The Rolls-Royce Phantom is a very expensive luxury car. It can have systems that automatically help with braking and with turning on the windshield wipers. The podcast mentions it because those automatic actions can sometimes happen when they shouldn’t.
An airbag is a safety cushion that inflates very quickly in a crash. The goal is to inflate at the right moment so it can catch you before you hit something.
Before a crash, the car can pull your seatbelt tighter automatically. That way you’re held in place right when the impact happens, which helps keep you safer.
Impact sensors are the car’s crash detectors. They help decide whether the airbags should actually deploy, so the system doesn’t trigger just because it thinks something might happen.
The Tesla Cybercab is a future self-driving vehicle concept. The hosts talk about how it’s designed to be simpler for passengers (like having two seats) and they mention a maximum weight limit.
Autonomy means the car can drive itself. The idea is that if the car can handle driving, you might not need the usual controls like a steering wheel or pedals.
Curb weight is how much the car weighs when it’s ready to drive, but with nobody inside and no extra stuff in it. It helps you figure out how much weight you can add safely.
GVWR is the maximum total weight the vehicle is designed to handle. It includes the car plus people and luggage, and it’s the number you shouldn’t exceed.
This refers to a calculated payload-style limit derived from GVWR minus curb weight. In practice, it’s a regulatory/engineering constraint that affects how many people and how much cargo the vehicle can carry while staying within its certified maximum weight.
Automated driving systems are the car’s tech that can drive for you—like controlling steering and braking. The rules can change depending on how much the car is expected to handle by itself.
Towing means pulling the car to where it needs to go when it can’t drive itself. With self-driving cars, that backup plan matters if the system has a problem.
“Full self driving” is Tesla’s software that tries to drive the car with less help from the human. The host is saying some people found ways to trick it, which shows the system can be vulnerable.
The Tesla Model X is an all-electric SUV. It’s designed for families and people who want more space than a sedan. In the podcast, it’s brought up because Tesla is no longer producing it, along with the Model S.
The Tesla Model S is an all-electric car made by Tesla. It’s a larger, higher-end sedan designed to go a long distance on electricity. It comes up in discussions about Tesla’s lineup and how the company’s models are changing.
Carbon ceramic brakes are a premium type of brake system that uses special ceramic material. They’re designed to handle repeated hard braking better and can be lighter than regular brake setups.
“Plaid” is Tesla’s name for its top, high-performance version of the Model S and Model X. In this episode, it’s used to say these signature editions are the fastest/most powerful versions.
Brake calipers are the clamping mechanism that squeezes the brake pads against the rotor to slow the car. “Gold calipers” here is an appearance/trim detail used to visually mark the signature edition’s upgraded brake package.
FSD stands for Full Self-Driving. It’s Tesla’s software that can help drive the car in certain situations, but it still needs the driver to be ready to take over.
The Tesla Model Y is an all-electric SUV. Some versions can use driver-assistance features that help with steering and driving tasks, depending on conditions. The episode mentions it because a crash happened while those features were turned on.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is the U.S. agency that regulates vehicle safety and investigates crashes and vehicle issues. Here, it opened a preliminary investigation into the accident and similar incidents.
A preliminary investigation is an initial look by safety regulators. They check what happened and whether it looks serious enough to study in more detail.
An engineering analysis is a more technical investigation. Regulators dig into how the car’s systems worked and whether there’s a safety defect that could require a recall.
Camera visibility is how clearly the car’s cameras can see what’s in front of it. If visibility is poor, the car may not understand the situation in time.
Tesla uses cameras to “see” the road and traffic. The point being made here is that bright sun could interfere with what the cameras can reliably detect.
The Tesla Model 3 is an all-electric sedan. It’s built for everyday driving and is one of Tesla’s most common models. The podcast brings it up because there was a serious crash involving a Model 3 at high speed.
Autopilot is Tesla’s set of driver-assist features that can help steer and control speed in some situations. The discussion here is about which automation mode was running during the crash.
Manually overriding means the driver stepped in and forced the car to do something different than the automated system wanted. The claim here is that the driver’s pedal input was what drove the car’s actions during the crash.
