Security

Tesla Hacker Exposes Design Failure Causing Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA)

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Hey there, folks! It’s time to drive headfirst into the big ol’ mess involving an embattled and disgraced electric vehicle manufacturer known as Tesla. Accusations are flying left and right, claiming that their cars are zooming off uncontrollably, leading to some seriously large funeral bills. But as we dig into the nitty-gritty, it seems like the evidence is pointing fingers directly at Tesla’s doorstep, leaving little room for the classic “oops, your bad” excuse.

The NHTSA claims to have done a bunch of investigations to shed light on these hair-raising incidents. And what did they find? Well, initially, they blamed the drivers like it was an Audi 5000 again, saying people love mashing the go pedal instead of hitting the brakes. Classic mix-up, right? But hold on to your seats, because things have taken a sharp turn. Recent revelations are steering us back to Tesla’s possible mechanical or software snafus.

There’s a petition making waves, demanding a second look at the decision to slam the brakes on government safety investigations. They’re saying that these Tesla cars might be going haywire due to some electrical hiccups in their 12VDC systems. And who’s their star witness? A hacker who uncovered some dirty little secrets lurking within the Tesla Model 3 inverter design. Talk about an electrifying twist (PDF of Petition)!

Motor Vehicle Defect Petition to Recall All Tesla Vehicles Due to
Sudden Unintended Acceleration

To put it simply…

…it is not the driver that is causing the sudden unintended acceleration because of pedal misapplication. It is the vehicle’s control system that is causing the sudden acceleration because it allows an incorrect lower ADC calibration voltage to be used that creates an increase in the digitized accelerator pedal outputs even though the analog values of the accelerator pedal outputs remain the same because the driver has not pressed on the accelerator pedal.

Digital accelerator pedal sensor outputs increase to a maximum of 100% even though analog accelerator pedal outputs are never changed.

Uh oh. Logs can’t even be trusted if they don’t capture the entire picture. We’re talking serious design integrity failure.

So, here we are, folks, standing at a crossroads with more questions than answers.

Are these Tesla vehicles cursed with some inherent gremlins in their mechanics or software? Could these intermittent electrical currents be the culprits behind these wild rides, as our petitioners suggest?

The purpose of this letter is to request that investigation DP 20-001 be re-opened because of new information, enclosed with this letter, that NHTSA investigators erred in ascribing the cause of these incidents to pedal misapplication. The enclosed paper shows that nearly all of these incidents may have been caused instead by a change in the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) calibration used when the accelerator pedal sensor outputs were digitized, which can make the digitized accelerator pedal sensor outputs increase to a maximum of 100% even though the analog accelerator pedal outputs are never changed because the accelerator pedal is not being pressed by the driver. This mechanism explains how sudden unintended acceleration can occur in all Tesla vehicles, with the accelerator pedal sensor data in both the EDR and the vehicle log increasing up to 100% pedal, even though the driver has never stepped on the accelerator pedal. It also explains why the drive motor torque is not limited by the torque monitor during sudden acceleration when it should be limited to zero if the accelerator pedal is not pressed. This is because the digitized pedal sensor outputs are increased up to a maximum of 100% even though the analog accelerator pedal outputs remain unchanged because the accelerator pedal is not being pressed by the driver.

The road ahead is full of twists and turns, my friends. We need a thorough and unbiased investigation to separate fact from fiction. Let’s keep our eyes peeled as we wait for the truth to come to light for every single one of Tesla’s nearly 2 million vehicles now under investigation for dangerous flaws.

It certainly makes a lot more sense when reading the drumbeat of headlines about Tesla very uniquely having sudden pedal problems while making low speed maneuvers. Here’s another typical one from last week:

Firefighters extricate driver trapped after Tesla goes airborne, hits tree and rolls over near Deerfield. […] Covelli said the driver tried applying the brakes but accidentally hit the accelerator. […] “This was the second time in a short period of time that a significant crash happened in the parking lot,” Covelli added. In late April, a woman, also driving a Tesla, crashed into the Deerfield Wine and Spirits in the same strip mall.

