Sometimes going off the beaten road and breaking the constraints of convention are exactly what is required to reach the next level.

yeah but, when you do that, you're not supposed to hit a tree.

Not when you're successful, that is.

Is that Musk building cars or testing "AI" driving software? Wild horses wouldn't drag me into buying one of those deathtraps. The guy in charge micromanages everything, and he's clearly not firing on all his cylinders.

"The guy in charge micromanages everything"

Yes, but only part time now as he has a new toy to smash up and add to the debris pile at the bottom of the toy box.

It's more significant than the rear axle on ford explorers, the doors falling off ford escapes, failed braking on daimler trucks, tyre management systems causing deflation, people trapped in cars burning to death....

I've only gone back to april in the list of investigations the NHTSA are running....

I know - it's because you report on every tesla failure, potential or real, because people love to hate Musk, and you get "engagement"....

Maybe because Musk is promising auto pilot and not delivering ?

And several people have died because of that ?

Maybe because doors falling off cars is not exactly a death sentence ?

I'm sorry your God is taking a beating here, but he asked for it.

We need a "Poor Widdle Snowflake" icon.

You seem to think that I revere Musk, I don't.

He has done a number of things worthy of paying attention - and a number which are rather silly. But I tend to look at the individual things as individual things.

Of course doors falling off cars is all perfectly normal, and wouldn't terrify you at all, but steering goes heavy when power steering fails is about as predictable as people complaining that their water was wet.

People nowadays generally have no idea how much force it takes to steer a vehicle (hint, it's often quite alot, and it's worse with wider tyres).

People have died because of autopilot? Do you mean people have died because they couldn't operate their vehicle, or read the instructions?

Has anyone died in a vehicle that wasn't a tesla I wonder...

"Maybe because Musk is promising auto pilot and not delivering ?"

I'm not seeing Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, going on a TED talk and saying HE knows more about manufacturing than anybody else on the planet.

The autopilot/fsd thing is like a record skipping. Bump, later this year, bump, later THIS year, bump, later this year, bump, fully confident, bump, confident, bump, later this year.

I was curious about a couple of these issues.

For the Ford escapes, are you referring to PE23013? If so it's not a case of doors falling off. It is a case of failure to completely latch when closing it (meaning it could open when braking).

As for the burning death, I'm guessing you're reffering to the dodge Journey? I'm struggling to find more details other than a few journal pieces repeating the same info, but from what I can gather, it was an electrical failure that prevented unlocking the doors whereas a manual override was possible by simply pulling the pin. Something which most modern cars don't allow to do (and Teslas don't in the back seats).

It's true that Tesla's failure are sensationalized, but when you throw out the window the decades of redundancy that car makers put in their cars in order to save some bucks, you get criticized a bit harsher when said failures happen.

I literally pulled the headlines out of the top few open investigations, I didn't actually look any further, it's not like that's even expected of journalists any more.

Only two comments before the whataboutism started. Keep trying. Maybe you’ll make it to be the first commentard one of these days!

No - it needs an investigation, pointing out that other things also need investigations, which historically have not been reported on is quite reasonable.

I'm all for a channel on El Reg which looks at all NHTSA investigations...

I'm all for a channel on El Reg which looks at all NHTSA investigations...

How would that belong? You're just butthurt because they have had more articles focused on Tesla problems and not on Ford or Toyota problems. The Register focuses articles on tech and tech adjacent news. A vehicle that's more "tech" than that of other carmakers, and which has abandoned stuff like direct linkages from the steering wheel to the tires and relies on software to translate steering wheel position to the tires is obviously more likely to have tech related issues and tech related recalls.

If Toyota hypothetically had an issue with steering rack gear slippage causing cars to run off the road that wouldn't be worthy of The Register's notice, because that would be a purely mechanical issue. There would be other websites devoted to mechanical engineering or manufacturing quality control where you might find that but not find this Tesla issue that's software related.

You'll note that The Register does post articles about other car companies when they are appropriate to the The Register's focus and audience - like when GM announced they would no longer support Apple Carplay or the Android equivalent in future vehicles. Because, you know, that's tech related. I can't remember for certain but I'm pretty sure they had a lot of articles about the whole VW dieselgate scandal. That was more "tech adjacent" since it wasn't a software problem that caused that, it was management ordering a software change for very shady reasons.

"Tesla features did not help stay in the lane or break in an emergency."

I would the car would brake in an emergency and not break.

I would have thought it broke pretty well when it hit the tree.

Hopefully the human(s) inside did not break either.

Brilliant way to inspire confidence.

Well done.

Carry on !

Multiple reports indicate the affected vehicles had been driven less than 1,000 miles, and several users mention having to reboot the vehicle's electronic systems to purge error messages and restore steering, which in some cases was only a temporary fix until the next failure

Who the fook is rebooting their cars and carrying on driving it? Can windows sysadmins afford Tesla's?

