Tesla Master Plan: Part Deux

  • Thread starter CodeRedR51
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Tornado
So now we just need Volkswagen and the federal government to drag this out for 5 years.
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There's already a group of "EV industry players" (aka people who have a stake in CCS and will lose their their cut of the profit) who are causing pushback about it, but I have a feeling they'll be roundly ignored unless a charging network that's more comprehansive and user-friendly than Tesla's just magically sprouts up out of the soil in the near future.
 
www.thedrive.com

Electrify America Will Add Tesla's Charging Plug

Tesla's EV charging plug is spreading to the nation's largest independent charge network, solidifying its position as number one in America.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com

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Aside from whatever stupid nonsense Nissan continues to do, I suppose.
 
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"Interesting"

Breaking: NHTSA Petition Claims Tesla Sudden Unintended Acceleration Is Real (but Fixable)
www.autoevolution.com

Breaking: NHTSA Petition Claims Tesla Sudden Unintended Acceleration Is Real (but Fixable)

New information received by the NHTSA shows that sudden unintended acceleration events with Tesla EVs were real and not driver errors. The report explain...
www.autoevolution.com www.autoevolution.com

New information received by the NHTSA shows that sudden unintended acceleration events with Tesla EVs were real and not driver errors. The report explains in detail what caused the cars to accelerate even when the accelerator pedal was not pressed. It also offers recommendations to solve this issue once and for all.

For quite some time, Tesla electric vehicles have been accused by drivers of accelerating out of control without anyone touching the accelerator pedal. Still, investigations have concluded that almost every single case was caused by the drivers inadvertently pressing the accelerator pedal instead of the brake. Chinese Tesla owners have got so far that they installed cameras in the foot area of their cars to prove they did not press the accelerator should a sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) event occur.

Safety bodies in several countries opened investigations into these crashes. Many were closed after Tesla provided evidence that the accelerator pedal was pressed all the way down in all these cases. The NHTSA also investigated Tesla SUA reports, but in January 2021, the Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) denied the petition filed a year earlier.

According to the ODI Resume for the DP 20-001 investigation, no evidence has been identified that would support opening a defect investigation into SUA in the subject vehicles. In every instance in which event data was available for review by ODI, the evidence showed that SUA crashes were caused by pedal misapplication.

However, on June 29, 2023, ODI received a new petition requesting a reevaluation of the decision to deny DP20-001. The document explains that intermittent high electrical current demands on the vehicles' 12VDC systems may have caused some or all of the incidents examined by ODI in DP20-001. The petitioner based their information on a review of open-source research analyzing the Tesla Model 3 inverter design.

ODI petition: All Teslas are prone to sudden unintended acceleration (SUA)
Based on this, a faulty inverter design creates conditions where negative spikes in Tesla's low-voltage system can be interpreted as a full acceleration command even though the driver did not touch the accelerator. This is possible because the inverter uses a voltage reference derived from the 12-volt system to calibrate the accelerator pedal position (APP) sensor. It also explains why the logs show the accelerator was pressed all the way down, even though drivers claimed it didn't touch the accelerator.

If you were wondering what causes the negative spikes in the low-voltage system, the petition (attached below) is very detailed in engineering data. Apparently, the steering assist system uses a very high current motor powered by the 12-volt system. Because Teslas are heavy vehicles, the driver assist motor needs in excess of 100 amps to turn the wheels when the car is stationary. This causes the 12-volt system to drop voltage to near zero volts for several hundred microseconds.

This in itself does not cause sudden unintended acceleration. However, if a recalibration is initiated during this interval, then an incorrect calibration voltage will be produced that is very close to zero volts. Based on the researcher's findings, it will last until another ADC calibration is performed, which may be minutes later. Once the calibration is performed with faulty data, it can cause a spike equivalent to pressing the accelerator pedal all the way down.

What's worse is that the incorrectly increased sensor signals will be sent via the CAN bus to the vehicle logs, causing Tesla and NHTSA to conclude that the driver caused the sudden increase in torque by stepping on the accelerator pedal. But in this case, the sudden acceleration was caused not by the driver stepping on the accelerator pedal but by a random superposition of a negative-going voltage spike (which is about 100 microseconds long), and the sampling time of the analog-to-digital converter (which is about 10 microseconds long). This random superposition explains the low occurrence rate of sudden acceleration in Tesla vehicles.

