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