This fellow is editor in chief of an automotive blog, which offers advertising and sponsorships, "gives marketers access to xxx car buyers and shoppers.." etc. Their review board lists 45 makes including some minor ones. Tesla is notably absent. There is a missing FAQ question for "why haven't you reviewed ___".
My take is that automakers are squirming with angst and demand their media outlets agree.
Thank you for posting. Reminds me of the NYT article that bashed Amazon and Bezos a while back. Didn't take much digging to conclude the author/organization has a preconceived bias against the subject.
I'm shocked that this man's blog has received the attention it did in the first place. It's a bit of an accidental straw man for any real Tesla-related concerns that should come up.
Wow. A Tesla owner's complaints on the unofficial Tesla forums were reposted by an apparently-unrelated blogger who complains about Tesla a lot. Clearly this proves that the blogger "fabricated this issue" and was the one who "caused negative and incorrect news to be written about Tesla by reputable institutions" by doing so. I mean, it's not like this argument could be used to discredit any issues customers have with Tesla no matter how genuine - that'd require this anti-Tesla blogger who supposedly latches onto any perceived failure to write about them, after all.
OK, not as tech as many on here, but I've spent the last 25 years as an amateur mechanic, and spent 10 preparing and driving my own rally car, right up to World Rally Championship level, as well as having owned more cars than most people have had hot dinners, and fixed even more than that (sadly!)
The balljoint in question has failed because the rubber boot on it has failed, allowing water/dirt in, and it's rusted out from there. This is nothing specific to Tesla, it can happen on any car - I've seen it on quite a few FWD cars, but never to this degree (total failure) - they will go on for a LONG time with play in them, and take a LOT of abuse before failing.
To have failed in this manner, it would have needed to go un-noticed for some considerable time - I've had ones which have had a year of abuse in extreme circumstances and still been nowhere near as bad as this, so I think you have to ask about the servicing that had been done on this car - whether or not it had been inspected. In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road, and easily noticed during any kind of worthwhile inspection (such as the MOT in the UK) - not sure if the state in question has a mandatory inspection?
Yes, being on a dirt road could have exacerbated the problem, but it's not something that a "normal" car can't take - you'd be amazed the amount of physical abuse a mechanically-standard car can take on rough gravel roads at speed.
Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me.
As has been said elsewhere here, if this had happened on a Ford Focus, no-one would give a monkey's, it's only because it's a Tesla and this guy has an axe to grind.
[In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road, and easily noticed during any kind of worthwhile inspection (such as the MOT in the UK) - not sure if the state in question has a mandatory inspection?]
True. I've had to replace a few lower control arms on various cars due to loose ball joints. In all of the cases, the car made terrible sounds during normal driving long before the ball joint was actually loose enough to pop out.
It was always very evident that something in the wheel was loose.
Of course, anything can happen...
[Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me.]
I agree. I doubt that Tesla is making their own ball joints. It seems like to much NRE considering there are tons of off-the-shelf options available.
Nice write up! Makes a lot of sense, your perspective. While I don't have nearly the same credentials with car racing and breaking, I did drive a heavily modified Volvo 850 T-5R back in the day, chipped from 240hp (peak) to 285hp (excluding 1st gear). The car was designed just fine from the factory, but the limited change I made would cause nightmares with the CV boots/joints. The forces would lead to leakage which meant failure not far behind, and, if I remember correctly, it was pretty easy to tell when things were going south.
Ragging on Tesla is not new to me, but I do think it's important to at least try to be fair about it. I mean, this case? Not quite a good example to me. Like you said, not a specific thing to a manufacturer. Now, seeing about 3 Model Xs in the wild so far, two of which had obviously troublesome door alignment (un-matched latch) fit & finish, that's fair game.
>To have failed in this manner, it would have needed to go un-noticed for some considerable time - I've had ones which have had a year of abuse in extreme circumstances and still been nowhere near as bad as this, so I think you have to ask about the servicing that had been done on this car - whether or not it had been inspected. In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road...
Take a gander at the carnage over at reddit's /r/justrolledintotheshop . You'll see a complete ball joint failure about every other day, and that's faaaar from the most egregious offenses.