The accelerator pedal is the driver control that commands engine/motor torque demand, which in an EV translates directly into how much power the car applies. In this segment, Tesla’s executive claims the driver manually overrode the automation by pressing the accelerator fully.
Sudden unintended acceleration means the car speeds up by itself when you didn’t ask it to. In this story, the lawsuit claims an electrical glitch makes the car think the gas pedal is being pressed.
Voltage surges are brief, abnormal spikes in electrical voltage. Here, the lawsuit alleges that battery-related power draw can create these spikes, which then interfere with how the car interprets driver inputs.
An inverter is an electronic box that changes battery power into the right kind of electricity for the motor. The claim here is that it gets confused and thinks you pressed the gas.
A chip shortage means the factories couldn’t get enough computer chips. Since modern cars rely on chips for sensors and safety features, shortages can sometimes force changes that affect how well systems work.
For self-driving features, the car needs special sensors to “see” what’s around it. This phrase means the key parts that help the car detect things like people, cars, and other obstacles.
This is the U.S. government agency that looks into car safety problems. If it investigates a crash, it’s trying to figure out what went wrong and whether safety fixes are needed.
LIVE
Hello everyone and welcome to Kelowata podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy,
autonomous driving and much much more. My name is Bodie and I am your host and today we're going
to do something a little bit different. I am going to, I'm going to split the show up into
two different shows. Today's episode is going to be a little bit longer. So what I thought I would
do is do a little experiment. I will do the EV segment as one episode and I will do the Tesla
segment as one episode. Now this isn't necessarily going to happen all the time. I'm just trying it
out to see how people like it. So in general, you know, if the show is 30 minutes or less,
I don't feel a huge need to like split this stuff out. Or maybe the show is 40 minutes, but
only three of those minutes are the EV segment or the Tesla segment. I don't really feel the need
to split that out. But if it's pretty even and they're both long, both segments are long,
I was thinking that it might be better to split it out. So looking forward to hearing your thoughts
on this and we'll see what everybody thinks. If you'd rather just have one long episode,
it's actually less work for me. But all in all, I do get that when you
typically listen to a podcast that's under 30 minutes and all of a sudden it's over an hour,
which I don't think today's will be over an hour. But even when you combine the two segments,
it can feel intimidating. And maybe you don't want to listen because you don't feel like you have
the time or whatever. So by breaking it up, I'm trying to help kind of make it easier for people
to listen when they have the time. Alright, having said all of that, let's get into our
Tesla news. A neat little safety feature that are coming to Tesla's or it's already here,
is Tesla's will deploy airbags right before a crash happens. So just if you've ever experienced
like phantom braking or the windshield wipers turning on and off when it's not even raining,
this might cause you some pause. And I wouldn't completely understand why.
But this will only be for crashes that are absolutely going to happen. There's no way
to get around it, right? They won't, this won't be like near misses or hopefully won't be near
misses. So what happens is the cameras will spot an oncoming crash and a fraction of a second
before the impact, it will give the car time to figure out like the type and severity of the
impact, it will pre tighten or pre tension the seatbelt. And then it will allow the airbag
to be deployed 70 milliseconds faster, so that they're inflated and ready to receive impact as
soon as your body moves forward. So this is great news. There is a little safety catch to this,
which is also good news. The cameras cannot deploy the airbags on their own. So if you are,
let's say, about to get into a crash, and you're able to stop in time, but the cameras think,
well, you're still going to have this accident is still going to occur.
The airbags aren't supposed to deploy. It won't, they won't deploy until the actual physical
impact sensors that are on the car, they, those still make the final decision whether or not
to inflate the airbags or not. So unless those sensors are activated, those impact sensors are
activated, it will not deploy or it's not supposed to deploy the, the airbags. So to prevent accidental
deployments. So fingers crossed, we'll see how it goes. I'm sure it'll be fine.
You know, I've got a couple of things for cyber cab just in terms of updates. So I just kind of
Ben, who lives in and around Kansas city saw one on the freeway as well. And Joe saw a few in Pittsburgh.
