This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The new software is able to detect if the hood is open and, if so, will display a warning to the driver to alert them to stop their vehicle and secure the hood
This should not be legal. They should be forced to recall vehicles and replace the faulty part instead of kindly asking drivers to pull over when the part fails.
The shit this company gets away with is astounding.
Driving on the highway
Hood pops open. Can't see anything. Try to brake but crash.
⚠️ Warning! Your hood is open. Please pull over in a safe location and secure your hood.
Tesla: OTA update successful
Yup. No reason to rewrite the playbook.
"Full self driving" detects an imminent collision of it's own doing. Car beeps and shuts off "full self driving"
Human was "in control" at the time of the crash, not our fault.
Just like the rumored cut all driver aids instant before crash to say it wasn't due to any of the auto pilot features
It’s not the actual latch that’s faulty, but the warning the driver should get, if they haven’t closed the frunk properly.
does tesla just not bother to hire a qa team or something?
It's pretty tough to say without looking at comparable recall rates for other companies. My Toyota Corolla had two recalls that I know about while I owned it, and Toyota is known for their reliability. Tesla is just always in the news because they're always in the news.
Toyota is also known for their reluctance to issue recalls even though they REALLY need to do a recall because they don't want to tarnish their reputation for reliability. Often waiting until the government forces them to issue the recall. I'd much rather the Ford approach and just issue recalls like candy on Halloween. Sure having 700 recalls sucks, but driving a defective car sucks even more.
The latch is fault, and so is the sensor. Sensor doesn't go off when the latch starts to fail from deformation.
Is a frunk a front trunk, or is that a typo?
Front trunk, yeah
This right here is why there should be a distinction between software updates and physical recalls. Calling this a recall without actually taking the product in and fixing the product is really deceptive.
That’s not what they’re saying. It’s essentially a “door ajar” warning. The sensor is what’s failing, rather than the physical part.
Oh so here's a fun thing. All American corporations have this level of freedom. We're just paying extra attention to Tesla because their CEO can't keep himself out of politics and the news. Ever notice you only see the CEO of GM/Stellantis/Ford when it's a crisis or a new CEO? That's how it works in a functional business. They aren't any less shady, they're just better at brand and scandal management.
Each country has it's own authorities. Hopefully they don't get away everywhere...
giving elon another $55b bonus should fix it
We need more children from him, because apparently we don't have enough!
Considering it seems all his children hate him, more can’t hurt.
Thankfully you don't need to be one of his kids to hate him.
Yeah I was about to write that some of the children seemed to turn out sane.
Do your thing, ma-gic man! Chanted the crowd as Elon in robes entered the golden restroom with his xPhone in the right and a ceremonial vial of coke in the left hand. It was followed by a series of thunder-like farts and sniffs.
Although the problem is with the hood latch, as with many Tesla safety recalls, the problem can be fixed with an over-the-air software patch. The new software is able to detect if the hood is open and, if so, will display a warning to the driver to alert them to stop their vehicle and secure the hood.
Patching the software isn't a "fix". Changing out the hood latch so it doesn't come open while driving is a fix.
"Warning: wheels falling off imminent! Please pull over!'
You have 3 seconds to comply. 3. 2. 1. Goodbye!
Trying to solve a hardware problem with a software solution. Where have I seen that before?
Right? It's deformation of the hood latch. So a physical change. How long until the warning is permanent?
Is this a real recall or an OTA update?
I hate Tesla, but a lot of news outlets are like
TESLA RECALLS BAJILLION CARS And what they really mean is they released an OTA update to fix some extremely rare race condition.
The issue is still bad, but I feel like the news outlets are sensationalizing to the point of dishonesty sometimes.
To be clear I'm not sure I understand the actual underlying issue here, so idk how deserved the headline is, but whenever I see them, I'm immediately skeptical
The problem is with a shitty latch: the hood appears closed, but it's not.
The OTA Update doesn't fix the shitty mechanical latch - it still doesn't latch consistently. What it fixes is another poor design choice: evidently, the car has sensors that can tell if the hood was closed correctly or not, but this was never turned on/programmed? The OTA Updates this so now the car can warn you when the shitty latch fails.