There is a segment of the population that is some combination of amazingly ignorant, lazy, and/or cheap. Don't underestimate people. ;)
Note that Chrysler sold the first generation Jeep Liberty with mediocre ball joints. They had a big recall and never did fix the flaw. I know because my dad owns such ca. Ive replaced them more than 5 times
"Recently, a Model S was in a very high speed accident in Germany that caused it to fly 82 feet through the air, an event that would likely be fatal in vehicles not designed to the level of safety of a Tesla. All five occupants were able to exit the vehicle under their own power and had no life-threatening injuries."
That is a pretty impressive feat for a car. Also, the voluntary recalls are an interesting case because to me they did something positive in doing a recall before any injury happened. When the news of the recall broke though, people were complaining about the recalls. Part of the problem is that any announcement by Tesla makes the news round while a similar recall by Toyota or anther company, that would affect many more people, wouldn't get a tenth of the attention.
The cabin looks still intact and the outcome would would probably be different, if there was an engine in the front of the car. Still I believe those 5 peoples were very, very lucky. In my opinion this is just PR. You'd probably find examples like this for all car manufacturers.
Sorry, but this part of the blog article is completely PR BS.
This car was speeding but not "very high speed". The car crashed into a field. This is flat. Every other comparable car like Mercedes E class, Audi A6, Volvo S60, … would have provided the same level of safety.
I enjoy the irony of using an anecdote to imply something meaningful about a car's safety in the same article that decries the use of an anecdote to imply something meaningful about a car's quality.
Long ago I was a passenger in a similar accident with a VW Golf that looked very much like this one after the dance. We walked out, just a little scratched and a lot scared.
The jump distance itself is not impressive, I've seen longer without consecuence.
Crazy how Tesla as an entire company is scrutinized for car incidents that no one would even remotely care about if it was any other car manufacturer. If this guy had a range rover, or even some other electric car this would be a nonstory.
It's the same as with Apple. If you put out so much marketing about how your products are perfect every little flaw will be hyped just as much as you hype the positive traits.
How much of that attention is caused by the original incident/reporting and how much comes from Tesla's decision to publish an overly defensive response on their blog?
The NYT article implies Tesla is not acting like other car companies.
>Ford, General Motors and Toyota all said they did not have customers sign confidentiality agreements in exchange for fixing cars that have broken down.
>Joan Claybrook, a former head of N.H.T.S.A., said requiring customers to keep quiet about repairs aroused suspicion. “I don’t know why they’d do that,” she said. “It makes it seem like they want to cover something up.”
On it's surface, that definitely looks like a full NDA: "don't speak of this" (IANAL)
However, I can see Tesla's interpretation/spin: "It just means: we aren't admitting liability, don't sue us for this, and don't say we paid for part of the repairs" -- which doesn't include "don't report a safety issue".
Still, it seems rather strongly worded for that...
"You agree to keep confidential ... the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the good will" certainly implies that I'm agreeing not to talk about the incident.
"In accepting the Goodwill, you hereby release and discharge Tesla and related persons or entities from any and all claims or damages arising out of or in any way connected with any claims or incidents leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill." (etc, with similar language concerning talking about incidents.)
in other words: we'll fix your car for you, but only if you keep quiet about a broadly and unclearly defined set of events, oh, and only if you agree not to hold us accountable for any wrongdoing on our part that's in any way "related or leading to" this agreement.
That's absurd, and shameful, especially the excessively broad scope of the incidents and the fact that even actual wrongdoing by Tesla is protected.
> With respect to the car that is discussed in the blog post that led to yesterday’s news (more on the blog post below), the suspension ball joint experienced very abnormal rust. We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt.
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in this post, but a dirty car has nothing to do with a rusty ball joint. Dirt doesn't cause rust. It means, as they note, the owner lives on a dirt road. The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring - nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Dirt can contain salt, iron and other rust-promoting particles. And a caked layer of dirt can hold water against the metal part for extended periods of time.
> The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring
That depends if the fault ultimately lied with the customer or Tesla. More broadly, it demonstrates the company's willingness to assist, to go beyond what most people would reasonably expect a company to do to help resolve a problem, even when it's possible the problem was caused by the customer.
