took on FSD (which I do actually get some utility from), I have no financial stake in Tesla's success or failure.  I guess I could have gotten creative with my taxes and called it a capital investment for "Guadaloopy's Robotaxi Fleet, LLC", but I'm pretty lazy (hence the self-driving car) and that would have required effort.

Appreciate the effort to meet in the middle.   I really am not an Elon fanboy, but I have had an exceptionally positive experience owning one of his company's vehicles.  

[Captainant 27311]

28 minutes ago, Guadaloopy said:

I really am not an Elon fanboy

[HenryJames 65868]

[Chopper 17126]

17 hours ago, Guadaloopy said:

I have had an exceptionally positive experience owning one of his company's vehicles.  

Pleased it's working out for you. Oh wow look at this bullshit dug up by reuters and published today. Who ever would've thought?

This seems worrisome and outrageous to say the least. What say you, please Tesla owner?

--Internal Tesla documents reveal they knew about parts failing and just lied about it to consumers and regulators

 

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/

edit - article spoilered in next post...the section "Teslas recalled in China but not the US" is *chef's kiss*

Edited December 20, 2023 by Chopper

[Chopper 17126]

Quote

A REUTERS INVESTIGATION
Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective 12/20/2023

 

Shreyansh Jain was ecstatic in March when he picked up his first electric vehicle, a brand-new 2023 Tesla Model Y. He used a sizable chunk of family savings to buy it with cash.

“We were over the moon!” said Jain, an electronics engineer in Cambridge, England.

His exuberance came to a “grinding halt” one day later, with 115 miles on the odometer, Jain told Reuters. As he drove with his wife and three-year-old daughter, he suddenly lost steering control as he made a slow turn into their neighborhood. The vehicle’s front-right suspension had collapsed, and parts of the car loudly scraped the road as it came to a stop.

“They were absolutely petrified,” Jain said of his wife and daughter. “If we were on a 70-mile-per-hour highway, and this would have happened, that would have been catastrophic.”

The complex repair required nearly 40 hours of labor to rebuild the suspension and replace the steering column, among other fixes, according to a detailed repair estimate. The cost: more than $14,000. Tesla refused to cover the repairs, blaming the accident on “prior” suspension damage.

Jain is one of tens of thousands of Tesla owners who have experienced premature failures of suspension or steering parts, according to a Reuters review of thousands of Tesla documents. The chronic failures, many in relatively new vehicles, date back at least seven years and stretch across Tesla’s model lineup and across the globe, from China to the United States to Europe, according to the records and interviews with more than 20 customers and nine former Tesla managers or service technicians.

Individual suspension or steering issues with Teslas have been discussed online and in news accounts for years. But the documents, which have not been previously reported, offer the most comprehensive view to date into the scope of the problems and how Tesla handled what its engineers have internally called part “flaws” and “failures.” The records and interviews reveal for the first time that the automaker has long known far more about the frequency and extent of the defects than it has disclosed to consumers and safety regulators.

The documents, dated between 2016 and 2022, include repair reports from Tesla service centers globally; analyses and data reviews by engineers on parts with high failure rates; and memos sent to technicians globally, instructing them to tell consumers that broken parts on their cars were not faulty.

    “Front wheel fell off while driving on Autopilot at 60 mph.”
    Tesla technician’s summary of a 2021 accident involving a 2020 Model 3

Neither Tesla nor top executive Elon Musk responded to detailed questions for this article. Musk has acknowledged some build-quality problems with Teslas in the past, particularly the entry-level Model 3. But he also says his cars have no peer.

“We make the best cars,” he said of Tesla at a New York Times event last month. “Whether you hate me, like me or are indifferent, do you want the best car, or do you not want the best car?”

Tesla’s handling of suspension and steering complaints reflects a pattern across Musk’s corporate empire of dismissing concerns about safety or other harms raised by customers, workers and others as he rushes to roll out new products or expand sales, Reuters has found.

A Reuters investigation in November documented at least 600 injuries at rocket-builder SpaceX, where employees described a culture of rushing dangerous projects with little regard for workers’ safety worries. In July, the news agency revealed how Tesla had created a secret team to suppress thousands of customer complaints about poor driving range. The report, which found that Tesla rigged an algorithm to inflate its cars’ in-dash range estimates, sparked a federal investigation. Late last year, Reuters exposed how hurried experiments at Musk’s brain-chip startup, Neuralink, resulted in the unnecessary suffering and deaths of laboratory animals, despite objections from workers seeking to protect them.

Neither Musk nor any of his companies commented for these reports. But he recently lashed out at critics of his social-media company, X, formerly Twitter, which has seen its revenue and market value plummet since Musk bought the firm for $44 billion about a year ago. At the live Times event, he went after advertisers who boycotted X over Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic post on the social-media site. “Go fuck yourself,” the billionaire told companies who pulled their business.