Tesla could solve the problem easily
The researchers went even further and managed to verify their theory by deliberately inputting the wrong calibration voltage into the inverter. When they entered 0,28 volts or less instead of the expected 1.65 volts (which can happen when the 12-volt supply dips briefly to 2.14 volts), the APP sensor would read values equivalent to flooring the accelerator pedal. This causes sudden unintended acceleration without the driver pressing on the accelerator pedal.

The study also offers two solutions to this problem. The first involves adding a second 12-volt supply line with its own battery and DC/DC converter. This should be used only for powering the APP sensors and the ADCs to provide clean power to these functions. The second solution is modifying the calibration routine software by testing the calibration voltage before using it. The latter is by far easier and cheaper to implement in existing vehicles, as it only requires a software update.

According to the petition, all Tesla vehicles are affected, although the Model S and Model X use a slightly different DSP controller chip. NHTSA investigation mentions that 1.8 million vehicles are part of this new investigation. The findings represent a welcome relief for those who reported SUA events and were told they caused them. Unfortunately, for some people might be too late.
 
Eunos_Cosmo
Impressive that somebody was able to work this out...a situation the engineers at Tesla clearly (and reasonably) never imagined.
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Extremely rare coincidences leading to catastrophe is very reminiscent of various events in aviation that have lead to sweeping safety and regulatory changes.
 
Nissan switches to NACS

usa.nissannews.com

Nissan to adopt North American Charging Standard (NACS) for Ariya and future EV models

Nissan has reached an agreement with Tesla to adopt the North American Charging Standard (NACS) beginning in 2025, providing Nissan customers even more choices when it comes to charging their electric vehicle.
usa.nissannews.com usa.nissannews.com

Nissan has reached an agreement with Tesla to adopt the North American Charging Standard (NACS) beginning in 2025, providing Nissan customers even more choices when it comes to charging their electric vehicle. Nissan is the first Japanese automaker to announce future product support for NACS.

From 2024, Nissan will make available a NACS charging adapter for Ariya models which are currently equipped with the Combined Charging System 1 (CCS1) for DC fast charging. This will enable customers to connect their vehicle's charging port to NACS plugs at compatible chargers.

Starting in 2025, Nissan will begin offering EVs for the U.S. and Canadian markets with a NACS port. This will make charging on the Tesla Supercharger network seamless and convenient for drivers, significantly increasing the number of public fast-charging locations at which Nissan EVs can be charged1.
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Meanwhile, the first Cybertruck rolled off the production line Monday, and... er...

www.thedrive.com

First Tesla Cybertruck to Roll Off the Line Looks Like It Has a Misaligned Door

Tesla has produced its very first Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas, but it looks like the vehicle came out with a misaligned passenger door.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com

I'll be honest, the artifacting on that zoomed in portion makes it hard to be sure if it's actually a misalignment or just some weird lighting on the body due to all the people standing in front of it (although having the truck so heavily obscured like that is a bit of an eyebrow raiser). And like the article says, we don't know for sure if it's a pre-production test vehicle or a showroom model. But it's to be expected that everyone and their dog will be scrutinizing every square inch of these things as they start getting out into the public eye again.
 
Tesla purposefully increased estimated range numbers while the cars were fully charged. They had a team of customer service people who would try to convince people not to bring the car in for service due to the cars not reaching the estimated range

www.reuters.com

Tesla’s secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.

The Austin, Texas-based electric carmaker deployed the team because its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners who had expected better performance based on the company’s advertised estimates and the projections displayed by the in-dash range meters of the cars themselves, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.

Managers told the employees that they were saving Tesla about $1,000 for every canceled appointment, the people said. Another goal was to ease the pressure on service centers, some of which had long waits for appointments.