A dirt road will work the suspension a lot harder than paved. Combine that with stones pitting the ball and allowing moisture behind the seal, and it all comes down to the S not being an off-road vehicle.
An influencing factor I can think of is that a dirt road will kick up debris such as small rocks, which will in turn potentially chip any passivation layer (chrome treatment, paint, etc.) on a metal component. This could accelerate corrosion by allowing moisture ingress if subsequently driven through puddles.
Specifically, chipped paint is doubly bad as moisture can ingress and then flow underneath the paint, trapping it in there and not letting it dry out, so it continues to corrorde.
"We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt."
Which is not nearly as bad as the systematic, repeated adverse conditions testing they did on these cars in development and continued to do into the present.
It's not possible to know without seeing the road. I have relatives that live several miles down a dirt road that gets corrugated as a way of grading the road, and to prevent runoff. It beats the hell out of the suspension. In fact, I should give my family a call to tell them to have their equipment checked.
It's also not clear what is meant when the road is being described as a dirt road: often people will describe a gravel road as a dirt road, but I think this is an error. A gravel road of several inches of 21A, properly graded, compacted, and maintained, has little in common with a dirt road.
quite right, i live in a rural area and drive extensively on dirt roads every day and have for decades across maybe a dozen+ vehicles, i have never had a ball joint failure, nor have i heard of one.
Since I've seen this mentioned a few times in the comments, it's worth noting: Tesla did not expose the identity of the customer who had the suspension problem. Edward Niedermayer is a blogger who uncovered a post on a car forum[1] and then made hay out of it[2] causing some national media to report about it. Tesla was merely commenting that this blogger has a pretty clear anti-Tesla bias in his other writing. If anyone's responsible for exposing the customer to scrutiny, it's Niedermayer (who linked to the semi-anonymous forum post and turned it into a media story).
I have a first-generation Honda Insight. It's sixteen years old and still going. At about 110K miles, the power pack failed, someplace in the Central Valley of California.
Honda (I guess some zone office) had it towed 50 miles to the nearest dealership, which happened to be in Bakersfield. They then replaced the power pack without charging me for it.
Now, I knew I was an early adopter. I knew this could happen. I was prepared to pay for it. And Honda decided to treat me like an early adopter. (They sent the old power pack back to Japan; I suppose they wanted to inspect it.)
It never occurred to me to slag them in the media, or try to get a class action suit going, or some such foolishness. I was stuck in "the desert" for a few hours. But it might have made a good story. The media love stories about design defects in cars, and the big car companies' coverups play right into those stories. If it bleeds it leads.
These EVs don't need oil changes. So the temptation may be to treat them like Soviet tanks and never maintain them. That seems a bad idea. They still have rubber seals on ball joints. They still have pads on the disc brakes. All that stuff is expendable, and needs to be looked at.
Tesla is right to debunk this "big story." One guy who could have been using a 20-year-old jalopy pickup truck experienced a typical failure and turned it into his fifteen minutes of fame.
Looking at all the blog posts that blogger Edward Niedermeyer wrote on his blog [1] I can't find a single positive thing he ever said about Tesla, it looks like he has some obligation to just write all the negativity he can come up with.
"The nation’s top auto safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said on Thursday that at least some Tesla customers who experienced suspension failures with Model S luxury cars were asked to sign confidentiality agreements about the issue."
That ball joint is in miserable condition. How had the owner not noticed any problems? The ball joint would be visible to anyone who would have had to replace the tires, which should have happened before 70K miles. Something feels off about this story.
And about the $3k repair bill: You will see that with any luxury car. Low number of cars means a smaller market for used parts, so what usually happens is only the manufacturer sells used parts. When they're the only supplier, they can charge whatever they want for the parts, and they often do. Maybe the owner did know about the problem, but chose not to replace it because it was too expensive.
It doesn't sound like Tesla is at fault at all, but I suppose they feel the need to protect their brand.
"the blogger who fabricated this issue, which then caused negative and incorrect news to be written about Tesla by reputable institutions, is Edward Niedermayer. This is the same gentle soul who previously wrote a blog titled “Tesla Death Watch,” which starting on May 19, 2008 was counting the days until Tesla’s death. It has now been 2,944 days."