There seem to be a whole lot of Tesla crash patterns like these two that may be rather simple and easy to fix design failures. Owners need their car data to get a much deeper look at why Tesla might be at fault for crashes.

Perhaps the most important point made by the petitioner is this one:

NHTSA could go still further and require that the log containing the number of times that a faulty digital value of the ADC calibration voltage is replaced with a new digitized value, the faulty digital values of the ADC calibration voltage that have been stored, and the current ADC calibration voltage, be made available to vehicle owners by transferring them via the CAN bus to the EDR module, where they can be accessed by suitably modified EDR reading software for use by the vehicle owner. This would give vehicle owners the data they need to challenge Tesla in court in cases of sudden unintended acceleration instead of forcing vehicle m,vners to rely on Tesla to supply this information. This reliance has put vehicle owners at a serious disadvantage, allowing Tesla to claim in the press that sudden unintended acceleration in Tesla vehicles is impossible while denying vehicle owners access to EDR and vehicle log information for use in court cases or during mandatory arbitration imposed by Tesla’s sales agreements.

The U.S. government should mandate every new and existing Tesla get assigned an open-standards personal data store for vehicle owners to receive a full set of their information from their vehicle.

Petition references:

  1. NHTSA complaint #11291423 from Palmdale, California, in which the owner of a 2015 Tesla Model S claims their vehicle suddenly accelerated while the owner was outside the vehicle. Cited in ODI memo DP20-001 Second Addendum Attachment of letter to James Owens, dated 12-30-2020. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2020/INME-DP20001-81994.pdf
  2. NHTSA ODI Resume DP20-001 denying defect petition, dated 1/8/20 21,
    https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2020/INCLA-DP20001-6158.PDF
  3. Damien Maguire at https://openinverter.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=575
  4. Damien Maguire at https://openinverter.org/wiki/Main_Page
  5. Damien Maguire at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvEuErZWr8c
  6. Damien Maguire at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBhNcad7ZTA
  7. Damien Maguire at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDH-EKbXmrA
  8. Texas Instruments, “TMS32ofa8377d data sheet”, https://www.ti.com/product/TMS320F28377D
  9. Damien Maguire at https://github.com/damienmaguire/Tesla-Model-3-Drive-Unit/blob/master/M3_TMS_PINOUTDIAG1.pdf. This pinout diagram was first published on November 24, 2020, and has never been revised. It should have been revised on March 24, 2023, to make it agree with the pin map in reference 10 below.
  10. Damien Maguire at https://github.com/damienmaguire/Tesla-Model-3-Drive-Unit/blob/master/TMS320F28377D_M3_PinMap.ods. The first version of this table was released on November 24, 2020, and showed a 12V_measure signal on pin 44. The most recent version of this table is dated March 25, 2023, and shows the 12V_measure signal on pin 29 instead of pin 44. Pin 44 is now undefined, although a private communication reveals that more recent probing shows that pin 44 has a 1.655V signal on it that provides an ADC value of 2005 out of 4095.
  11. Several automobile manufacturers use a pedal rate-of-motion test on the APP sensor signals, including Nissan, BMW, Land Rover, and Tesla.
  12. Jason Hughes (wko57) at https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/sudden-unintended-acceleration.107134/page-22
Security

Tesla Owner Shocked FSD Has Been Rapidly Devalued by… Tesla

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An owner seems very concerned that Elon Musk promised that FSD would appreciate in value, while Tesla is doing the exact opposite and heavily devaluing it.

What is so frustrating about this is that Elon is always raving about how incredible FSD is and how most people “don’t understand its value,” but yet, Tesla itself heavily devalues it in used cars, despite not delivering on its promises.

Yup. It’s called fraud. FSD doesn’t even work.

Thus the Tesla “investment” is NOT going to turn out well, given the company keeps trying to pump valuations through giant promises it has no intention of keeping.

Bernie Madoff robbed 37,000 victims in 136 countries over the course of two decades before he was arrested…. Some victims, including those who could barely afford to invest in the first place, lost their entire life savings and several later committed suicide as a result.

History, Poetry, Security

Die große Trümmerfrau spricht

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A poem from the book Gleisdreieck (1960) by Günter Gras, speaks to the peculiar state of mythical German women tasked with clearing the rubble of WWII.