Unlike traditional automakers, which use independent dealers to sell and repair vehicles, Tesla sells directly to customers and owns and operates a large portion of its service centers. That gives the automaker extraordinarily detailed real-time visibility into parts failures, repairs and warranty claims, which Tesla engineers meticulously tracked and analyzed for years, the company records show.

Yet the company has denied some of the suspension and steering problems in statements to U.S. regulators and the public– and, according to Tesla records, sought to shift some of the resulting repair costs to customers.

Tesla has blamed frequent failures of several parts on Tesla owners, alleging they abused the cars, according to interviews with former service managers, company records and a 2020 Tesla letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In other cases, the automaker charged customers with out-of-warranty cars to replace parts that Tesla engineers internally called flawed or that they knew had high failure rates. Engineers ordered repeated redesigns for several parts and discussed seeking money back from suppliers because of the defects.

The records reveal persistent problems with low-tech suspension connections, such as upper and lower control arms, and fore and aft links. These parts are relatively inexpensive for Tesla and largely invisible to most consumers. But they play a critical role in safely connecting a car’s axle and wheels to its body and steering apparatus.

Two more complex and expensive parts also frequently failed: half shafts – the left and right drive axles – and steering racks, which often needed replacing after sudden power-steering outages that some Tesla owners said nearly caused accidents. One driver said in an interview that his brand-new 2023 Model Y jerked to the right when the power-steering suddenly failed at speed, nearly putting the vehicle into a ditch.

At least 11 drivers told Tesla a crash was caused by a failure in the suspension, steering or wheel assembly, company records show. Those accident claims, which have not been previously reported by the media, were recorded by Tesla staff between 2018 and 2021 and assigned to engineers or technicians for review.

In April 2021, the owner of a 2020 Model 3 with less than 15,000 miles on the odometer, went to a Tesla repair center in Brooklyn, New York, after an accident. The technician’s summary: “Front wheel fell off while driving on Autopilot at 60 mph,” referring to Tesla’s automated driving system. The wrecked car was sold, without the front wheel, in November 2021, auction records show.

The following month, another owner of a 2020 Model X in Madrid reported a wheel falling off while driving, the records show. Neither driver is identified in the records, which also do not detail how Tesla responded.

The suspension collapse in Jain’s car fortunately occurred at low speed. It was nonetheless shocking in a car he had owned for less than 24 hours. The automaker told him the suspension collapse was caused by the separation of a lower control arm from the steering knuckle, which connects to the wheel assembly. Jain expected Tesla to cover the damage.

A Tesla Service representative had texted Jain that an initial inspection found “no evidence of any external damage” that caused the incident and implied Tesla would pay for the repairs, according to a copy of the text Jain provided to Reuters.

About a week later, Tesla sent Jain a letter denying responsibility, saying it had inspected the vehicle and determined that the cause was “a prior external influenced damage to the front-right suspension.”

Jain said he was the only driver of the car during the one day he owned it and hadn’t had an accident before the suspension failure. “I was like, ‘Bloody hell, how can metal just snap like that when I know for sure the car has not hit anything?’” he said.

The repair took about three months. Jain paid a deductible of about $1,250 to have the work covered by his insurance company, which after the claim hiked his rates sharply on another car he owned, he said.

Fed up with the ordeal, Jain sold the repaired Tesla – for about $10,000 less than the $55,000 he paid for it.

“I lost complete confidence in the car,” he said.

Recalling parts in China – but not in the U.S.

The Tesla records reveal the company’s extensive knowledge of systemic suspension and steering problems, even as the company denied some of the same problems to regulators and customers who expected the company to pay for repairs. One especially problematic part was the aft link.

A series of 2016 suspension failures in China bears striking similarities to the incident with Jain’s car seven years later. Some of Tesla’s earliest China customers told the automaker that a front wheel had collapsed while turning at low speeds on its Model S luxury sports car, Tesla’s first mass-produced vehicle.

The front aft link, an aluminum-alloy suspension arm, had snapped, Tesla engineers found, according to company records that documented half a dozen such incidents. Between 2016 and 2020, Tesla resolved about 400 complaints involving aft-link failures in China, according to a former Tesla employee with direct knowledge of the matter. The company fixed cars under warranty or by making so-called goodwill repairs for out-of-warranty vehicles, the former employee said. Tesla redesigned the part four times because the initial revisions did not fully fix the problem, the automaker’s records show.

“The collapse of the suspension is terrifying to the customer,” Riccardo Dong, a Tesla engineer then based in China, wrote in 2016 on the company’s troubleshooting platform. “Many owners are asking for a recall.”