Material science lifecycles are measured in decades. Just because you "haven't seen it before" does not mean it can't happen. It means you're not testing well enough, or that your data sample is not good enough. Noone is clairvoyant, and excuses such as "dirt" and "70000 miles" don't make you either. Why automatically attack the victim? Is it not remotely possible, that the fault lies with Tesla?
What strikes me about this whole saga is that if the dealership had simply recognized that those joints should not have failed this early in the vehicles life and fixed them it would have ended right there.
Also I think that to have a 'will not sue' clause in the agreement to fix issues that are out of warranty is fine but the explicit consent not to talk about it is the kind of thing that will make your lawyer happy in the short term but that will damage your reputation in the longer one. Manufacturers should never try to control the speech of their consumers, even if it benefits them in the short term. It will look like you're trying to cover something up, even when you don't.
70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long.
I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I will make you agree to not thank me with a lawsuit. It's very simple, really. The customer gets a free repair, Tesla does not have to deal with lawsuit-wielding psychopaths.
Big fan of Tesla and their achievement even thus far, but perplexed that they didn't take the high ground, and decided to call out the individual by name in a derogatory and spin-like manner whilst still hiding behind the anonymity of authorship attributed to "The Tesla Team".
"A few things need to be cleared up about the supposed safety of Model S suspensions:"
Maybe it's just me but it seems to imply that Model S suspensions aren't safe. The whole post is written in a pretty aggressive tone as well. Not your run of the mill PR piece that's for sure. If what Tesla states about this case and about the blogger is true I can see why they would be angry about it though.
So are the documents customers were allegedly asked to sign real, or fabricated? This post calls Mr. Niedermayer everything short of a liar, and yet they didn't answer the obvious question. I am still withholding judgement.
Looking at Mr. Niedermeyer's linkedin profile[0] and what he's doing/where he's worked was kind of enlightening as to his purpose and motivations.
It probably works for him, though. I think 99+% of people, myself included, do not often look at who is writing what they read online. And I'd guess a majority percentage don't think about the fact that they are reading opinion vs. news.
[+] [-] franciscop|9 years ago|reply
- Worker Discontent Makes Tesla a Union Target
- Tesla Needs More Than Elon Musk
- Tesla Will Get Trampled by the Mass Market
- Tesla's Radical Update Is Just More of the Same
- Tesla Has to Start Acting Like a Car Company
- Tesla Stock Shifts Into 'Insane Mode' [negative]
- The Empire Strikes Back at Tesla
- Why Tesla Has a Target on Its Back
- ...
And the original cited in teslamotors.com:
http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage-not...
It seems that yes, we should take a grain of salt and a lot more. There's definitely something fishy going on here.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edwar...
[+] [-] imglorp|9 years ago|reply
My take is that automakers are squirming with angst and demand their media outlets agree.
No reason to send them traffic for bad behavior.
[+] [-] bedhead|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mangeletti|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artursapek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makomk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djaychela|9 years ago|reply
The balljoint in question has failed because the rubber boot on it has failed, allowing water/dirt in, and it's rusted out from there. This is nothing specific to Tesla, it can happen on any car - I've seen it on quite a few FWD cars, but never to this degree (total failure) - they will go on for a LONG time with play in them, and take a LOT of abuse before failing.
To have failed in this manner, it would have needed to go un-noticed for some considerable time - I've had ones which have had a year of abuse in extreme circumstances and still been nowhere near as bad as this, so I think you have to ask about the servicing that had been done on this car - whether or not it had been inspected. In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road, and easily noticed during any kind of worthwhile inspection (such as the MOT in the UK) - not sure if the state in question has a mandatory inspection?
Yes, being on a dirt road could have exacerbated the problem, but it's not something that a "normal" car can't take - you'd be amazed the amount of physical abuse a mechanically-standard car can take on rough gravel roads at speed.
Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me.
As has been said elsewhere here, if this had happened on a Ford Focus, no-one would give a monkey's, it's only because it's a Tesla and this guy has an axe to grind.
[+] [-] Unklejoe|9 years ago|reply
True. I've had to replace a few lower control arms on various cars due to loose ball joints. In all of the cases, the car made terrible sounds during normal driving long before the ball joint was actually loose enough to pop out.
It was always very evident that something in the wheel was loose.
