Steering wheel falls off a new Tesla Y while driving on a highway
twitter.com
twitter.com
> Ford is recalling 1.4 million vehicles because the steering wheels can become loose and even come off while driving.
> The automaker says it is aware of two accidents and one injury that may have been caused by the problem.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/14/news/companies/ford-steerin...
> Rivian recalls all of its vehicles for steering wheel troubles
https://www.pocnetwork.net/technology-news/rivian-recalls-al...
etc...
Of course steering wheels shouldn't fall off. But the comments here are already full of people under the impression that this incident proves Tesla is uniquely bad, and it's just silly. A few seconds Googling will tell you that most carmakers have had either isolated incidents or even widespread recalls of steering wheels that can fall off, or very similar problems such as the wheel disconnecting from the steering mechanism. Just on the front page of Google results I also see Mercedes and GM and Toyota. Turns out perfection in manufacturing hasn't been achieved yet, by anyone.
The major differences are that:
- Tesla has a well-documented history of sacrificing safety for factory throughput, including taping parts together and shipping parts that are out of tolerance
- Tesla's customer service in this (and, nowadays, all other) error is abysmal
- Elon Musk controls the outlet where this was first reported, and he has now shadow-banned the post (it's impossible to search for it)
This is a very different problem. Ford is proactively trying to prevent steering wheels from becoming a problem publicly. In contrast, Tesla waits for it to be a problem before issuing a recall.
Case in point: instead of showing a news article about Ford steering wheels falling off, they listed an article discussing a hypothetical "might fall off" recall. Do you see why these two stories are completely different?
EDIT: Case in point: how long do you think it will be before Tesla issues a recall over this? Can Tesla even track its manufacturing errors and which batch of vehicles are affected by this problem?
Seems like steering wheels had already fallen off before they issued the recall.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/03/14/ford-st...
Multiple people have burned to death as those silly electronic locks fail and when the car catches on fire. Has there been any recall to fix this issue? No.
Multiple people have died as 'Full Self Driving' has collided into walls and trucks. Has there been a recall? No .
Multiple safety critical issues have hit this company over and over again, and they do nothing about it. I can say that Tesla will ignore this problem too.
"Whataboutism" is the attempt to make something seem more acceptable because it's common (or at least not unique). It's a dismissal of valid criticism.
In this case, it doesn't matter if every company had a steering wheel recall. Tesla didn't and hasn't owned up to this mistake, and it's notably egregious even if other companies have had a similar issue.
It's notable that a Tesla lost one, no Teslas have been recalled, and Tesla's support has been terrible/insane about this (and many other quality issues).
> agendas of interested parties into account
The Twitter OP's "agenda" was to buy an expensive car that had a securely-attached steering wheel.
That's not what it is. Whataboutism is generally an effort to paint someone making an argument as hypocritical by citing other incidents that are similar and by drawing attention away from the original argument, eg. Republicans are bad because X; what about Democrats that do X?
The top comment isn't saying this is acceptable because other car companies do this. They're saying this is a manufacturing defect, and as is often the case when manufacturing items in the millions, defects happen. Mistakes get made. And unless the statistics of an incident are known, a single isolated data point tells us very little, and attempting to draw general conclusions from it is bad practice at best.
Further, I wouldn't expect to hear about recalls about steering wheels from other car companies (unless it was a very common issue), or incidents where their cars caught fire, or just crashes in general - and yet it seems articles crop up regularly about such events as they apply to Teslas. Going by media attention alone, one would expect Teslas to be 10x less reliable as any other car, which just doesn't seem to be the case.
> In this case, it doesn't matter if every company had a steering wheel recall. Tesla didn't and hasn't owned up to this mistake, and it's notably egregious even if other companies have had a similar issue.
Dude, it's been _one day_. Literally.
The Ford recall article notes "The automaker says it is aware of two accidents and one injury that may have been caused by the problem." So far for this case, we have one incident and no accidents. I'm genuinely curious how many incident reports Ford received before they decided to do the recall - but its pretty obvious its more than a single case.
It isn't whataboutism to expect the same standards to be applied to all car companies.
And I'm not a huge fan of Musk, especially his recent behavior with Twitter, but I try to be fair and data driven at least.
It includes many historical references, and an example from 1974 which may be the first use of the term; the definition given there (and throughout the article) is obviously applicable to modeless' original comment. It also includes a thoughtful defense of whataboutism, including rndmize's comment that sometimes it provides useful context.
Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair, and behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be appropriate in a given geopolitical neighborhood.[7] Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (cf. agenda setting, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism.
and yet, somehow you read about it.
The difference between a regular car manufacturer and Tesla is that they take responsibility and recall vehicles.
Now, who knows, maybe Tesla will recall their model Y, in which case I will stand corrected.
It is my belief that they all have bean counters constantly looking at the stats and have some sort of recall threshold before anything is recalled.
I'm sure some companies are better than others though which also probably depends on the country.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
https://nypost.com/2023/01/30/firefighters-use-6k-gallons-of...
1. Tesla has electronic only locks in the rear seats of Model 3 and Model Y. Furthermore, the door handles to the front seats are electronic only, the mechanical override is hidden behind the speaker IIRC or under the floor.
2. Once the fire starts, the electronics fail to function, locking you inside of the car.
#1 combined with #2 means that Tesla vehicles are uniquely positioned to lock in and kill their victims. Even when there are people who are in the front seats, most people are ignorant to the location of the manual override, and thus get locked in for the fire.
Bonus points: it requires 10,000+ gallons of water to extinguish a Tesla Fire. Once that fire starts, they can't actually extinguish the flames.
------------
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/19/tesla-texas...
> “Our investigation has determined that one of the victims was in the front passenger seat; one was in the back seat,” Mark Herman, a constable for Harris County Precinct 4, told KHOU, adding police were “100 percent certain that no one was in the driver’s seat.”
> Officials in Houston said the battery inside Tesla ignited after the collision, causing a fire that burned for four hours and required more than 30,000 gallons of water to put out.
Current theory is that the driver tried the front door, which failed to work. (Electronics failed). Driver was likely ignorant to the manual-override process. Driver moves to rear seats to try back seats, which has no manual override. At that point, the two die to the fire. (There's a pretty bad theory floating around the media that it was "driverless". A later story found some Ring doorbell footage showing the driver in the driver's seat, so I don't buy the "driverless" theory that Wash. Po pushes in that story)
The "try the front door / try the back door" thing has happened so many times it should be the default assumption when we see these burn-to-death situations with Tesla vehicles.
----------
https://www.oregonlive.com/nation/2019/10/florida-man-died-i...
Another case.
Error proofing means at least two things in this context:
1. Making the operation hard to fail at, aka poka yoke (mistake proofing), sometimes called idiot proofing.
2. Work specification validation.
Both of these are difficult because the steering column has to be immobilized and then it has to be re-mobilized. This is not hard, per se, but it is just slightly more complicated than other assembly steps.
How does this happen? The validation mechanism and operator both have a type 2 error (false negative, failure to detect a fault) - they are not aware that some part of the tooling is not working or sensing correctly. Other things that can cause this: manual intervention to release a vehicle from the work cell due to excessive type 1 errors (false positive errors); repair work after the vehicle leaves the assembly line; off by one errors in vehicle tracking.
In other words, Tesla manufacturing didn't give the nut enough torque at manufacturing time. How that's not automated with a preset gun/wrench/whatever, I have no idea. Or maybe someone just spun the nut on by hand and it never got the wrench.
Oh. I just looked at a video on how to get the steering wheel off. There's just a big Allen bolt holding the steering wheel on, and then the video author simply wiggled the it off the steering column. Man, I'm not so sure I like that, and this story seems to back me up. On the other hand, it could be the video author has a defective Tesla as well, and you really are supposed to need a puller. :-)
Diesel engine tech here. Not only is there a special tool, but on most modern vehicles in the last 5-7 years, you have several more nuts to engage as well and a certain direction you need to move the wheel to align it with a pattern before it slides off.
that the nut was absent/loose on this vehicle implies a cascade failure in the manufacturing chain. the electrical team, the FA team, the driveline mechanics, everyone missed this failure at multiple steps or simply ignored it assuming someone else would take care of it. Toyota and Honda remedied this complacency thirty years ago with the line stop/all stop switch. basically its a big red button at your workstation where, if you detect any serious error or failure, you can halt the entire production line which triggers an immediate investigation into the failure condition before it ever reaches the customer. this halt can happen anytime, from the initial subframe assembly to something as insignificant as paint. its a massive amount of power and responsibility these companies entrust to each worker.