Gnade Gnade.
Die große Trümmerfrau…

Amen Amen.
Hingestreut liegt Berlin.
Staub fliegt auf,
dann wieder Flaute.
Die große
Trümmerfrau wird heiliggesprochen

That last line translates roughly as “Rubble woman is canonized”.

The “canonized” angle of the Trümmerfrau is interesting because they actually were a tiny and insignificant group of reluctant volunteers.

The historian concedes that, of course, the builders needed help – after all, about 400 million cubic meters of rubble and ruins were waiting to be cleared across the nation. “But women played a minor role in clearing German cities from the rubble,” Treber says. Berlin mobilized about 60,000 women to clear the war ruins, but even that amounted to no more than 5 percent of the female population – it wasn’t a mass phenomenon. In the British Sector, Treber says, only 0.3 percent of the women joined in the hard work. Yet it wasn’t just the women who were reserved when it came to clearing the war debris; men weren’t crazy about the task, either. In the eyes of the Germans, it was anything but honorable for people to show their “willingness to rebuild.” In fact, most Germans regarded clearing rubble as punishment – and for a reason. During the war, the Nazis made soldiers, the Hitler Youth, forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners clear the bombed cities after Allied air raids.

This checks out when you read American military history of occupation after the war. In fact, while a number like 60,000 sounds large, first-person accounts explain what they actually worked on in terms of an entire country reduced to rubble.

“We had 20,000 (people) per shift and we worked 24 hours a day with lights, generator sets — so there were 60,000 people,” Delbridge said. “We had more women than men that did all of the earth moving… and they moved the earth by hand.” In all, records from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of History estimate that more than 9.8 million work hours went into the [Tempelhof Airstrip] effort between military personnel and local Germans. Local Germans – mostly women according to Delbridge – accounted for the vast majority of that figure (more than 9.6 million work hours).

Thus it was 60,000 people, mostly women, who had cleared and built one airstrip. Undoubtedly an important project, yet that was just one airstrip.

For another simple number check, during WWII the Nazis deported 75,000 people into Leipzig to do forced labor including punishing rubble removal as “Ostarbeiter”.

Soviet prisoners of war removing rubble in the centre of Leipzig (Leipzig city archive)

The mostly forgotten “Ostarbeiter”, despite numbering far more than the Trümmerfrau, was in addition to the large slave labor supply out of Buchenwald concentration camps.

Here’s another typical image courtesy of Hamburg almost completely erased by the “big” Trümmerfrau story.

Concentration camp prisoners, many from satellite camps of Neuengamme, remove corpses of German civilians after Allied bombings of Hamburg. Germany, August 1943. Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia

Thus, a subset of 60,000 people clearing all of Berlin seems to NOT add up. It is dwarfed by the bigger picture of who removed rubble and when. One important airstrip indeed could be credited to tens of thousands of Trümmerfrau by the U.S. military, but what does that really represent about Berlin’s reconstruction?

…in a voluntary recruitment drive in Duisburg in the West German industrial Ruhr-area in December 1945, 10,550 men volunteered — and 50 women. Such evidence suggests that when they were not compelled to do so, German women did not volunteer in great numbers. […] The divided city of Berlin was a special case. Here, large numbers of women did clear rubble — about 26,000 women in total, and the term Trümmerfrauen originated in West Berlin. This large number was due to the fact that women far outnumbered men in Berlin — in the age group 20–39, there were 250,000 men and 500,000 women in Berlin in 1947.

Perhaps the thing that rings most hollow is how the German narrative tried to frame Nazi women after WWII as suffering hard labor, at the very same time that concentration camps were being fully investigated.

As a young woman who had grown up almost exclusively under the Third Reich, Frau Naß admits the end of the war threw all her beliefs into question: “We were totally disillusioned, because as girls we had gone through the Hitler Youth,” she says. “You have to imagine how you would react if the whole system you had been brought up in simply didn’t exist anymore. People just couldn’t grasp it.”

The lack of slaves?

Hard work really hit the Nazi girls hard, I guess, when they realized they couldn’t expect Hitler’s promises of slavery to work for them anymore. Their dream of easy living through slavery wasn’t easy to let go of apparently, and some say we should appreciate them more for it.

