Electric Vehicles (Cars, Planes, and Ships)

I would say ESC reduced, not eliminated, rollover risk between the vehicle types, but rollover rates are still higher in SU Vs. Your sources says the adoption of ESC does bring it more in line with rollover rates compared to the then current passenger cars and fleets when it was written in 2008, but its methodology was specifically about comparing new and old SU Vs fleets, not about comparing it to passenger cars, nor does it state if their findings were compared to passenger cars in general or passenger cars that were also fitted with ESC. Current DOT data still points to a discrepancy between in rollover fatality rates in SU Vs, with passenger cars and vans having lower rates. When comparing years data from 2011 up to 2020, with 2020 data saying that 42% of rollover fatalities were from SU Vs compared to 23% from vans and 22% from passenger cars [1].

Not that it matters that much, since rollovers are still a small portion of vehicular fatalities (7% by my recollection), but I would have still preferred a move away from SU Vs and the cultural hazards it perpetuates. Just that rollovers are not big on that list of reasons.

Edited by HeyMikey on Mar 9th 2024 at 9:15:30 AM

And then we're dancing around the question of 'rollovers caused by hitting something slightly sideways', which no amount of vehicle control can really eliminate because wheels can't defy physics. But that's a minor edge case and not important.

Which could also be considered something of a downside, because lacking confidence tends to lead to being more cautious.

And all of this 'is it safer to be inside an SUV' conversation ignores the actual problem which is: they're more dangerous for literally everyone else. Even if you removed all lower-sitting vehicles from the roads, they're still worse for pedestrians, and there's no designing your way out of "hm, maybe a vehicle which is hitting people in more important areas and has a bigger height blind spot right in front of it (I guess you could try an EV with no bonnet but then you compromise passenger safety) will be more dangerous to people it hits".

To maximize pedestrian safety, everyone should ride bicycles. We have to accept that certain compromises will be reached. As a driver, the thing I hate about large pickups and SUVs the most is that they obstruct line-of-sight when backing out of parking spaces.

We can go back and forth about how we got here, but none of this has anything to do with electric vehicles. Except, of course, that EV makers will aim for the markets that satisfy consumer demand, since they want to sell vehicles.

It is worth noting though that a lot of the problem with SU Vs is because they have access to a thoroughly deranged loophole in safety standards. Basically, in the US at least, it's mandated that passenger cars be designed so that if they hit anyone, that person will bounce up onto the hood. But if a vehicle is heavy enough, that rule is suspended and, IMO, that suspension shouldn't be accessible to private passenger vehicles.

So the result is that a lot of SU Vs are effectively designed to bounce people hit under the vehicle, making it way more likely to kill them or seriously injure them.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 10th 2024 at 11:02:08 AM

"SUVs are popular, so fuck everyone else who's endangered by an inherently flawed vehicle design for normal road use" is not a compromise, it's just once again prioritising how car drivers (and in this case, a specific type of car driver) feel over the good of everyone else.

You're right that this isn't an EV thing, except for the farce of targeting 'adventuring' when probably 95% of all the SUVs they sell will never have to contend with anything more adventurous than a road in bad weather.

No one who buys an SUV would ever risk taking it off-road if they could avoid it. It would scratch the paint job.

Folks, the SUV argument is a derail and needs to stop. Even if we wanted to take it upon ourselves to decide what sort of cars other people are allowed to drive, that has nothing to do with electric vehicles per se.

Edit: Rivian has positioned itself as an "adventure" brand in order to distinguish itself from other automakers, since a startup needs to lean into a unique selling point in order to gain any traction with consumers. It is also making delivery trucks for Amazon, so it has found a comfortable niche. There's nothing wrong with that.

Well, it does have a problem with persistently negative auto gross margins, but that's an entirely different matter.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 10th 2024 at 1:23:00 PM

I have two teenaged kids, and an SUV is a lifesaver. If Rivian is selling one for the $40k's, that's inching into my price range. The next time I'm looking for a car, I might consider one of these.

Anyone know Rivian's overall reputation for build quality?

There's nothing wrong with giving yourself a niche, but that doesn't mean the niche in question doesn't read as absurd when you consider exactly what the vehicles are going to be used for.

I'd take the SUV thing to the general automotive thread, but at this point I don't really have anything extra to say. Though, I wonder if there's a point these two should just be combined—it's not like EVs are 'small corner of market almost only specialist manufacturers' like they were when the thread was started 13 years ago. And as the SUV thing or the software highlights, there's going to be a lot more 'this is just a generic car thing' coming from talking about EVs in future and a lot less... well, battery stuff.

So Tesla has started shipping the $3K Cybertruck Tent accessory, and it's not even close to living up to the advertising.

If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, that image was taken out of context and deliberately made to look as bad as possible. For one thing, the rain flap is not extended. Also, the tent accessory is shown on Tesla's website and it looks nothing like that rendered version seen in the first image.

If you read the article, the customer's experience seems to be getting intentionally distorted by people with axes to grind.

Obviously people can have different experiences, but $3,000 for a "roof/bed tent" accessory of that nature is fairly reasonable.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 10th 2024 at 5:01:54 AM

$3,000 seems like rather a lot for the most miserable camping experience possible, I feel. Like... I feel I'd have to look around way more than I'm willing to in order to find one above £1,000 if it was JUST a tent (based on a casual glance). For something that's confined to the bed of a single make of pickup and basically just has some extra fastenings... <_>

So where is the axe being ground in that article?