Thank you for a more up-to-date perspective. My pro years were 30 years ago, and the only vehicles I work on these days are the ones in my driveway (most of which are over 10 years old).
And here's the video I was referencing, if anyone wants a look:
If anyone likes this kind of mechanical puzzle-slash-critical safety interlock, check out strong link/weak link systems in nuclear weapons.[1]
That's extremely impressive! But I gotta wonder: is there ever any soft pressure to just quietly fix the missing/loose bit quickly (if you can) and then not hit the button?
Two weeks ago I took my new Model 3 to Tesla and was also billed for a warranty repair. They removed the charge but only after I complained.
My opinion of Tesla has really declined since the purchase of my first Tesla in 2019. Probably will never buy another.
[Interviewer:] Well, if this wasn’t safe, why did it have 80,000 tonnes of oil on it?
[Senator Collins:] Well, I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
[Interviewer:] Why?
[Senator Collins:] Well, some of them are built so the front doesn’t fall off at all.
[Interviewer:] Wasn’t this built so the front wouldn’t fall off?
[Senator Collins:] Well, obviously not.
[Interviewer:] “How do you know?”
[Senator Collins:] Well, ‘cause the front fell off, and 20,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the sea, caught fire. It’s a bit of a give-away.” I would just like to make the point that that is not normal.
[Interviewer:] Well, what sort of standards are these oil tankers built to?
[Senator Collins:] Oh, very rigorous … maritime engineering standards.
[Interviewer:] What sort of things?
[Senator Collins:] Well the front’s not supposed to fall off, for a start.
It’s self draining it doesn’t need a wheelBut I don't know what has happened to Tesla since then. The Model Y is nice, but just a slightly inflated Model 3. The Model S and Model X refreshes are unimpressive and the basic design of those cars is over a decade old now.
The Tesla Roadster never shipped, despite them taking $50k deposits on them. They've only "delivered" a few hand-made Semis. The Cybertruck is a joke and apparently vaporware. "FSD" is technically impressive but nowhere near usable and probably has no path to ever get there.
I think Musk pulled together a really impressive team and probably managed to burn them all out or scare them all off to get the Model 3 shipped, and they're just coasting since then.
Happened twice in our journey, the second time I was driving very defensively (leaving lots of space and not changing lane) and reacted quickly.
It was the first and last French-made car I've owned.
Then there was the VW Polo I had whose main brakes failed coming off of the motorway. That was crazy scary, had to use a combination of the handbreak and going off-road to stop in time.
Cost cutting? Higher US wages? Too little technical know how?
Neither of these things strikes me as something Elon Musk would consider time well spent. He's more like, "cybertruck!", "really self-driving this time!", and more recently, running Twitter.
Guess he really is an idiot.
> Rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 204 times over 13 years
(Also Falcon 1 launched five times).
There are multiple _single types_ of US and Soviet rocket which have launched more times than that. Atlas I, for instance, 514 launches. Titan II, 396. Kosmos: 610. Soyuz: _1,964_.
Because they can? Up until this point Tesla had no real competitors in its segment, it has (had?) a religiously devoted fanbase, and lets face it: their cars out-performed their nearest ICE competitors (luxury sports sedans and SUVs) by a long shot.
Therefore, they could afford to have lower build quality, because electric drive-trains are just so much damn better performing, and their cars in particular sold themselves for years based largely on image and identity.
You only need to test drive a Chevy Bolt to understand how much better even a cheap EV is than most ICEs.
Tesla's poor build quality isn't unprecedented either. Plenty of other niche luxury sports car brands also have been known to have bad build quality and require gobs of maintenance. But people who drive such cars tolerate such things due to the other benefits of the car.
Technically, I think some of this is also because of Tesla's ruthless focus on reducing weight to maximize the range of their vehicles. They remove every last bolt or other metal component they possibly can (which does also lower cost). They have received high praise compared to their competitors by manufacturing optimization experts like Sandy Munro for this.
But I think this approach can have its downsides when it comes to things like this issue, where it was trivial to detach the steering wheel. I don't have any proof that this issue was caused by that approach, but it's pretty plausible.
Not only exceptional build quality, but such customer service to boot!
trash
I don't have a dog in this race as I don't care about twitter and I don't drive an EV - this kind of activity to sully one's name always struck me as organized vindictiveness for financial and social reasons. It all just seems so artificial.