Of course, anything can happen...
[Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me.]
I agree. I doubt that Tesla is making their own ball joints. It seems like to much NRE considering there are tons of off-the-shelf options available.
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
Ragging on Tesla is not new to me, but I do think it's important to at least try to be fair about it. I mean, this case? Not quite a good example to me. Like you said, not a specific thing to a manufacturer. Now, seeing about 3 Model Xs in the wild so far, two of which had obviously troublesome door alignment (un-matched latch) fit & finish, that's fair game.
[+] [-] wldcordeiro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrFoof|9 years ago|reply
Take a gander at the carnage over at reddit's /r/justrolledintotheshop . You'll see a complete ball joint failure about every other day, and that's faaaar from the most egregious offenses.
There is a segment of the population that is some combination of amazingly ignorant, lazy, and/or cheap. Don't underestimate people. ;)
[+] [-] asimuvPR|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hbhakhra|9 years ago|reply
That is a pretty impressive feat for a car. Also, the voluntary recalls are an interesting case because to me they did something positive in doing a recall before any injury happened. When the news of the recall broke though, people were complaining about the recalls. Part of the problem is that any announcement by Tesla makes the news round while a similar recall by Toyota or anther company, that would affect many more people, wouldn't get a tenth of the attention.
[+] [-] zubspace|9 years ago|reply
The cabin looks still intact and the outcome would would probably be different, if there was an engine in the front of the car. Still I believe those 5 peoples were very, very lucky. In my opinion this is just PR. You'd probably find examples like this for all car manufacturers.
[+] [-] PinguTS|9 years ago|reply
This car was speeding but not "very high speed". The car crashed into a field. This is flat. Every other comparable car like Mercedes E class, Audi A6, Volvo S60, … would have provided the same level of safety.
Here the original reporting with images: http://www.tz.de/muenchen/region/schwerer-unfall-icking-18-j...
[+] [-] FreeFull|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hermannj314|9 years ago|reply
In total, a good response from Tesla.
[+] [-] narag|9 years ago|reply
Long ago I was a passenger in a similar accident with a VW Golf that looked very much like this one after the dance. We walked out, just a little scratched and a lot scared.
The jump distance itself is not impressive, I've seen longer without consecuence.
[+] [-] biokoda|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usrusr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rplnt|9 years ago|reply
(*edited, not the most)
[+] [-] malz|9 years ago|reply
>Ford, General Motors and Toyota all said they did not have customers sign confidentiality agreements in exchange for fixing cars that have broken down.
>Joan Claybrook, a former head of N.H.T.S.A., said requiring customers to keep quiet about repairs aroused suspicion. “I don’t know why they’d do that,” she said. “It makes it seem like they want to cover something up.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/business/tesla-motors-mode...
[+] [-] voiper1|9 years ago|reply
On it's surface, that definitely looks like a full NDA: "don't speak of this" (IANAL)
However, I can see Tesla's interpretation/spin: "It just means: we aren't admitting liability, don't sue us for this, and don't say we paid for part of the repairs" -- which doesn't include "don't report a safety issue". Still, it seems rather strongly worded for that...
[+] [-] malz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emn13|9 years ago|reply
"In accepting the Goodwill, you hereby release and discharge Tesla and related persons or entities from any and all claims or damages arising out of or in any way connected with any claims or incidents leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill." (etc, with similar language concerning talking about incidents.)
in other words: we'll fix your car for you, but only if you keep quiet about a broadly and unclearly defined set of events, oh, and only if you agree not to hold us accountable for any wrongdoing on our part that's in any way "related or leading to" this agreement.
That's absurd, and shameful, especially the excessively broad scope of the incidents and the fact that even actual wrongdoing by Tesla is protected.
[+] [-] NeutronBoy|9 years ago|reply
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in this post, but a dirty car has nothing to do with a rusty ball joint. Dirt doesn't cause rust. It means, as they note, the owner lives on a dirt road. The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring - nothing to do with the issue at hand.
[+] [-] sjwright|9 years ago|reply
Dirt can contain salt, iron and other rust-promoting particles. And a caked layer of dirt can hold water against the metal part for extended periods of time.
