Gone in 35 seconds – the Cybertruck's misbehaving acceleration pedal While the vast majority of recent Tesla recalls have been addressed with over-the-air updates, the fix for Cybertruck's recalcitrant acceleration pedal necessitates a rare venture into meatspace. And it's as underwhelming as it is simple. Last week the electric vehicle juggernaut issued a recall notice for every Cybertruck it …
I am genuinely amazed that they simple just glued the pedal on, how do they think of these things?
When I think "how do I attached X to Y in a structurally sound way that prevents slipping" I imminently think "Ah screws / bolts & nuts". But no!, at Tesla they go "ah some PVA will do".
Truly revolutionary design!
Are you sure they glued it on? The mention of residual lubricant implies to me they didn't use glue rather they just pushed it on relying on pressure and designed in mechanical fasteners eg tabs,spring tabs,ledges etc to hold it together.
When designed right glue joints with the right glue and mechanical design can be incredibly strong. Just look at any modern windscreen, or the racecar windscreens of sports prototypes which can be cut out and reused as part of the structural monocoque in the event of a crash.
Pretty sure all they did was glue a rubber sleeve over the metal plate that is the pedal. Still, given they were too cheap to provide a protective coating to the exterior, I'm amazed they didn't decide to save a couple pennies and not bother with that rubber sleeve. So what if the person's shoe is wet, like from melting snow, and it causes it to slip off the pedal? That's something you can blame on the owner!*
* /s for the humor challenged
You could try listening to the BBC's recent radio series about the history of human use of glue at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001y89y. (*)
"Released On: 15 Apr 2024 Available for over a year
Modern life would quite literally fall apart without glues – they hold our buildings, our phones, even our bodies together. But the story of stickiness runs much deeper than that. In fact, our greatest leaps forward as a species couldn’t have happened without adhesives.
In this series, materials scientist Mark Miodownik charts the journey of human progress through the sticky substances that have shaped us. In episode one he explores the very earliest adhesives, dating back at least 190,000 years, that allowed our ancestors to invent, innovate, and make the first tools.
And he hears how lumps of these prehistoric glues contain fragments of the stone age people who used them, trapped in time for thousands of years."
* Log on required, sorry, but it is really interesting, in a nerdish sort of way.
No particularly good idea. Possibly some people think that the invention of glue is where human civilisation became decadent. Or possibly when glue instead of screws etc. became a preferred tool for assembling personal computers and cellphones, for the last word in "no user serviceable parts inside"-ability.
You had the temerity to suggest someone might listen to the BBC?
Who knows. For every non-trivial opinion there are haters. And you post here often enough that it's possible you've simply attracted one of the local Downvoting Trolls, an invasive species which is known to infest most of the Internet.
If they used glue, it would have stayed in place. I believe the excuse I've heard is "the employees used soap to make it easier to install", which is how people have installed rubber onto metal for decades now. The real mistake was the engineering department who were clearly much more concerned with making it look a particular way, instead of making it functional.
True story:
A Travel Agent got an angry call form a customer complaining that there was no sea view from his hotel bedroom window win Tallahassee, Florida.
"I've seen the atlas, Florida is a thin state"
Admittedly, "Tallahassee is located just 22 miles from the Gulf of Mexico"*, but a sea view from your hotel room window? Reminds me of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVMgtv9oIM4
* https://choosetallahassee.com/beaches-near-tallahassee/#:~:text=Tallahassee%20is%20located%20just%2022,beach%20in%20America%20for%202023!
This post has been deleted by its author
Well, the horizon for an averagely tall person is about 3 miles away so the complainant would need to be on the upper floor of a fairly tall hotel to get a see view, over 300' feet up. It'd have a be a pretty clear day too, something not common in humid States.
Of course, if the complainant was a flat earther it might get all philosophical :-)
Yes, this struck me too. I'm pretty sure all the cars I've ever owned had pedals with molded rubber pads that have a lip that wraps under the edge of the metal pedal. It's the obvious design. Why go to the trouble of fucking that up? Hell, source an existing set of pedals from a parts manufacturer, rather than designing new ones and paying for tooling. Niche autos have been using existing interior gear from popular models forever. It's the sensible thing to do.
They don't reinvent the fit and finish though, each car has more gaps in the body than a barn.
Since Musk wants to channel the DeLorean, he is going for the same legendary build quality as well. At least DeLorean had the excuse that it was being built by workers in a factory in Northern Ireland who had never built a car before due to tax breaks from Thatcher's government.
Man, I just saw a Just Rolled In video the other day where someone had screwed the battery cables to the posts with wood screws.
Nothing to do with Tesla, of course, but never underestimate the cunning of DIYers, either.
(Just Rolled In — a YouTube channel — is an excellent corrective if you're ever feeling complacent about the state of the other vehicles you may encounter on the road.)
