Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, has recalled thousands of its new Cybertrucks over safety concerns.
It is because their accelerator pedals currently risk getting trapped by the interior trim, increasing the possibility of crashes.
The BBC recently spoke to a whistleblower at the company who had raised concerns over the safety of pedals of previous Tesla models.
Tesla has been contacted for comment.
The recall affects 3,878 Cybertrucks, which cost roughly $61,000 (£48,320), made between November 2023 and April 2024.
“A trapped accelerator pedal can cause the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally, increasing the risk of a crash,” the US Department of Transportation wrote in a notification of the recall.
I question whether or not Tesla will be around in 3 years. The Cybertruck has been one giant cash sink that has delivered a giant rusty lemon. They cancelled their latest consumer grade car. Their next product is robo-taxis and that’s with a history of driver death from their self-driving tech. And the major car brands have caught up or are at Tesla’s heels.
Tesla still has advantages like an extensive charger network and the appearance of FSD on the horizon to general consumers. People that follow EV closely know there are better options, but they’re a minority.
Not to mention the fact that places like Lemmy give the company and its CEO never-ending free press and coverage.
It’s been on the horizon for the last 7 years or so.
Thus why I specifically said appearance and also mentioned it was for the uninformed.
I don’t believe FSD is anywhere close to commercially viable for Tesla.
Reality doesn’t matter when you’re selling an idea or image. Its really easy to get lost in our nerd bubble and think everyone else reads about this stuff every day.
Yeah, I think fully self-driving cars are pretty much impossible unless all vehicles on the road are fsd, and reporting information to a single central network.
There’s just too many interconnected variables that can cause cascading newton like chains of cause and effect. For example something as simple as a little bit of rain vs a moderate amount of rain has drastically different effects on the coefficient of friction of the tires and road.
In other words, impossible forever because there are plenty of legitimate road users that will never be self-driving, such as bicycles.
eyes bike, webcam, raspberrypi, powerbank, and some actuators
Hold my beer.
On a more serious note, there are some prototype self driving e-bikes, and due to the lower speed and mass they are probably much safer than Tesla’s murderbots.
I gotta admit, I’ve heard of those before, but they don’t make any damn sense to me as anything but a novelty/experiment so I ignored them.
“legitimate road users” “such as bicycles”
Not recognized in America.
To be fair, that “advantage” shouldn’t even exist.
We shouldn’t have different chargers for cars just like we don’t have different gas stations.
Thankfully lots of upcoming vehicles will be adopting the Tesla charging standard (it’s better).
Sure?
That doesn’t affect reality though.
I don’t think they’re a minority of people that have considered buying an EV and don’t impulse spend tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle though.
It doesn’t matter to them if the person who wasn’t going to buy an EV doesn’t buy a Tesla. It matters if the person who was going to buy an EV doesn’t buy a Tesla.
Its not an impulse spend, its a lengthy history of hearing that Teslas are THE option for EV.
Normies who have seen or heard of Teslas for well over a decade now aren’t going to be easily swayed by an upstart company or the latest Nissan Leaf.
Elon’s image after Twitter in my opinion has done way more to dissuade potential buyers than anything Tesla itself or other car manufacturers have done.
I’ve talked to plenty of normies about this, from what I’ve seen whatever advantage Tesla had is pretty much gone between the stories of EVs burning down buildings, EV range anxiety, etc.
The “normies” just want a good car that’s going to get them from point A to B … and most “normies” shop around a bit before dropping 30, 40, or 50k on a car.
If they’re buying Tesla it’s because a friend they trust bought one and likes it. Most normies have way too many doubts about EVs and Tesla to really have brand loyalty.
What EV cars are these normie friends of yours buying instead? As in actually purchased, not plan to purchase.
My normie friends haven’t bought any EV cars because they don’t think they’re ready and I’m inclined to agree really.
Then why do their opinions matter? They aren’t in the market for any EV, as you said in an earlier post.
My normie friends with EV have bought teslas and I don’t know anyone except EV nerds that have bought any other manufacturer since the first gen Leaf.
Let me try restarting this conversation because IMO it’s off the rails of my point and has nothing to do with what “my friends” think.
Most people do not buy a new car without looking at options. When people do care, they’ll ask Google what the best EVs are of XYZ year and go try some cars out. They’re not going to “just go buy a Tesla because that’s the name they’ve associated with EVs.”
Most people are also not buying EVs at this point.
When this average people do care and they start seriously looking at buying an EV, “Tesla” having the brand Tesla is not going to help them very much, if at all.
Put differently, any advantage Tesla has exists with the average Joe because the average Joe don’t have skin in the game. “Tesla” may have word association with “EV”, but word association alone isn’t enough to justify a 30, 40, 50, etc thousand dollar purchase.
I’d argue the lease business carries them big time. But 2nd hand leases don’t generate money for them … they might get some spare change from subscriptions but their support has to carry over to older vehicles no longer providing profit.