And there are two cyber cabs were spotted on a transport vehicle in New Zealand,
in New Zealand's capital, Wellington. So I mean, crazy. I guess the nice thing about the cyber cab,
once it's all done, you know, once, once they've figured out autonomy, Tesla, which will probably
be by the end of this year if you listen to Elon. But once they figure out autonomy, and the cyber
cabs don't need to have steering wheels or pedals anymore, really doesn't matter where you build
them, whether you live in a right hand or a left hand drive country, you could just get in a cyber
cab doesn't really matter. So I thought that was interesting. Cyber cabs, a lot more like when I
go to my Facebook and because I'm a member of a couple of Tesla groups, a lot of people
are spotting the cyber cabs on the freeways. So that's super cool.
We all know that the cyber cab has two seats. We now know that the maximum weight limit of the
cyber cab is 617 pounds or 288 or 280 kilograms, not a Tesla app, which is a great site to go to.
Anyway, they figured this out by subtracting the vehicle curb weight, which is, you know, the
battery, the motor, the frame, the skin on the car, all that stuff, when compared to the gross
vehicle weight rating, which is the maximum weight that the vehicle can weigh with passengers and
cargo, and they got a max weight limit of 617 pounds. Again, that two people, 617 pounds,
probably not going to go over that, but two people and some cargo could potentially go over that.
I wonder if Tesla will stop you from traveling if you overweight and, you know, put too much
weight in the car. I doubt it. And then let's see, I think this is the last cyber cab update.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NITSA, has updated safety
standards to remove the requirement for manual brake pedals in vehicles driven
by automated driving systems. So this is not to say this is specifically for cyber cab,
this is for any robo taxi that has autonomous driving systems. What this will do is will allow
autonomous vehicle developers to design cabins without the traditional human controls while still
enforcing, in this case, the strict stopping distances that you have to have, and they have
a test for that. The updated framework provides a direct path of deployment for
robo taxis, custom robo taxis, which would benefit companies obviously like Tesla,
but also Uber and, you know, Lucid and Zooks and things like that. I do think if you're going to
have a car that is designed like the Waymo's, for instance, that is designed so that there's
not a person in the front seat driving, I do think that it's probably unnecessary to have
the vehicle controls on the car. However, here's the change. If for some reason
that car is not able to function as a robo taxi, the only way to get it back to someplace is by
by towing it or putting it on a flatbed and moving it to the place that you need to. Maybe
that's fine for these robo taxi companies. I don't know that that would be great for
people who own their own car, right? If you say years down the road and you were able to buy
something that was actually level four or level five autonomy, you would probably want to be able
if for some reason there was some sort of outage or some sort of issue with the car,
you would want to have some sort of backup to be able to get back to where you want to be,
to either your home or your hotel or whatever it happens to be without paying some big
tow bill to unnecessarily have your car driven somewhere because it temporarily had a hiccup.
But for companies like Waymo or Zooks or Tesla, you know, having the car towed is not going to
be a big price inconvenience for them. So not a big deal. So in one way, I agree. In another way,
I disagree. And that's all I'll say about that. Oh, before we go to our next story,
there was something that I wanted to talk about. And the story made a lot of headlines,
and I don't put too much into it. But apparently people were using like heads of dolls as a way
to fool Tesla's full self driving system to drive on its own without somebody in the passenger seat
or in the driver seat. And while I do think that that is a concern, I think it's kind of an edge
case, just in general. Also, you know, there are a ton of different ways to get around safety
features. It's what Tesla does with this to fix it that really I care about. So if they do nothing,
then that's a problem. However, if somebody just found a way a cool interesting way of
fooling the system, I don't that that doesn't kind of bothered me too much. Like
I'm not going to get too upset about it. Like, people are very clever. It's when Tesla doesn't
or any company for that matter doesn't do anything to fix that problem. Then that becomes an issue.
But if somebody figures it out in a unique way, I never would have thought about doing it.