I love an opportunity to take a potshot at Xitler as much as the next person, but how often do you really spend looking at the accelerator pedal in a car? As long as it keeps the problem for happening, who cares if it looks like ass when you might only see it fleetingly in your peripheral vision?
I'm still very dubious of this "unapproved change" explanation. Best case scenario it means that the change control process at Tesla is extremely slipshod, which is not the sort of thing you want when you're driving around a couple tons of metal, complete with a bunch of flammable battery packs, at 60-70mph. Whatever sub-department of the DOT is responsible for this sort of thing, should be going in and doing a white glove level audit of Tesla's entire process. Wouldn't be surprised if the insurance premiums on the Cybertruck also went up significantly as a result of this. If I'm an insurance underwriter and I hear that an "unapproved change" made it into the better part of 4K vehicles, and was only caught when it impacted a customer, I have to wonder what other ticking timebombs "unapproved change[s]" might be in every other Tesla vehicle on the road.
how often do you really spend looking at the accelerator pedal
Personally, I don't really want to know what's lurking in my footwell. However "premium" (I think that's the correct marketing term for unnecessarily expensive) vehicles tend to make a feature of their design and engineering as some sort of sop to the financial conscience of their buyers. It is often seen as the hallmark of true engineering excellence that even the parts you can't see are as carefully crafted as the parts you can.
It does strike me that there is a certain amount of exceptionalism at play if (a) the owner of a particular brand of expensive car doesn't mind that a cheap rivet is holding the accelerator pedal together and (b) it remains true that the parts you can see are indeed crafted with the same care.
This particular "unapproved change" is an old dodge - soap up the rubber so it slips on easy (stop sniggering at the back, there!). But it's also as dodgy as it is old. Back in the 1980s a colleague bought a shit-hot roadster, basically a LeMans car with number plates (Lotus Elite maybe)? There is an absolutely sharp right-hander in the middle of open ground on the way back from the research center, and he took it at over a ton. The tyres turned the corner OK but the rest of the car did not.... Turned out the mechanics had used a touch too much soap when putting on a fresh set of tyres.
Roll forward 35 years, and yawn! His Muskiness just learned the same lesson - keep that soap in a strong safe!
Reminds me of a story my late friend told me. They were driving on the freeway and there's a car next to them. The wheel comes off, and for a brief time actually gets out ahead of the car, before the laws of physics asserted themselves.
But some of this also reminds me of stories you hear about the racism that goes on at Tesla. One black woman put into a lawsuit how when she complained to HR about the rampant racism her supervisor retaliated by putting her on a duty she was physically ill equipped to do. IIRC it involved installing something from the under side of the chassis and the woman was on the shorter side, which meant she had to climb into the chassis as it was going down the line and she very nearly was seriously injured. There's also a secondary production line outside in a tented area that isn't heated or anything, and surprise surprise, that's where most of the black workers end up stationed. You can take the Apartheid out of South Africa, but you can't take the Apartheid South Africa out of Xitler.
The wheel comes off, and for a brief time actually gets out ahead of the car, before the laws of physics asserted themselves.
Yes, that will happen with wheels abruptly liberated from their vehicles, and with hubcaps that come off as well. I've seen it happen once or twice with wheels, and several times with hubcaps (always from someone else's care, not the one I was in).
With the hubcaps it seems like there might be a conservation of angular momentum effect in play, though without working it out on paper I'm a bit dubious of that thought.
With a wheel, I wonder if it's just because once relieved of the weight of the car, the tire deforms less, so rolling resistance is reduced.
"Reminds me of a story my late friend told me. They were driving on the freeway and there's a car next to them. The wheel comes off, and for a brief time actually gets out ahead of the car, before the laws of physics asserted themselves."
Despite driving up to 60,000 miles per year this last 30 years, I've seen that happen only twice, both times when in a previous job that only had a 15 mile each way commute. One was on a bridge crossing, two lanes in each direction, no central divider, 40mph speed limit and a front wheel came off a car coming towards me, both of us in the outside lanes so only feet clearance and a relative closing speed of about 80mph. Luckily for me, his wheel folded flat under the car and he somehow kept it straight and in lane! The other time, I'd just got into work, looked out into the car park and saw a wheel bouncing over the kerb from the road and into the car park, missing all the parked cars and slowing enough to roll in a circle and fall flat :-)
> how often do you really spend looking at the accelerator pedal in a car?
I always assumed that the Cybertruck had a camera in the footwell, so you the driver could see a dramatic shot of his foot pressing down as he pretended to be Batman
That was the error made in the video - they're supposed to leave the rivet pin sticking out so the driver can be sure their foot will not slip, on account of now being spiked to the pedal..
Given how Tesla fans treat the words of their messiah I'm certain some would actually follow through on this if Musk pronounced it as being essential..
> We're also sure that owners will not be thrilled that a mechanic is taking a drill to the pickup
All they had to do was include a drill bit in the kit, paint it purple and describe it as "specialised equipment for precisely modifying the accelerator pedal whilst fully retaining its bulletproof rating".
