Chinese safety regulators have cracked down on doors that don't open in a crash:
Tesla is facing a massive recall in China today. Chinese regulators are taking a stricter approach to safety, and the automaker now has to add warning labels to 2.98 million Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles in China that make it clearer how to open the rear doors in the case of an emergency that causes the car to lose power.
As we learned earlier this year, Chinese regulators are getting more serious about the recent trend of electronically controlled car doors; a growing number of crashes have had fatal consequences when the occupants have been trapped in burning cars. Starting next year, new rules give specific dimensions for handles that must be followed by all newly approved vehicles. But cars that have already been on sale for some time, like the Models 3 and Y, are grandfathered in, at least until the end of 2028.
But China wants Tesla to do something about the nearly 3 million cars already on its roads. It is requiring the automaker to add warning labels to the car interiors—something that will require physical access to the car. Additionally, Tesla will push out a software update that automatically lowers all the cars’ windows in the event of a collision.
Tesla is also facing a second Chinese recall, this one only affecting 2.74 million cars. These require new software for their driver monitoring system, which currently only uses a torque sensor on the steering wheel to determine if the driver is holding the wheel and remaining engaged in the task of driving. Now, the update will leverage the interior camera in the Models 3 and Y to track the driver’s gaze instead.
However, Electrek has previously reported that Chinese Tesla owners have been able to defeat the cabin driver monitoring system—which it has rolled out to customers with its more advanced partially automated driving system—by mounting a doll’s head in front of the camera.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by corey on Monday August 24, @10:27PM (1 child)
I’m usually an advocate of nice features in new cars but stop at retrograde things like touchscreens for the driver. And of all the ridiculous retrograde new features on new cars, it’s the electric door handles. I really don’t see how they thought it a good idea, and how it passed regulators. I got into a Tesla a few weeks back and got to yet the door handle.
The Chinese are doing a good thing here. I think they should go further and require one of those little green hammers with pointy steel head you see in busses with a sign that says break window in case of emergency. And then force Tesla to foot the bill for window replacements whenever someone needs to use it to get out of the door handles have failed.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday August 25, @11:10AM
What, you mean communist China is regulating vehicles? You can't do that, that's socialism... no, hang on... it's communi... socialism...
Kernal panic: Exception trigger in exception handler! Rebooting...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25, @01:03AM (3 children)
Is this the beginning of the end of China's rapid growth era? Now that they have regulators and regulations just like ours (USA/Euro) the end of their years of double digit (claimed) growth must be coming to an end.
Soon they will have fleets of lawyers like ours, suing anyone that does anything unusual...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25, @03:11PM (2 children)
Unusual, or downright irresponsible?
In the USA Tesla ranks as the #1 most dangerous car brand overall for fatal accidents.
https://www.kron4.com/news/technology-ai/cybertruck-trapped-piedmont-college-students-who-burned-to-death-new-lawsuits-claim/ [kron4.com]
It is not about the unusual electronic door handles, it is about bloody obvious safety concerns - did they honestly not see this coming?
Those poor kids simple could not find the hidden door handles.
Also relatively innovative for a car/truck is the drive by wire steering in the Cybertruck.
I can't find different the article, different from the one above, some kid must have turned the wheel full lock at high speed and basically destroyed the vehicle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25, @05:04PM
> Tesla ranks as the #1 most dangerous car brand overall
It's possible that this is the study behind that statement?
https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study [iseecars.com]
Your comment is one of the summary bullet points, but see my link above for more detail. I take away a couple of thoughts,
- all these numbers are in the range of a few deaths per billion miles--we're looking at extremely rare occurrences given the enormous total miles driven in USA. One quick search suggested 3.29 trillion miles in 2024. Should the system be better, of course, but given the scale it's not terrible. I try to stay focused when driving, but I don't fear for my life, there are other more dangerous things to worry about.
- there are different reasons that a manufacturer or vehicle-model is worse than the average. For example I'll guess that Corvette is on the list (in part) because of the ease of getting to very high speeds, while the Mitsubishi Mirage is on the list because it's the smallest/lightest(?) car sold in USA.
Some of these things you (the driver) have some control over, so we are not all in the same data bin. I don't carry a cell phone when driving, that's the sort of decision/control I'm referring to. While I haven't had a Tesla ride yet (there aren't that many of them around here yet), when I do, I'm going to ask how to access the mechanical door release...(and the same for any electric door system).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25, @05:17PM
> ... drive by wire steering in the Cybertruck. I can't find different the article, different from the one above, some kid must have turned the wheel full lock at high speed
I'm no fan of drive by wire, one of the projects I worked on was a DbW prototype and it was scary for a bunch of reasons. This testbed was never driven on the road, only closed test tracks.
However, the situation you describe above is exactly the sort of thing that DbW can improve. Simplistically, the DbW software can put limits on the amount that the front wheels can steer depending on speed and other real-time vehicle dynamics measurements. One way to do this is to slow down the steering ratio, so that at high speed, full lock at the steering wheel only turns the front wheels a small amount. This makes lane corrections on the freeway much less sensitive than they are with a conventional steering system.