In most cases, the complaining customers’ cars likely did not need repair, according to the people familiar with the matter. Rather, Tesla created the groundswell of complaints another way – by hyping the range of its futuristic electric vehicles, or EVs, raising consumer expectations beyond what the cars can deliver. Teslas often fail to achieve their advertised range estimates and the projections provided by the cars’ own equipment, according to Reuters interviews with three automotive experts who have tested or studied the company’s vehicles.

Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts.

Then, when the battery fell below 50% of its maximum charge, the algorithm would show drivers more realistic projections for their remaining driving range, this person said. To prevent drivers from getting stranded as their predicted range started declining more quickly, Teslas were designed with a “safety buffer,” allowing about 15 miles (24 km) of additional range even after the dash readout showed an empty battery, the source said.

The directive to present the optimistic range estimates came from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, this person said.

“Elon wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged,” the person said, adding: “When you buy a car off the lot seeing 350-mile, 400-mile range, it makes you feel good.”

Tesla’s intentional inflation of in-dash range-meter projections and the creation of its range-complaints diversion team have not been previously reported.
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Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts.

Then, when the battery fell below 50% of its maximum charge, the algorithm would show drivers more realistic projections for their remaining driving range, this person said. To prevent drivers from getting stranded as their predicted range started declining more quickly, Teslas were designed with a “safety buffer,” allowing about 15 miles (24 km) of additional range even after the dash readout showed an empty battery, the source said.
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This is frankly hilarious. :lol:
 
It's hilariously on brand.

This part is like a skit on a typical day in the office:

Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.
 
Tornado
Would that affect the EPA mileage ratings? I don't know what their testing procedure is for electric cars.
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I don't think so. The EPA does their own independent tests. According to the Reuter's report, the EPA has requested multiple times for Tesla to reduce their range claims in their advertising / window stickers. The article claims the cars' interior screens would lie about their estimated range when the battery is full

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required Tesla since the 2020 model year to reduce the range estimates the automaker wanted to advertise for six of its vehicles by an average of 3%. The EPA told Reuters, however, that it expects some variation between the results of separate tests conducted by automakers and the agency.

[...]

EV makers have a choice in how to calculate a model’s range. They can use a standard EPA formula that converts fuel-economy results from city and highway driving tests to calculate a total range figure. Or automakers can conduct additional tests to come up with their own range estimate. The only reason to conduct more tests is to generate a more favorable estimate, said Pannone, a retired auto-industry veteran.

Tesla conducts additional range tests on all of its models. By contrast, many other automakers, including Ford, Mercedes and Porsche, continue to rely on the EPA’s formula to calculate potential range, according to agency data for 2023 models. That generally produces more conservative estimates, Pannone said.

Mercedes-Benz told Reuters it uses the EPA’s formula because it believes it provides a more accurate estimate. “We follow a certification strategy that reflects the real-world driving behavior of our customers in the best possible way,” the German carmaker said in a statement.

[...]

Whatever an automaker decides, the EPA must approve the window-sticker numbers. The agency told Reuters it conducts its own tests on 15% to 20% of new electric vehicles each year as part of an audit program and has tested six Tesla models since the 2020 model year.

EPA data obtained by Reuters through the Freedom of Information Act showed that the audits resulted in Tesla being required to lower all the cars’ estimated ranges by an average of 3%. The projected range for one vehicle, the 2021 Model Y Long Range AWD (all-wheel drive), dropped by 5.15%. The EPA said all the changes to Tesla’s range estimates were made before the company used the figures on window stickers.

The EPA said it has seen “everything” in its audits of EV manufacturers’ range testing, including low and high estimates from other automakers. “That is what we expect when we have new manufacturers and new technologies entering the market and why EPA prioritizes” auditing them, the agency said.

The EPA cautioned that individuals’ actual experience with vehicle efficiency might differ from the estimates the agency approves. Independent automotive testers commonly examine the EPA-approved fuel-efficiency or driving range claims against their own experience in structured tests or real-world driving. Often, they get different results, as in the case of Tesla vehicles.
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I think all range tests should be standardized and offer three different numbers: hot weather, cold weather, and neutral weather where no HVAC is required. All tests should be done with headlights on.
 