> The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring
That depends if the fault ultimately lied with the customer or Tesla. More broadly, it demonstrates the company's willingness to assist, to go beyond what most people would reasonably expect a company to do to help resolve a problem, even when it's possible the problem was caused by the customer.
[+] [-] snovv_crash|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NamTaf|9 years ago|reply
Specifically, chipped paint is doubly bad as moisture can ingress and then flow underneath the paint, trapping it in there and not letting it dry out, so it continues to corrorde.
[+] [-] rsync|9 years ago|reply
Which is not nearly as bad as the systematic, repeated adverse conditions testing they did on these cars in development and continued to do into the present.
Right ? Right ?
[+] [-] unethical_ban|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etendue|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2048|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schneidmaster|9 years ago|reply
1: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/suspension-problem-o...
2: http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage-not...
[+] [-] OliverJones|9 years ago|reply
Honda (I guess some zone office) had it towed 50 miles to the nearest dealership, which happened to be in Bakersfield. They then replaced the power pack without charging me for it.
Now, I knew I was an early adopter. I knew this could happen. I was prepared to pay for it. And Honda decided to treat me like an early adopter. (They sent the old power pack back to Japan; I suppose they wanted to inspect it.)
It never occurred to me to slag them in the media, or try to get a class action suit going, or some such foolishness. I was stuck in "the desert" for a few hours. But it might have made a good story. The media love stories about design defects in cars, and the big car companies' coverups play right into those stories. If it bleeds it leads.
These EVs don't need oil changes. So the temptation may be to treat them like Soviet tanks and never maintain them. That seems a bad idea. They still have rubber seals on ball joints. They still have pads on the disc brakes. All that stuff is expendable, and needs to be looked at.
Tesla is right to debunk this "big story." One guy who could have been using a 20-year-old jalopy pickup truck experienced a typical failure and turned it into his fifteen minutes of fame.
[+] [-] knorker|9 years ago|reply
Do they? I seem to remember Musk saying they motor brake (picking up the power to charge the batteries) to brake.
Maybe secondary brakes.
[+] [-] usaphp|9 years ago|reply
[1] - http://dailykanban.com/author/bjorn/
[+] [-] steve19|9 years ago|reply
"The nation’s top auto safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said on Thursday that at least some Tesla customers who experienced suspension failures with Model S luxury cars were asked to sign confidentiality agreements about the issue."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/business/tesla-model-s-nht...
[+] [-] castratikron|9 years ago|reply
And about the $3k repair bill: You will see that with any luxury car. Low number of cars means a smaller market for used parts, so what usually happens is only the manufacturer sells used parts. When they're the only supplier, they can charge whatever they want for the parts, and they often do. Maybe the owner did know about the problem, but chose not to replace it because it was too expensive.
It doesn't sound like Tesla is at fault at all, but I suppose they feel the need to protect their brand.
[+] [-] ktRolster|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abpavel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|9 years ago|reply
Also I think that to have a 'will not sue' clause in the agreement to fix issues that are out of warranty is fine but the explicit consent not to talk about it is the kind of thing that will make your lawyer happy in the short term but that will damage your reputation in the longer one. Manufacturers should never try to control the speech of their consumers, even if it benefits them in the short term. It will look like you're trying to cover something up, even when you don't.
[+] [-] awestroke|9 years ago|reply
I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I will make you agree to not thank me with a lawsuit. It's very simple, really. The customer gets a free repair, Tesla does not have to deal with lawsuit-wielding psychopaths.
[+] [-] yellowpug|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pedrocr|9 years ago|reply
"A few things need to be cleared up about the supposed safety of Model S suspensions:"
Maybe it's just me but it seems to imply that Model S suspensions aren't safe. The whole post is written in a pretty aggressive tone as well. Not your run of the mill PR piece that's for sure. If what Tesla states about this case and about the blogger is true I can see why they would be angry about it though.
[+] [-] miander|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnoway|9 years ago|reply
It probably works for him, though. I think 99+% of people, myself included, do not often look at who is writing what they read online. And I'd guess a majority percentage don't think about the fact that they are reading opinion vs. news.
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-niedermeyer-35942261
[+] [-] sathishvj|9 years ago|reply
A list of articles by said Edward Niedermeyer. There definitely are a lot of anti-Tesla articles.