Or who knows, maybe they initially turned off that sensor because it was going off all the time because of the latch...
Although the problem is with the hood latch, as with many Tesla safety recalls, the problem can be fixed with an over-the-air software patch.
Beyond any issues with the owner of the company, these cars have multiple dangerous issues.
You cannot treat a company that makes physical stuff that can endanger lives the same way you treat a software company that makes a leisure activity platform.
Iterative design for a purely software environment is way more forgiving than iterative design for physical hardware or even software that interacts with physical hardware. You can profoundly fuck up the backend for a website and take the whole thing down until you could roll back to last known good production, you won't kill anyone, but you'll make the line go down temporarily.
If you profoundly fuck up an iteration on an embedded vehicle system and don't catch it because you don't respect safety regulation or existing engineering norms you can and will kill people.
The problem first became apparent to Tesla in March of this year after complaints about unintended hood opening from Chinese customers. By April, it had identified the problem as deformation of the hood latch switch, "which could prevent the customer from being notified about an open hood state."
Given that China is now an electric car superpower, this situation will not bode well for Tesla in that country.
I wanted a Tesla as a teenager, I recently realized that they are getting so low I could in theory finacance a used one, but they are so much shit lmao, worse than a Kia
By April, it had identified the problem as deformation of the hood latch switch, “which could prevent the customer from being notified about an open hood state.”
I think there was a scandal before with the logic of that thing being not good at all and it becoming dangerous if you've put sufficiently heavy pressure to prevent it from closing a few times.
the problem can be fixed with an over-the-air software patch
I was about to make a bad joke about Tesla trying to fix a mechanical issue with a software patch but apparently Elon beat me to the punchline.
By April, it had identified the problem as deformation of the hood latch switch
I mean that says the switch is faulty, sure there ALSO seems to be a problem with the sensor not providing the driver with a warning the frunk isn't latched, but you can't fix hardware with an over the air update
The only thing I can think of is if the sensor is a hall effect sensor that detects something (the switch?) being depressed by the hood. The sensitivity of the hall effect sensor might be tuneable. They may be able to reduce the sensitivity so it still detects a properly closed hood, but reports an improperly closed hood as open.
It's annoying that the report just says it's fixed in software without explaining how.
Every day I'm reminded how glad I am that I changed my mind about buying into the early run of the 3 series. Shit quality and even a bigger POS in the head office.
The comments read like a lot of people don't quite understand the issue.
The bonnet (hood if you insist) latch may not warn a driver if it isn't secured correctly. If it is secured correctly then it is fine. So it isn't going to suddenly open.
If the latch isn't shut correctly and then the sensor doesn't report this then the bonnet may open unexpectedly.
If they can use a software update to correct the reporting then that's it fixed.
There's no issue with the actual latching mechanism. It's just the sensor for reporting the latching state.
It may be that it currently works on a two value system. i.e a value for correctly latched and a value for not latched. If that's the case and isn't just not providing the second valve correctly then a simple software change to only use the latched value would fix this. As any other value or the absence of a value will report it at unlatched.
It's a soft close latch, the frunk pulls the lid into the latching mechanism. The mechanism isn't doing it's job and needs to be replaced either with a properly adjusted soft close mechanism that grabs the lid, or with a non soft close standard latch that is very obvious to the user when it has not been properly closed.
The comments read like a lot of people don't quite understand the issue....There's no issue with the actual latching mechanism.
..."Although the problem is with the hood latch" <--- literally from the article. Care to re-read?
It's just the sensor for reporting the latching state.
You skipped over the part where a) the latch is deforming, and as a result of that deformation b) the sensor can't detect that it's not closed, and so c) Tesla is pushing an update that lets people know their deformed latch isn't closed properly.
But yes, we all misread the article. Not you. Definitely not you.
You missed the part where the latch is deforming, causing it to not close or alert the driver. The software fix is yet another attempt to dodge the fact that they do not have enough repair capacity or financial reserves for a major fleet recall.