One, I commend them. Good job. Very clever. And two, it just, you know, allows these companies
like Tesla to see that there's a hole in their system. And how do they fix it? And how do they
prevent similar hacks from happening? But I don't know. In general, I think these kind of things
are good in terms of exposing flaws or the holes in the system. But I'm not going to get
all frustrated about it. I think it in general, you know, Tesla does nothing, then it's a problem.
If they fix it, and then they add a couple of other fixes in addition to that, great.
But I still think it's kind of an edge case.
Moving on to our next story. So Model S and Model X are no longer in production.
Right before they stopped production, Tesla offered the final few Model S and Model Xs as a
signature edition. This was initially just sold in North America, and it might have just been
sold here in the United States, but we'll just say North America for good measure.
So the last 100 of the Model Xs and the last 250 of the Model Ss were set aside for this
signature edition. They are plaid versions, they come with the garnet red paint, carbon ceramic
brakes with gold calipers, gold seat badging, gold piping, they're numbered, you know, between
one and 100 or one and 250 depending on where you're at. And then they have a bunch of other
other upgrades as well. Well, we were told initially that those vehicles were completely
sold out. And it sounds like Tesla has been recently reaching out to European customers,
offering them Model S signature editions. And according to the article from not a Tesla app
again, great, great site by the way, you should everybody should go read them.
Around 20 units are headed to Europe to be sold. And the question that I have was Tesla's telling
the truth when they said, Hey, we're all sold out. Or did they hold a few back? And that was always
going to be the plan to hold on to a few and then sell those to their most hardened fans in Europe,
who may have wanted to own one of these as well. Either of these cases,
why shouldn't they either these cases, I guess it's the same. It could be that they were not
telling the truth, or it could be that they were telling the truth and then people canceled their
reservation. Or it could be that they had planned all along to hold a few back and send them over
to Europe. Doesn't really matter if you're a diehard Tesla fan in Europe. And you got one of
these emails, because it's not going out to everybody, it's going out to a select a few
customers. You have an opportunity to own a Model S signature edition, which, you know, is not a
cheap vehicle. So in the US, they were selling for right under $160,000. We don't have a price
for what these Model Ss are going to cost in Europe. I would imagine that it's probably
somewhere close to whatever the equivalent of $160,000 is US to euros. It might be a little bit
more because you have to ship them over and that kind of thing. And there's probably some added
fees. I don't know where we're at in the world of tariffs, but there's probably some added fees
that go along with that as well. So it could be slightly more than whatever the equivalent of
$160,000 is to euros, but I would imagine it's more. Okay, before we jump into our final two
stories, I just want to say real quick, if you want to support the show, you can go to support
Kilowatt.com. You can sign up for Patreon or what's the other one, Supercast and support the show.
That way I only ask for a dollar a month. It's really economical. You get rid of all the ads,
if that's something you're interested in. So yeah, support Kilowatt.com and you're supporting
this show. All the money goes back into the show. All right, let's start off in November of 2023.
A 71 year old grandmother was helping direct traffic around an accident that occurred between
Phoenix and Flagstaff. And I drive this road not often, but several times a year.
And it is mostly a straight road, not a big deal, but you know, there's no trees out there,
unless you get, except for when you're close to Flagstaff, then you get trees.
But it is like, if the sun's in the right place, the sun is directly in your eyes,
depending on the time of day when you're driving. So what had happened was while she was directing
traffic, she was hit by a Model Y that had FSD activated and was driving at highway speeds.
And in that section, it's not uncommon to be driving about 75 miles an hour. So
the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration opened up a preliminary investigation
into not only this accident, but similar accidents. And the preliminary investigation,
or the probe, was then upgraded to an engineering analysis, which is typically a step before
there's a forced recall. And I'm just going to read what the preliminary findings showed.
And then we'll kind of talk about the rest of this here in just a second.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
the Tesla system did not detect common roadway conditions
that impaired camera visibility until immediately before impact, giving drivers little time to
react. The scope has since grown to nine incidents with one fatality and one injury.