Dong did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla delayed a recall for four more years, until Chinese regulators pushed for one. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, in a statement, cited a “risk of accidents” in extreme cases of the aft-link part failure. Yet the automaker never recalled the part in the United States and Europe despite reports of frequent failures globally.

Tesla told U.S. regulators the failures were caused by “driver abuse.” The company also instructed service centers, in a February 2019 “talking points” memo, to use the same explanation with customers experiencing aft-link failures. They were told to blame “vehicle misuse,” such as “hitting a curb or other excessive strong impact.”

Tesla uses the terms “abuse” and “misuse” in the conditions of its warranty contract language that allow the automaker to decline claims for repairs or damage.

Tesla employed this deny-and-delay strategy as its ballooning costs of warranty repairs threatened the company’s profitability at a critical juncture – when investors were scrutinizing its long-term prospects.

During the fourth quarter of 2018, Tesla paid nearly $500 for repairs, on average, for every Tesla in operation at the time, service engineers were told in a series of memos. In total, an April 2019 memo noted, Tesla’s repair business lost $263 million in the quarter because of the high volume of warranty and goodwill repairs. For comparison, that was nearly double Tesla’s quarterly profit of $139 million.

“I lost complete confidence in the car.”

Shreyansh Jain, who says the suspension on his 2023 Tesla collapsed the day after he bought it new.

Some U.S. customers with out-of-warranty cars paid more than $1,000 to repair aft links, and Tesla records show many European customers were frustrated at paying for replacements. Tesla’s basic U.S. warranty lasts four years or 50,000 miles, and coverage is similar in most other markets.

Tesla has also fought in court to avoid making repairs to suspension parts, including control arm assembly components.

The automaker scored a recent victory in a prospective class-action lawsuit alleging Tesla was aware that Model S and X cars made from 2013 to 2018 had a “suspension defect,” yet refused to cover repair costs, even for vehicles still under warranty. A federal judge in California dismissed claims from one plaintiff in January 2023, ruling he had failed to show Tesla “knew or should have known” of an alleged defect in his car. The class-action lawsuit, however, didn’t cite the Tesla records Reuters reviewed for this article. The other two plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims without prejudice, which could allow them to refile a similar case later.

Tesla has had nine recalls in the United States for steering and suspension issues since 2018, NHTSA records show. Most affected a relatively small number of vehicles. The largest was in 2018, to replace steering-rack bolts on more than 70,000 Model S vehicles because of the risk that corrosion could cause a loss of power steering.

Tesla engineers were still examining the aft-link failures as recently as 2022, company records show. In February of that year, one company data review noted that the multiple revisions to the part, over several years, had finally fixed all “major flaws.”

Earlier, in April 2019, Netherlands-based Tesla Product Support Engineer Ralf van Gestel presented findings on the aft-link issue in an analysis. He found Tesla had spent nearly $4 million on suspension warranty repairs globally for models S and X over the previous 12 months. Aft-link failures, often on cars less than two years old, accounted for the largest portion, $1.3 million.

In the 12 months before van Gestel’s analysis, Tesla had replaced about 11,000 of the parts, about two-thirds of them under warranty, the data collected by van Gestel showed.

In September 2020, Tesla engineers in Europe examined the long history of aft-link failures. Valentin Oetliker, an engineer and company intern based in France, expressed alarm that the part had a “high failure rate” despite a redesign. In an analysis written for other engineers, he noted that many customers were dissatisfied at paying for the repairs in newer vehicles. At the time, about 5% of the 12,858 Model S and Model X vehicles on the road in Tesla’s southern Europe and Middle East markets had needed repairs because of aft-link failures, according to a Reuters calculation of the data reported by Oetliker.

Oetliker did not comment.

That same month, in a September 3, 2020, letter to U.S. regulators, Tesla denied there were any defects with the same aft links that its engineers had determined were flawed. It told NHTSA it would not recall the part for U.S. customers, despite its recall of the same part the month before in China.

The company told NHTSA it had voluntarily recalled the aft link and another suspension part under pressure from China regulators, even though it disagreed with their assessment, because fighting them presented a “heavy burden.” At the time, Tesla was looking to ramp up production at its newly built Shanghai Gigafactory, which would become the world’s most productive and profitable electric-vehicle plant.

By contrast, Tesla took a firm stance with U.S. regulators.

“There is no defect in the subject components and no associated safety risk,” a senior Tesla lawyer wrote to NHTSA, again blaming owners: “The root cause of the issue is driver abuse.”

The letter cited a drastically lower failure frequency than the 5% failure rate for the aft link in the markets that Oetliker analyzed. Addressing both aft links and the other part it recalled in China, a rear suspension upper link, Tesla told NHTSA: “The occurrence of such failures in China (approx. 0.1%) and elsewhere (less than 0.05%) remains exceedingly rare.”