Great video on the discussion of manufacturers moving over to NACS



In general, the move to NACS is good. Their connector is definitely easier to handle

However, that was never the problem with charging infrastructure in North America. The old CCS connector itself did not have any problems. The problem is that the existing charging networks have a poor user experience due to poor maintenance and uptime as well as payment system. As these networks migrate to NACS, the same problems will persist. The only upside now is that these networks will directly compete with Tesla's charging networks, which will in turn force them to better maintain their charging stations.

Another point he brought up was the fact that Hyundai/Kia and Porsche have 800V systems which Tesla's charging network has yet support so the NACS's capabilities are still up in the air, although their updated spec claims they support up to 1000V charging now. This is probably why Hyunda/Kia and Porsche have yet to officially adopt NACS

As I posted in the general EV thread in the other subforum, a bunch of automakers are joining together to create their own charging network now which will be interesting to see how that pans out. I personally think we should be focusing more on at-home charging and figure out how to efficiently solve the problem for those who cannot do that
 
ProjectWHaT
800V systems which Tesla's charging network has yet support
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Not a huge deal as far as I'm concerned. Going to a single slower charger that works every time is quicker than having to hunt for multiple ones that don't work at all.

Edit: Just watched the Technology Connections video and I am so annoyed. Why do journalists refuse to put the blame where it lies when it comes to Electrify America? Yeah, we all know it's a failure. It's Volkswagen's failure. Say it loud. Volkswagen is in charge of EA, they are the bad managers. EA was a bargain-basement scam by VW to satisfy American regulators for Dieselgate reparations. The company is lying, cheating, and chintzy as can be. They failed once and they tried to make up for it by failing again, so bad that Tesla just sat around fat and happy becoming one of the top 10 most valuable corporations in the world because they know their stuff was good and it would eventually be adopted by everyone. Now all the industry has to do is destroy every software protocol that EA relies on because it's all garbage.

I can't wait until Tesla annihilates the entire American trucking industry as well. Some of the most annoying things in daily American life include Harley motorcycles and semi trucks. They're offensive in every way.
 
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From leaked internal email, Elon wants the Cybertruck to be built like Legos and soda cans

insideevs.com

Musk Puts Spotlight On Cybertruck's Fit And Finish In Leaked Email

Elon Musk said in internal email that "all parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy."
insideevs.com insideevs.com

Due to the nature of Cybertruck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb.

All parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy.

That means all part dimensions need to be to the third decimal place in millimeters and tolerances need be specified in single digit microns. If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.

Precision predicates perfectionism.

Elon
Click to expand...
 
ProjectWHaT
From leaked internal email, Elon wants the Cybertruck to be built like Legos and soda cans

insideevs.com

Musk Puts Spotlight On Cybertruck's Fit And Finish In Leaked Email

Elon Musk said in internal email that "all parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy."
insideevs.com insideevs.com
Click to expand...
So does he think the manufacturing process is like playing Factorio, where you just click the "Make Thing" button and a bunch of perfectly identical PNGs pop onto the conveyor belt?
 
Well that's a wildly unrealistic direction. My brother is an aerospace engineer and sub-10 microns is what they use for gearbox journal bearing tolerance - stuff that rotates at 80,000rpm. I would guess its flat out impossible with casting and/or pressing or else so expensive its not even worth considering. Just validating a pressed body panel to a 5 micron tolerance would be basically impossible.

Edit: Also, I presume the engineering for the Cybertruck is basically finished. To change such a fundamental spec now could cause unknowable amounts of rework. I'm almost convinced the project will never reach production.
 
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Eunos_Cosmo
And if they don't Musk can cancel the project and gaslight everyone with "the Cybertruck was too advanced for current technology" or some ****.
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Everytime I look at it, it makes me think my graphics card isn't advanced enough for the texture to load so there might be some truth in that...
 
Eunos_Cosmo
And if they don't Musk can cancel the project and gaslight everyone with "the Cybertruck was too advanced for current technology" or some ****.
Click to expand...

It's more likely that they'll just launch a sub par product and the large swathes of Tesla-Cultists with deposits will not care... seems to be the MO for many of Musk's projects.
 

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