The suffering of these women isn’t even appreciated.

Here’s a good description of what is meant when “the whole system you had been brought up in simply didn’t exist anymore“:

Not only were the women not volunteering to help in the rebuilding, the men weren’t signing up either. It was not seen as honorable to help rebuild. In fact, it was considered punishment. The reason for that lies in the fact that the Nazi party forced soldiers, Hitler Youth, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners to clean up the rubble in Berlin during the war. After the war, the authorities began using prisoners of war and former members of the Nazi party. Only when progress was insufficient using those forced laborers did the country turn to the general population for help. In the West, the help was voluntary…. Berlin encouraged participation by making the second-highest category of food ration cards available to the Trümmerfrauen. They showed images of smiling women cheerfully lugging stones and bricks. The image was repeated so many times, it is ingrained in the German collective consciousness.

A small group of reluctant volunteer women, only showing up for highly valuable ration cards, seems to be what became an ingrained German propaganda image of willing hard workers. Was it meant to be a subtle nod back to arbeit macht frei?

Some have started to study whether such propaganda was a calculated effort by Nazis after they surrendered to coldly erase the memory of those who had suffered actual hard labor under their tyranny. A strange irony is emerging. Clearing rubble was punishment to be avoided by German women, until “canonization” for hard work was on the table and then suddenly it was appropriated by them as a symbol of pride.

The focus of this research project is to investigate the Austrian “Trümmerfrauen”-myth as the idea that the removal of debris after World War II in Vienna was mainly done by voluntary female workers. To this end, previously unprocessed holdings of the Wiener Stadt und Landesarchiv will be systematically recorded and analyzed for the first time. From these holdings it becomes clear that the work in Vienna was primarily done by former National Socialists who were compelled by law to work. …this expiatory work by former NSDAP members could give rise to the Austrian “Trümmerfrauen”-myth decades later.

A Trümmerfrau at work. Source: Gleisdreieck by Günter Gras
Security

South Africa Opens Investigation Into “Lady R” Arms Shipment to Russia

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As much as South Africa has angrily protested foreign intelligence for exposing suspected arms shipments by Transmorflot Russia’s Lady R (Turkish built and formerly a Roll-On/Roll-Off Car Carrier SLOMAN PRODUCER)… the latest move to appoint an internal investigation has exposed large domestic disputes about global identity.

…President will appoint a judge (retired) to investigate this matter. This is where we find ourselves regarding whatever claim has been made about the alleged transfers of arms to Russia. On 28 May 2023, a three-person panel was appointed by the president, headed by Judge Phineas Mojapelo (retired).

“The panel is currently hard at work in order to bring this matter to its ultimate conclusion within its mandate. The Panel has been granted a six (6) week period to conclude its investigation.”

“Within its mandate” is code for under a rug.

The official opposition’s ire was raised by the reports with Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen leading the charge.

“Hiding the findings of the report will only further damage South Africa’s international standing, as it will create legitimate fears of a cover-up. The fact that Ramaphosa has suddenly announced his intention to hide the report from the public suggests he has already become aware of incriminating information he wants to hide from public view to protect his government.

It seems likely at this point that South Africa thought it would facilitate arms transfer to Russia by allowing a sanctioned ship to transit its port, intermediary for secretive private cargo handled by foreign military intelligence… and get away with it by claiming official “know nothing” status.

…the Minister speculated about the possibility of a private company potentially utilising the Lady R to transport illegal arms or other contraband destined for Russia.

Given South Africa’s dubious past role in arms deals — like the 1980s when it flipped the NRA in America from a regulator to the thin veneer for gun makers violating sanctions — this ship represents much more than a single port incident.

It’s a giant domestic bone of contention. Should South Africans be allowed, even secretively, to passively enrich themselves by facilitating armed conflicts elsewhere? There’s a much larger matter here, of moving past lingering national indignities and achieving respect for law and order.

It reminds me of Chinatown corruption in San Francisco (facilitating illegal arms shipments) finally being confronted and then taken down by a Chinese-American Mayor.