NHTSA has not ordered Tesla to take any action on the parts the company recalled in China. The agency has not explained why. The U.S. safety regulator, however, has since 2020 been investigating a similar front suspension part known as a fore link, and its risk of breaking, in models S and X. The agency has said it received dozens of complaints about the part breaking, including several about failures happening at highway speeds.

NHTSA confirmed to Reuters it was investigating the fore link. The agency also launched a probe into power-steering outages in July. NHTSA declined further comment on both inquiries.

In July 2021, Henrietta Wooten, a retiree outside St. Louis, was backing her 2015 Model S out of the driveway when she heard a “screeching noise” and a “big old thump,” she said in an interview. The wheel had collapsed after a break in the fore link that NHTSA is investigating. The repair cost her about $980.

In March, the agency asked Tesla for more information on fore-link failures, including any reports of fires related to the part breaking. Such a part failure could cause a fire if the battery, which is embedded in the floor of Tesla vehicles, scrapes the ground, said Michael Brooks, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer advocacy group.

Suspension parts are critical for safety because a failure “pretty much means that your car is going to have some sort of loss of control and a much higher chance of a crash,” Brooks said in an interview.

Tesla owners have filed about 260 complaints with NHTSA over suspension and steering problems this year, compared to about 750 for General Motors and 230 for Toyota. That makes Tesla’s complaint rate far higher when considering the number of GM and Toyota vehicles on the road. GM has a 21% share of U.S. cars in operation; Toyota, 15%. Tesla’s share: less than 1%, according to data analytics firm Experian.

Trouble in Norway

When Tesla engineer van Gestel examined common suspension problems, he found control-arm failure failures had been the second-most expensive failure for the automaker in the 12 months preceding April 2019. Control arms on the Model X had failed more than 3,000 times during that period, despite a redesign of the part.

The engineer found that front upper control arms in models S and X were prone to early failure, with most replacements happening within 2-1/2 years of ownership, he said in a report for Tesla engineers. Van Gestel recommended “next steps,” including “improve quality” of the part and “charge back supplier” for the failures.

The records do not make clear whether Tesla ever received any money back from suppliers. Van Gestel did not respond to a request for comment.

The control-arm problem continued for years, across Tesla’s model lineup. The automaker replaced front upper control arms on about 120,000 cars globally from January 2021 through March 2022, according to a Reuters analysis of repair records included in the Tesla documents. Most of the replacements came on the Model 3, Tesla’s least expensive vehicle. Many of the customer complaints were for noise.

Tesla paid for most of the 120,000 vehicles repaired under warranty, but owners with older cars also paid for 31,000 repairs, the Reuters analysis showed. An upper control arm can cost about $90 on a Model 3 and more than $280 for a Model X, according to invoices provided by customers. That doesn’t include labor, which can run $200 an hour or more for a Tesla technician.

Such suspension defects are rare on relatively new cars, said David Friedman, former acting NHTSA administrator under the Obama administration.

“You certainly shouldn’t be expecting suspensions to fail within the first few years of owning a vehicle,” Friedman said in an interview.

Former service managers and technicians in Norway, the country with the most Teslas per capita, said in interviews that they were inundated with angry customers complaining of early control-arm failures. They said that tension increased as the automaker, starting in 2017, told service employees to push the cost of the frequent and repeated failures onto customers to cut warranty and goodwill repair costs.

One manager said he was forced out after resisting the company’s push to blame customers for the failures of faulty control arms. “I said: ‘Now, we have to quit talking bullshit,’” he recalled. A service technician said he started in 2018 and quit a year later over the issue. “I wasn’t doing anything else than just constantly changing those control arms,” he said.

One senior manager defended the company’s push to cut costs, saying some service managers were giving away repairs in Norway at a rate that would “bankrupt any company.”

‘Womp-womp-womp’

The problematic control arms and links were cheap and simple parts. But two more complex and expensive Tesla components – steering racks and axle half shafts – also frequently failed on newer vehicles.

Trace Curry had a slew of problems with his 2016 Model X. After paying about $110,000 for the vehicle, the Cincinnati surgeon had to replace the control arms twice, once under warranty and once at his own expense. Later, after the four-year warranty ran out, he paid about $10,000 more out of pocket for suspension and drive-axle parts that failed, according to invoices Curry provided to Reuters.

In 2018, Curry had to replace both front half shafts, the left and right drive axles that connect to the wheels, under warranty. Then he had to pay about $1,500 last year to replace both of them again.

When suspension parts rust or wear out, the first symptom can be an annoying squeak, frustrating some Tesla drivers who paid six-figure sums for a luxury vehicle that promised whisper-quiet, breakneck acceleration.