And thus we see why the cybertruck looks the way it does: selling overpriced proprietary shit so you can't buy cheaper off-brand alternatives (at least not until they start making them), or use anything you've already got.

Tents are typically pretty model-agnostic too, unlike stuff like camper shells.

Edited by Chortleous on Mar 10th 2024 at 4:20:51 AM

The second picture in the article is one of Tesla's actual promotional images.

And yeah, like 90% of the article is just quoting a guy who owns the cybertruck and bought one, and he's saying it's okay but it's not $3000 worth. Which, yeah, it really doesn't look like it's worth $3000. I can buy a significantly larger inflatable tent for $600 CAD, so I think it's a reasonable question to ask why this would be worth an extra over $4000 CAD after already paying $83,000 CAD for the truck itself. Especially since Tesla is saying they want to install and remove it themselves, which adds a lot of extra hassle to it.

I know there's a market for these kind of tents, but the most expensive pickup truck tent I can find is less than $400 CAD. It is a completely reasonable question to ask why this particular tent is over ten times the average market price of these particular kinds of tents.

Like, it’s a tent. There is no possible way it is somehow so proprietary and magical that it needs to cost that much. Especially since it creates a really fucking obvious opening for like, Bass Pro Shops to come out with a Cybertruck compatible tent that’s literally a tenth of the price. That’s the thing here. The reason it’s raising eyebrows is not because it’s Tesla or because it’s connected to Musk. It’s because it’s insanely expensive by the standards of this product type for no apparent reason and it’s way less convenient than the other examples.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 10th 2024 at 12:06:35 PM

Angela Chao, billionaire CEO of Foremost Group, drowned in her Tesla after accidentally backing up into a pond on her Texas ranch.

Just an absolute shit-show. She went in reverse accidentally because of the asinine decision to make the stick into a touchscreen. First responders couldn't get into the Tesla because the glass was too indestructible to break underwater. And she couldn't escape because the manual release for the door requires partially dissembling it and pulling on an unlabeled wire.

An absolute testament to how inherently unsafe Teslas are. Infuriating. Maybe now that someone rich has been victimized, the courts will actually force Tesla to implement necessary safety features.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 10th 2024 at 9:27:57 AM

Link doesn't work for me for some reason. I'll post a Business Insider article about it.

Angela Chao may have died after accidentally putting her Tesla in reverse, a mistake she made before, WSJ reports

BTW, Angela Chao was also the younger sister of Elaine Chao, former USA Transportation secretary.

The article notes this wasn't the first time she accidentally hit reverse instead of going forward too. It's just that this time had lethal consequences.

The article mentions that experts say you only have about a minute to escape a sinking vehicle. Doing all of this to manually open a door probably takes longer than a minute.

Edited by M84 on Mar 11th 2024 at 12:34:26 AM

The article mentions that experts say you only have about a minute to escape a sinking vehicle. Doing all of this to manually open a door probably takes longer than a minute.

Yup. Whereas just pulling the hinge (if it functioned to open the door manually) would only take seconds.

I've seen it pointed out that Elaine Chao, Transportation Secretary under Trump, was strongly against imposing safety regulations and gutted the department's regulatory abilities, including making it clear that the department had no legal ability to enforce compliance to safety standards.

Still a tragedy, of course, but one that was only made worse - if not made possible in the first place - by intentional greed and disregard.

The original position fallacy strikes again.

Even if the car had had a normal door handle it wouldn't have helped.... the pressure differential involved in a car sinking under water prevents you from opening the door almost imediatly, mythbusters even tested that.

You have to smash the window, and most car windows aren't breakable by your bare hands...

This is why you should keep a window pick in your car if you are in any kind of position where an under water vehicle is ever a concern.... or just... in general, Tesla or Not.

Edit: Or a tire iron, that will pull double duty if you get a flat as well....

Edited by Imca on Mar 11th 2024 at 6:54:14 PM

I'd spring for a life hammer myself. Easy to handle, brightly coloured, and the holster can be stuck to the ceiling. Always in sight, always in reach.

The manual door release on a Tesla does not require dismantling anything. I have no idea where that idea came from. The lever is next to the window controls, and every owner should be aware of it. As noted, a submerged vehicle's doors are extremely difficult to open thanks to differential pressure; it doesn't matter what make or model you're talking about.

As for the gear, it's possible to inadvertently select Reverse in any vehicle. Just look around the Internet for thousands of such incidents.

To find that Tesla is at fault for the accident, even partially, would require that there be a disproportionate number of cases of erroneous gear selection, pedal misapplication, and/or the inability to escape the vehicle in emergencies. That's for NHTSA to determine, not the Internet.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 8:43:54 AM

We went over this like five times, the earlier Tesla models had some very weird manual door releases. One required removing one of the front passenger speakers, one had the wire to pull be under the floor mat in the back and required opening a hatch. This does not mean that the one the accident occurred in had this problem, but there is a real precedent for Tesla having weird and unwieldy manual door releases and it's not an out of nowhere allegation.

It is true that Tesla realized how dumb trying to minimize the use of the door handle was and just put the manual release in the door handle again like everyone else does.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 11th 2024 at 8:54:28 AM

Any such older vehicle would have a physical gear selection stalk, not the automated version in the refreshed Model S and X, making a claim that the vehicle selected Reverse autonomously difficult to credit.

Do we know what specific model/year she was driving?

Edit: The article says she had a Model X, but does not specify the year. It also makes no claims that Tesla was in any way at fault for the error. Again, that's for investigators to determine.

Unless you can prove that the design of the vehicle caused the fatality, this is just another unfortunate accident.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 8:57:33 AM