By Tesla's own analysis, its updated software fix may have affected. So
camera only approach, right? That if you are just like in real life, like Elon says that you have
two eyes as inputs, right? And you're taking in all this data. If you're blinded by the sun,
it does stand a reason that the camera, if this is the way that Tesla is in fact designing their
camera systems, that the camera is going to cause a problem with the, the sun's going to
cause a problem with the camera. And unfortunately, a woman lost her life. The family of the deceased
woman sued Tesla and Tesla has quietly settled with them for an undisclosed amount of money.
Now, last week, a Model 3 crashed into a Texas home at very high speeds. It killed a 76-year-old
grandmother. Again, this is very unfortunate. The driver of the vehicle said that the
automated driver assist feature didn't specifically call out autopilot or full self-driving. So I
don't know which one was activated at the time. So unless I'm directly quoting somebody, I'm not
going to specifically say who, what system was being run because I don't know. But anyway,
so the driver of the vehicle said that the automated driver assist feature was active
when the car lost control. So this was last week, not long after the accident occurred.
Elon said on X that Tesla's tech did not cause the crash. This is what he had to say. Full
self-driving drives slowly through neighborhood streets, and this was a high-speed crash
exclamation point, which doesn't necessarily, I mean, Tesla has the records. You know, all the car's
phone home. So Tesla can see whether he pushed the accelerator or not,
which brings me to a shock. Ola Swamis, who's the head of I think autonomous driving or full
self-driving at Tesla, he had this to say, in this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving
by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accelerator pedal in this residential area.
And he went on to add that the car reached speeds of 73 miles per hour during the crash,
and the accelerator was pressed even after the crash. So according to Tesla and Tesla's
representatives, the driver is in full self-driving mode and then just gunned it. I'm not going to
say that that's true or untrue because I don't know, but that seems like an odd thing to do,
but people do odd things. So while I wouldn't do that myself, especially, you know, if you were
to press on the accelerator, crash into a house and then continue to hold down the accelerator
after you've been in the crash, that just seems weird. Not to say that it's not true or anything
like that. But for me, that is weird. I have been on calls where someone had a medical event,
like a seizure, and they crashed into a house, and this is a specific case, actually. Somebody
had a medical event, they crashed into a house, and when we got there, their foot was still on
the accelerator and the tires were spinning and like there was just smoke and you could just hear
the screeching and we ended up, you know, going in and pulling the person's foot off,
but it was very, very sketchy, to be honest with you, because it wasn't going to go forward,
but the tires are still going. So if something broke loose and maybe the car changed direction,
we could be drug underneath or with the car. Anyway, it was just a crazy time.
And then we treated the patient and moved on with our day. But so it's not impossible,
it's just that's not a thing that I've seen often in my career. Not never, just it's not super
common, especially if the driver is completely with it. Typically, in those situations,
you know, they're going to let off on the accelerator pedal. So anyway, the driver or the
family in this situation that were of the 76 year old grandmother, they are now suing Tesla and the
driver of the vehicle. The family has two theories as to why this occurred. One of the theories is
sudden unintended acceleration, which is something we heard about quite a bit in the,
you know, late 2000s to early 2020s kind of thing. I haven't really seen too much of this,
but sudden unintended acceleration occurs when components of the vehicle
require additional power. And the draw of the battery causes significant spikes in the system,
according to the lawsuit. These voltage surges from the battery can be dangerous,
causing the inverter to incorrectly interpret that accelerator pedal has been pressed.
And pressing the car causing, excuse me, and causing the car to rapidly accelerate
to an extremely dangerous speed, that's according to the lawsuit.
The second claim is that when Tesla was building this particular model three,
there was a global chip, chip shortage, and they did not include the necessary chips or the,
the critical obstacle detection hardware that Tesla, that the car would needed to be
operate on full self driving correctly, or safely. The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration has opened up an investigation when it comes to this incident. And, you know,
ultimately somebody died. So what I kind of find,
what I find distasteful is Tesla coming out immediately and saying, this isn't our fault.