“It sounds like you’re driving a jalopy from the 1970s,” Curry said. “It defeats the purpose of the high speed if you’re afraid that your front wheels are going to fall off if you accelerate quickly.”

Tesla tracked noise complaints on the new Model 3 in 2018 and 2019, company records show. Repair centers handled about 300 cases where owners who had half shafts or wheel hubs replaced reported a wide array of strange noises alerting them to the problem. The complaints included descriptions of “clicking,” “clunking,” a “whir,” a “loud bang” or a “womp-womp-womp” noise increasing with speed. In those 300 cases, Tesla tracked “days to failure,” the total number of days between the start of a vehicle’s new-car warranty and a repair. The average was about eight months.

When the half shafts failed in Curry’s Model X, the SUV vibrated severely, especially under acceleration. He called the multiple replacements “insane” in a car that new: “Have you ever heard of anybody having to replace the axles when you didn’t have an accident?”

Tesla engineers heard about it quite a lot, company records show. One repair analysis showed the company replaced nearly 66,000 half shafts between January 2021 and March 2022. Customers paid for about 10% of those repairs.

Lars Heykers, a senior technician in Belgium, wrote on a company messaging system in September 2021: “We have a car which already had the newest revision of the half shafts 6 weeks ago, and the same issue has returned. Is there another fix for this or just replace them again?”

More than one engineer made a point of saying the issue had nothing to do with damage caused by customers. Engineer Anastasia Skolariki, who was troubleshooting repair problems and customer complaints for Tesla in Europe, wrote in May 2020 to other engineers and technicians that the problem was a design issue “and not abusive behavior from the customer side.” The company needed to cover repairs for cars under warranty, she said, “no matter how many times the vehicle comes to Service with the same issue.”

Neither Heykers nor Skolariki responded to requests for comment.

In 2019, a Tesla engineer in Shanghai flagged a failure on a brand-new Model S with 160 kilometers (99 miles) on it. The car’s rear left half shaft had broken into three pieces when the owner stepped on the accelerator; one of the pieces pierced the electric-drive unit that powers the car.

Another problem seen in brand-new Teslas: sudden power-steering outages.

In May, less than two months after buying his 2023 Model Y, Jamie Minshall felt it jerk suddenly to the right while driving outside Portland, Oregon. A dashboard error message popped up: “Steering assist reduced,” indicating a loss of power-steering. Losing the power function makes the steering wheel suddenly more difficult to turn.

“Fortunately, I was able to hit the brakes quick enough and not go into the ditch, but, yeah, it was pretty terrifying,” said Minshall, who has raced cars as a hobby. “It tried to kill me.”

In July, NHTSA began investigating power-steering outages in 2023 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

    “It tried to kill me.”
    Jamie Minshall, describing a sudden power-steering outage in his Tesla Model Y

Between late 2017 and early 2022, more than 400 Model 3 or Model Y owners told the automaker about power-steering failures, according to a Reuters review of customer messages sent through Tesla’s service app. Some reported outages of other safety systems at the same time. The steering complaints accelerated in late 2021 and early 2022.

One Tesla owner from Charlotte, North Carolina, who is not named in the Tesla records, reported to the automaker on Dec. 27, 2021: “Our Model Y started to buck” before power steering and stability control stopped working.

Two weeks later, a Model Y driver near White Plains, New York, told service technicians: “I cannot drive the car. None of the power functions work.”

When NHTSA started its investigation into power steering in late July, it did so on the basis of complaints from 12 drivers. Tesla had known of more than 30 times that number of complaints since 2017 on models 3 and Y, its records show.

NHTSA declined to comment on whether Tesla had disclosed consumer complaints about power steering or safety incidents to the agency.

Andrew Lundeen, of Santa Rosa, California, was driving his wife’s 2018 Model 3 in August when he rode over a speed bump and lost power steering.

Lundeen said in an interview that a Tesla service manager told him that a power-steering connector had corroded. The manager said the likely cause was a car wash, which he described as a known problem.

Lundeen paid $4,400 to replace the steering rack and a wiring harness.

“This is the only car that I’ve ever heard of where a car wash can damage the wiring,” Lundeen recalled telling the manager.

Lundeen said he was so shocked by the manager’s frank explanation of Tesla’s part failures that he wrote it down: “All I can tell you,” the Tesla manager said, “is we’re not a 100-year-old company like GM and Ford. We haven’t worked all the bugs out yet.”

Depiction of front suspension arms in a Tesla Model S: 1) front upper control arm, 6) front suspension fore link, 11) front suspension aft link. Source: Tesla parts catalog.

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Chopper

[Guadaloopy 10903]

18 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Pleased it's working out for you. Oh wow look at this bullshit dug up by reuters and published today. Who ever would've thought?