I admit complete ignorance on the subject of EVs of any sort and specifically Teslas and Cybertrucks, so maybe someone can help me out here.
My understanding, from admittedly cursory research and sketchy understanding, is that most EVs are direct drive -- the motors drive the wheels directly and there's no transmission.
This strikes me as a problem.
I'm old school. I drive a car with a stick (manual) shift. If, for some reason, the accelerator sticks in the "floored" position, I can still just push in the clutch, pop the transmission into neutral, and brake to a stop. I don't drive automatics all that often but I'm pretty certain you can shift to neutral there too and, similarly, then brake without fighting an engine that is out of control.
With direct drive that seems not to be an option.
A useful fail-safe seems to be missing.
Again, I'm asking from a position of ignorance and if someone can enlighten me, I'll be appreciative.
It is a requirement of roadworthiness that an average driver can stop the vehicle using the mechanical brakes with the engine "in gear" and at full power.
So if they met that, stomping on the brake pedal with both feet should still stop the vehicle.
It'll take a lot longer than it ought to, so you'll need a fairly long, straight section of empty road.
As well as a clean pair of undies.
That said, modern cars are fly-by-wire. The accelerator pedal is just an input to the ECU.
A sensibly designed EV should treat "90% brakes" as being "90% brakes, zero accelerator", regardless of the position of the accelerator pedal.
I'm not sure what my car does though, and tyres are expensive so I'm not planning on finding out.
Is the accelerator directly connected to the motor, or does it go via some sort of controller unit (can it do cruising where you don't press the accelerator at all?)? If it goes via a controller, then maybe some other inputs can override the accelerator, like pressing on the brakes?
I assume that Tesla cars are able to drive in reverse, so they must have a lever to control that, which very probably also has a neutral and park mode.
EDIT: holy shit it's not a lever it's a fucking touch screen:
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-E9B387D7-AFEF-4AAF-8685-4FE71E09287D.html
Worse it says:
"The touchscreen is the preferred method to manually shift. However, in the unlikely situation in which the touchscreen is unavailable and therefore can't be used, the drive mode selector on the overhead console automatically activates and must be used to shift (see Shift Using the Overhead Console).
If you try to shift when it is prohibited by the current driving speed, the touchscreen displays an alert, a chime sounds, and the drive mode does not change."
And the link to "overhead console" option states:
"In addition to manually shifting on the touchscreen, you can shift by pressing P, R, N or D located on the overhead console. In most situations, these buttons are not available until you press the brake and touch one of the buttons to activate it."
So the "emergency option" is in the "overhead console" and may not even work in an emergency if the vehicle speed is in the wrong range and "computer say no", ie the braking system has failed.
The VAST majority of American cars are not stick shift, and haven't been for decades.
The accelerator pedal is just an input to the computer on most cars now, it's in no way directly connected to anything other than wires.
Even Turdlas have 'neutral', but it's not directly connected to a gearbox any more than on any other modern car.
And you'll blow your engine if you do that with an actual throttle stuck on full in a stick shift car. You're better off hitting the brakes HARD unless it's a "stop now or die" situation.
The real problem with Turdlas is that they have essentially one pedal operation. If you don't adjust the settings properly, letting pressure off the accelerator will cause a significant amount regen braking. It's a truly stupid way to drive, and idiots who leave it turned on will get used to it and forget how to use the brake pedal.
First, thanks to all who replied.
@VicMortimer: Yes, I'm well aware that I'm probably among the last of a dying breed that wants to drive a stick and even knows how to. I think of it as antitheft insurance.
A few years ago I was staying at a somewhat fancy hotel in Los Angeles that only had valet parking.
Checking out in the morning, I called for my car and went out to stand at the kerb waiting for it to be delivered.
After cooling my heels for a few minutes, the attendant comes up to me and says, "Uh, sir. There's a problem with your car."
My immediate thought was that some hamburger backed into it or it was burgled in the middle of the night, but no, the problem was that the attendant couldn't drive a stick.
He led me down to the garage and I retrieved my car.
Yeah, I tipped him. Not much but, hey, I'm a soft touch.
"My immediate thought was that some hamburger backed into it or it was burgled in the middle of the night, but no, the problem was that the attendant couldn't drive a stick."
Since they are usually relatively young, give it a few years and they won't know how to put a key in the ignition, never having seen one before. Or drive an ICE vehicle "because it makes weird loud noises, it must be broken" :-)
4mm wide aluminium pop-rivet? Really? Those things are hollow - I'm surprised if one hard jerk on the petal wouldn't take it off.
If it were me, I'd drill that thing out as soon as I got it home (if I even needed a drill) and replace it with a round-topped coach bolt (stainless steel, trimmed to length). I might even glue the pad down first before bolting it - belt and braces, as my late granddad used to say.
Of course, this would be if I were inclined to get a cybertruck in the first place. Which I'm not.
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