This is the fault of the driver. And maybe it is. Listen, I'm not saying it's not. It could very
well be the fault of the driver. I genuinely have been a firefighter for long enough to see
people do all sorts of foolish things that would just shock you. Like genuinely, you just,
you're thinking to yourself, what made you think that this was a good idea? And it happens more
often than you think. And these are not dumb people, by the way. These are people who, whether
they were tired or stressed or whatever, made a temper a really dumb decision. So I am not saying
that this can't be the driver's fault. I'm also saying it's not, you know, can't be Tesla's fault
because it absolutely could be. But what I don't like is Tesla, if you want to make a statement,
say, hey, we're really sorry to hear that somebody passed away. We're going to be cooperating with
investigators and we're going to get to the bottom of this. And then at some point, release
report after the investigation is done. But before the investigation, I mean, the investigation,
this happened last week, the investigation has barely started. So by kind of putting this out
here, putting out a statement so early that knows the driver's fault, this wasn't on us,
I don't like that. It does not,
it seems callous and gross. So the driver or somebody in the car could have been
injured or deceased, I'm not saying in this case they weren't, but it's just there's so many different
outcomes that could happen before making a statement like this.
One, have a little bit of compassion. And two, just wait for the report to come out.
And then you can tell your side of the story. You're a multi-billion dollar company,
a trillion dollar company. You can weather a little bit of criticism. You're already doing
it. There's already constant criticism of Tesla. That is my thought on that. But
unfortunate to, I don't know, in my career, I have been on lots of things like this that
have happened, whether it's unintentional or intentional. Man, I'm so tempted. There's
some things that I probably shouldn't say. So I'm just going to keep my mouth shut.
Okay, so I'm not going to say anything else. Just wait for the investigation to be done.
Speak with some compassion. And it is entirely possible that Tesla did have a statement before
this that said, we're sorry that somebody lost their life and all this other stuff.
Very possible. But I don't know, by calling out the driver so early on,
maybe we do the investigation first. Maybe we get the report and then you can have,
you know, say what you wanted to say in a compassionate and kind way. Because this just
sucks. So anyway, all right, well, everybody, that is it for me on this particular episode.
What'd you think? Did you like the Tesla and EV episode on the same day, especially when they're
longer? Again, if I only have a 20 minute episode, it doesn't make sense to do this kind of thing.
But did you, was this something that was interesting to you or no?
Did it make it easier to listen to the show? I'm really interested. So send me your email and
feedback, bodibode at 918digital.com. And then what's the other thing? You can follow me on
LinkedIn at 918digital. And then you can also follow me on X. I'm not very active on X for
not any other reason other than it's just not been a place that I find fun anymore. But I still
go there and I look at what other people are saying. So, but I just don't personally post on
X and I never really did all that much anyway. So I guess it's not even that big of a deal.
But you can follow me at 918digital there as well. All right, everybody. Thank you so much.
And I will talk to you soon.
About this episode
Predictive airbags are getting smarter: Tesla’s cameras are said to spot an oncoming crash and trigger restraint systems “right before a crash happens,” with pre-tensioning and faster airbag deployment. The discussion then widens to Tesla’s autonomy and safety controversies, including NHTSA scrutiny of crashes tied to camera visibility, driver-assist disputes, and allegations of sudden unintended acceleration. Along the way, the hosts cover Cybercab specs, Tesla lineup changes, and limited “signature edition” Model S/X allocations.
In this episode of Kilowatt, we dive into the latest developments shaking up the electric vehicle market, starting with Tesla's surprising decision to open Model S Signature Edition orders in Europe. We also examine the regulatory landscape as the NHTSA updates rules allowing the upcoming Tesla Cybercab to ditch brake pedals entirely, alongside new details on its strict weight limits and recent sightings in New Zealand. Safety and legal battles take center stage as we break down Tesla's recent settlement over a fatal Full Self-Driving crash in Texas and look at a groundbreaking feature that uses vehicle cameras to deploy airbags before an impact even occurs.
Support the Show:
https://www.supportkilowatt.com/
Other Podcasts:
Beyond the Post YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@beyondthepostfm)
Beyond the Post Podcast (https://www.beyondthepost.fm/)