This seems worrisome and outrageous to say the least. What say you, please Tesla owner?

--Internal Tesla documents reveal they knew about parts failing and just lied about it to consumers and regulators

 

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/

 

There’s some exceptionally shitty stuff in that article.  I hope Tesla fixes the defects and their customer support processes.  

[NoName 16271]

17 hours ago, Guadaloopy said:

Appreciate the effort to meet in the middle.   I really am not an Elon fanboy, but I have had an exceptionally positive experience owning one of his company's vehicles.  

ahh, yes. a sample size of 1 is absolutely reasonable.

[Captainant 27311]

1 minute ago, NoName said:

ahh, yes. a sample size of 1 is absolutely reasonable.

Don't forget, anecdotes always trump large scale data (for some)

[Guadaloopy 10903]

2 minutes ago, NoName said:

ahh, yes. a sample size of 1 is absolutely reasonable.

I can point you to plenty of online communities with thousands of satisfied Tesla customers.  I’m also not the only Tesla owner here that has expressed how much they enjoy their car.  
 

I’m not making any sweeping, general claims based on my own experience.   Just sharing that the Tesla vehicle and FSD experience isn’t 100% terrible.

 

[texasdago 7550]

22 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

I 1000% believe the stat on Tesla drivers being among the shittiest.  For fuck's sake, just last night, I was leaving HEB.  Tesla in front of me as I'm driving down the parking lot aisle towards the exit.  Tesla is putzing along at around 1-2 mph.  Then stops, blocking the whole aisle.  So I can't fucking go home.  I honk.  It takes a few seconds, but it begins moving....again, at around 1-2 mph.  Gets to the exit drive, stops diagonally across it, blocking both entrance and exit lanes.  Finally goes out into the street (unfortunately, heading the same direction I am).  AGAIN, he's driving now around 3-5 mph . . . . and now, he's straddling the lane marker, so I can't even go around him.  Driving obliviously slow, taking up the entire road.  Yep, it completely checks out.

The number of things about Elon and his brands that AREN'T shitty is pretty close to absolute zero.

Yup... 80% of Tesla drivers seem to either be 1) incredibly slow and annoying.  Was stuck behind one this week on Mopac who was crawling along holding traffic behind him while there was wide open frontier ahead of him.  Slow and methodical 2) think they are putting the car in ludicrious mode and drive like absolute bats out of hell because "muh torque"

Then there are 20% normal drivers who are oblivious to looking like Tools for driving another white boring Tesla.  And yes, they are boring.  B O R I N G boring.  

[NoName 16271]

25 minutes ago, Guadaloopy said:

I’m not making any sweeping, general claims based on my own experience.   Just sharing that the Tesla vehicle and FSD experience isn’t 100% terrible.

few people think it's 100% terrible, even here. because it isn't 100% terrible. it just also isn't what it was promised and likely never will be.

the overreliance on cameras only is a huge threat to the company and literally any other company on earth would have their CEO on this for most of his time. it's the single largest threat they face as a company today, getting blown past in the self driving category.

also, i said it before: i'm glad it works for you, but FSD is not a long term option for self driving and their reliance on cameras only will lead to them getting leapfrogged by everyone else in the category. based on the rules outlined by SAE, FSD will never move on to level 3, much less level 5, as long as TSLA stays on cameras only with a human backup.

[Brisketexan 104465]

31 minutes ago, Guadaloopy said:

Just sharing that the Tesla vehicle and FSD experience isn’t 100% terrible.

Here's something else that isn't "100% terrible."

Would you like me to serve you a glass?  After all, it's 95% tasty punch, only 5% turd!

['stache 21744]

I'm seeing twitter links for signing day and they don't work. Is it dead, Jim? Or has he finally pulled the plug on people like me who got rid of their accounts?

[Prepuce of Doom 20969]

2 hours ago, Guadaloopy said:

I can point you to plenty of online communities with thousands of satisfied Tesla customers. 

 

I think it's safe to say that we're each already familiar with Twitter. 

[Captain Ron 12789]

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Here's something else that isn't "100% terrible."

Would you like me to serve you a glass?  After all, it's 95% tasty punch, only 5% turd!

Narrator - that in fact WAS 100% terrible.

[smuggs 9340]

5 hours ago, Chopper said:

 

 

 

"...Tesla engineer Riccardo Dong..."

 

 

[Francisco 2.0 32290]

The latest thing on Twitter:  scammers able to manipulate links to tweets in order to scam people out of their crypto:

 

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/crypto-scammers-abuse-twitter-feature-to-impersonate-high-profile-accounts/

 

Quote

Cryptocurrency scammers are abusing a legitimate Twitter "feature" to promote scams, fake giveaways, and fraudulent Telegram channels used to steal your crypto and NFTs.