I was having issues with Carplay trying to take over from the radio even when nothing was playing and no apps were running. I'd see a message "unknown artist" "unknown song" instead of the usual artist/song information, and there was no audio. Not every time but most of the time. I had to manually switch back to the radio which required a single touch on the touchscreen - so obviously it was nothing major, just a tiny bit annoying. I sought help on a Facebook group for that vehicle type and someone suggested I should reboot the MMI and provided instructions on how to do that. I did so, but it didn't help.

Turned out iOS 16.6 fixed it, as it hasn't happened since I updated my phone.

But I agree, rebooting a car's entertainment system is very different from rebooting the entire car in the hope that fixes an issue in something as critical as steering! If that had worked to fix the Tesla's issue, I would feel like I needed to reboot the car every I time I started it "just in case".

"But I agree, rebooting a car's entertainment system is very different from rebooting the entire car in the hope that fixes an issue in something as critical as steering!"

The issue is not "power assist" but the hardware for FSD/Autopilot. I've never had power steering in a car fail on me. I've driven a car where the power steering wasn't working at the yard and it's just harder to steer, but it isn't trying to go the other way. Granted, rebooting is easier than replacing some hoses, but there's a way to inspect the hoses periodically and swap them out when they start to get brittle. There's no way Tesla is going to show you any of their code.

Steering on corners you can take at 40mph is fine. Slower corners require planning: select the gear you will need to exit the corner in advance because you will need both hands on the wheel. I stopped to read the instruction manual which said the vehicle is safe to drive without power steering. When I started up again power steering was restored. It failed every two or three months until the problem was identified and fixed during an MOT. Stopping the engine and restarting worked as a temporary fix and is worth trying - but seriously, stop the car somewhere safe. If you want to try it while moving please ensure you have a straight clear path to the edge of a cliff in case the steering lock engages. I would not like to bet on the servo brakes without the engine running. (I have also had the master beak servo explode on a different vehicle: as long as the engine is turning you may still get some delayed help with the brakes but the engine may stall.)

When Tesla announced some new models would be fitted with a steering yoke I thought something very rude. A 1,200kg ICE car is hard enough to control when power steering fails. I would expect a 2000kg electric vehicle to be more difficult. Making the steering wheel into a stylish shape is just asking for trouble.

Dear Tesla Owner,

By now you are familiar with our new Tesla Full Steering Security system. Theft is now impossible with auto disabled steering and the convenient demountable steering wheel.

You may have noticed you account has now been debited the subscription for this enhanced function.

This is, incidentally, why I don't trust the move toward drive-by-wire that tesla has pioneered and so many others are copying. Advocates keep pointing to aircraft fly-by-wire systems as proof that there's nothing wrong with the idea, but quite apart from a number of notable issues that fly-by-wire has had in the past, there's one fundamental difference between aircraft and cars: in an aircraft, there are three computers , which constantly compare notes and reject any apparently spurious inputs. They are built to tolerances that far exceed the specifications (just don't mention the 737 max) and are robust enough to handle at least one of those computers just up and dying.

A ford or a tesla, or any other car, is built to the lowest cost to maximise profit, and these manufacturers are not above making potentially lethal design decisions if they think it'll save them more money than they'd lose in the ensuing lawsuits. All drive-by-wire does is ensure that, when a fault occurs - and it will - my car will suddenly not respond to any of my inputs, and might additionally decide that it's actually a spaceship and launch itself into a ravine.

And don't get me started on the touchscreen console fad. It's entirely cost driven and ignores more than a century of advances in ergonomics.

"aircraft fly-by-wire systems"

Most passenger aircraft are too large to actuate the control surfaces with wire ropes and running hydraulic lines is its own can of worms. Having a triple redundant system isn't totally perfect, but pretty darn close and the industry safety record shows that it's 'good enough'.

Cars are still small enough to be controllable with mechanical linkages, but I much prefer the power assist. My old VW bus was a chore to drive. I expect the new ID.Buzz is much easier.

I have a Fiat Panda which has an electric power steering system. And that failed on me while driving down a country road and turning a corner and I was lucky that I was able to turn the wheel enough to keep the car on the road. But it was still very scary and im relatively young and quite a strong guy.

I think that if it had happened to some OAP whose reactions times are slower and maybe not as strong to wrestle with the wheel, it could have resulted in the car going off the road.

"Tesla features did not help stay in the lane or break in an emergency."

It seems it broke just fine.

"We love our Tesla but why and how [do] these things pass their quality checks?"

Do you love it to death?

Hey, it worked fine at the factory when it was driven onto the delivery truck. Tesla is famous for sending out beta product and having customers test software patches. I remember there was a braking issue with the model 3 where is took too long to come to a complete stop. Tesla sent out an update in a day or two. I find that really odd since it would take longer than that to do proper testing to make sure than modifications didn't have unintended consequences like putting the car into a spin when trying to brake on an icy surface. Just days after a car spontaneously burst into flames in an underground car park in China, there was a battery controller update. The car hadn't yet been removed and examined. One explanation could be that they knew there was a setting that was pushing some boundaries and pulled it back or doing something, anything, and making a big PR announcement was more important that sorting out the root cause. The pack may have been damaged which led to the failure rather than software needing to be changed but just like politicians, Elon may have thought that it was more important to take action right away than to take the time to come up with the correct action.