On X, formerly and more widely known as Twitter, a post's URL consists of the account name of the person who tweeted it and a status ID, as shown below.

https://twitter.com/[account_name]/status/[status_id]

 

Quote

The website uses the status ID to determine what post should be loaded from the site's database, not bothering to check if the account name is valid.

This allows you to take an URL for a Tweet and modify the account name to whatever you want, even high-profile accounts. When visiting the URL, the website simply redirects you to the correct URL associated with the ID.

For example, https://twitter.com/BleepinComputer/status/1736650221243826564 looks like a legitimate post from our @bleepincomputer X account. However, clicking on it takes you to a post from Elon Musk, as the ID is associated with one of his tweets.

 

Quote

BleepingComputer previously reported on this feature in 2019, when security researcher Davy Wybiral expressed concerns that the feature could be used for phishing. However, at that time, it was not abused in phishing attacks.

 

 

Spoiler

Crypto scams abusing "feature"

Security researcher MalwareHunterTeam has told BleepingComputer that scammers have begun using this redirect mechanism for the past two weeks if not longer, to create URLs that look like they belong to legitimate, well-known organizations.

All of the impersonated organizations seen by BleepingComputer are crypto-related accounts, such as Binance (11 million followers), the Ethereum Foundation (3 million), zkSync (1.3 million), and Chainlink (1 million).

Example X redirect crypto scams
Source: BleepingComputer

 

While the above look like tweets from Binance, Ethereum, and zkSync, they instead redirected to an unrelated X user's tweets promoting crypto scams. BleepingComputer observed tweets promoting fake crypto giveaways, websites that utilize wallet drainers, and Discord channels promoting pump-and-dumps.

The fake zkSync tweet led to a page impersonating the company and promoting a website that the X community says is a crypto drainer, meaning that when you connect your wallet, it automatically steals all crypto assets and NFTs

Crypto scam on X
Source: BleepingComputer

 

Almost all accounts seen by BleepingComputer abusing this feature to promote crypto scam posts use an account name in the format of name+5 digits, such as @amanda_car16095. 

It is possible to filter out some of these tweets by enabling the Quality Filter under Settings > Notifications > Filters. However, you run the risk of tweets you wish to see being filtered incorrectly.

Most users should immediately be able to spot a scam tweet by seeing that the account is different than what was in the URL. However, some, like the zkSync URL, may be missed as the scammer created an account with the company in their user name.

Furthermore, opening these links on mobile can be a bit more confusing, as the app does not show an address bar, and you simply see the post. For many, it could be perceived that a company like Binance promoted it, making it appear more legitimate.

As this redirect is a standard feature of Twitter, we will likely not see it changed to make it more secure. That means if you click on an X link, you should take a quick look at your address bar (if available) to ensure you are visiting that person's tweet and have not been redirected.

 

[BrickHorn 18176]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

The latest thing on Twitter:  scammers able to manipulate links to tweets in order to scam people out of their crypto:

If you think that’s bad, you should read about the scammers who scam people into crypto. 

[HenryJames 65868]

If you take out the scammers, there is no crypto market.

[atomheartbevo 89362]

https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-turquoise-automated-driving-lights-level-3-1851110043

Quote

Mercedes-Benz is the first automaker to gain approval to sell a Level 3 automated driving system in the United States; the first customer-owned S-Class and EQS sedans in California and Nevada equipped with the Drive Pilot system hit dealer lots this month. Drive Pilot allows you to take your hands of the wheel and eyes off the road in traffic jam situations up to 40 mph, so you can read a book, watch a movie on the Hyperscreen, more easily talk to your passengers or even use your cellphone, depending on local laws.

Quote

All of that is totally legal, but how will other motorists or law enforcement know that you have the Level 3 system active and are not just plain distracted driving?To fix that problem, Mercedes has gotten permit approval for turquoise-colored exterior marker lights when Drive Pilot is in use, declaring to the people around you that you’re using automated driving.

The turquoise color for Level 3 driving was chosen by SAE, so other brands beyond just Mercedes will use it for their own cars. In addition to being illuminated in the headlights and taillights, the turquoise is used in the mirror lights, the steering wheel buttons and the gauge cluster, with the color being recognizable for the driver too.

Quote

With these turquoise lights, Mercedes and SAE hope to improve both road safety and public acceptance for automated driving — if you see the teal lights, you know the car is using automated driving, so it’s less likely for other motorists to be shocked and concerned when they see the occupants looking away from the road, plus emergency services have a better understanding of what to do if medical assistance is needed. It will also be super helpful for law enforcement, so cops hopefully won’t pull you over for watching TikToks on your infotainment screen when it’s perfectly allowed by law.

Quote

Because every state in the U.S. has its own laws and regulations, Mercedes’ Drive Pilot rollout in general could be pretty slow at first. California and Nevada are the only states where you can order and use a car with Drive Pilot, with no word from Mercedes or SAE on what other states will allow it and when. But Drive Pilot has been available since 2022 in all of Germany, with Mercedes not reporting a single incident involving the system in use. Other companies like BMW are working on Level 3 systems for the U.S., with no concrete rollout details yet.

 

Nice.

[royiv 9131]

Quote

More than a set of cameras, Mercedes-Benz DRIVE PILOT employs radar, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), ultrasound sensors and an antenna array to orient the vehicle in real-life driving conditions.

https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

[Brisketexan 104465]

More than a set of cameras, Mercedes-Benz DRIVE PILOT employs radar, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), ultrasound sensors and an antenna array to orient the vehicle in real-life driving conditions.

https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

Idiots. Don’t they know that Elmo has already decided that having a few Kodak Instamatics catching images around the car is all the engineering you need?

[atomheartbevo 89362]

[elfenix 34168]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

if you see the teal lights, you know the car is using automated driving, so it’s less likely for other motorists to be shocked and concerned when they see the occupants looking away from the road, plus emergency services have a better understanding of what to do if medical assistance is needed. It will also be super helpful for law enforcement, so cops hopefully won’t pull you over for watching TikToks on your infotainment screen when it’s perfectly allowed by law.

turquoise lights on ebay for 1998 chevy pickups in 3... 2...

[pacman 7309]

Twitter borked, again..

[atomheartbevo 89362]

12 minutes ago, pacman said:

Twitter borked, again..

Yep, hopped on to see why a police helicopter was farting around looking for somebody, and search/hashtag broke.  At least Threads is picking up new features every week or so.

[NoName 16271]

image:

[NoName 16271]

8 hours ago, pacman said:

Twitter borked, again..

 

8 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Yep, hopped on to see why a police helicopter was farting around looking for somebody, and search/hashtag broke.  At least Threads is picking up new features every week or so.

you are both wrong. the twitter status page shows zero incidents. stop trying to crush Elon with misinformation!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://api.twitterstat.us/

is this bad?

from HN sounds like stuff got pretty jacked in a super weird way. DMs worked, spaces worked

Edited December 21, 2023 by NoName

[pacman 7309]

To be fair to Elon, every technology vendor I work with has the same empty incident chart. 

Edited December 21, 2023 by pacman

[Captainant 27311]

17 minutes ago, pacman said:

To be fair to Elon, every technology vendor I work with has the same empty incident chart. 

Man you gotta get better SLA terms and monitoring to hold their feet to the fire

[Covri 6229]

Me driving to work in 2025

 

[Gatorubet 30064]

12 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-turquoise-automated-driving-lights-level-3-1851110043

 

Nice.

[closetohumping 17380]

[NoName 16271]

we have decades of "there's always a tweet" for Elon in the future.

here is today's version, from 2017:

[Francisco 2.0 32290]

In other news, our gal Linda is trying so, so hard:

 

 

 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89362]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

In other news, our gal Linda is trying so, so hard:

She's promoting this announcement from Twitter:

@X and the Consumer Technology Association @CTATech, the owner and producer of @CES, are bringing you the ultimate tech experience. For CES 2024, the most influential platform and the most powerful tech event in the world are converging to bring cutting-edge innovation from CES directly to the most influential and interested people on earth.

--------

So the 14th of 15th largest social media platform, that allows anybody with $8 to get a verified mark next to their handle, such as @1298sxbot418k ✅ (pretend it's blue), is now the most influential platform in the world?

[atomheartbevo 89362]

Russia pumping out their own EV, watch out Elmo! (his fanboys have to be conflicted - on the one hand, they want to buy his vehicles, but on the other hand, quite a few of them love Russia...)

 

 

[Goredho 17302]

[Gatorubet 30064]

29 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

 

Russian Cars 2?

[Left Coast 863]

32 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Russia pumping out their own EV, watch out Elmo! (his fanboys have to be conflicted - on the one hand, they want to buy his vehicles, but on the other hand, quite a few of them love Russia...)

 

 

Pixar already made it.

[Gatorubet 30064]

54 minutes ago, Left Coast said:

Pixar already made it.

[aggie08 21380]

When mom says we have Lightning McQueen at home.

[Hefeweizen 5307]

Why does that Russian car look like it just got the angry dolphin?

[Post Oak 20182]

27 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

When mom says we have Lightning McQueen at home.

Yep 

[Brisketexan 104465]

1 hour ago, aggie08 said:

When mom says we have Lightning McQueen at home.