For most of us, the most important attribute in a car we're thinking of purchasing is reliability. And that's a quality which is in short supply in the realm of Electric Vehicles. A few recent stories will help illustrate this point.
He managed to get through the roundabout, and then faced a long stretch of straight roadway. He assumed that the car would slow down and stop if he kept his foot off of the accelerator. But that did not happen. Fearing for his life, Mr. Morrison considered jumping out of the car, but he has mobility issues, and he worried that even at 30 mph -- the speed the E.V. was stuck on -- he would be seriously injured.
Instead he called emergency services, which sent the police to help. They also put engineers on the phone, who were surprised to learn that it wasn't even a self-driving car. They had no idea what to do. Once the police cars arrived, one pulled in front of the car, another behind, with a third next to him. He tossed his keys into the car alongside, but the E.V. didn't stop.
Eventually the police decided to attempt a controlled crash into the back of one of their vehicles. That did the trick, though they kept the cop car in place, for fear that the E.V. would start up again. When the investigator arrived, several hours later, “he plugged in the car to do a diagnostic check, and there was pages of faults,” Morrison said. This may be the first time this has happened with an electric car in Scotland. But it’s hard to imagine it will be the last.
The first charge went fine, but the second stop, however, in Albertville, Minnesota, was a disaster. The fast charger there brought up a faulty connection message. Bala called the help line but there was no answer. He then redirected to a nearby charging station in Elk River, Minn., but the charger there wouldn’t work either.
Bala was left in a difficult spot. His battery had only about 15 kilometers of juice left, and there were no charging stations in that range. Eventually he decided on the only possible course: Ditch the Lightning. He called a tow truck to bring it to a nearby Ford dealership, while the family rented a Toyota 4Runner -- gas powered, of course -- to complete their trip to Chicago.
The CBC story reports that other cars were able to use the charging stations at issue with no problem that day. So it was apparently the car, not the station, that was at fault. Again, a reliability issue. No one has a hard time putting gas in a car.
These days Bala is only using the truck for commuting to work. “To have a more than $100,000 car to just drive in the city… that was not expected,” Bala said.
Banner’s family has sued Tesla over the autopilot crash, one of at least ten active suits pertaining to autopilot. Some of them are expected to go to court in the next year. Says the Post: “Together, these cases could determine whether the driver is solely responsible when things go wrong in a vehicle guided by autopilot — or whether the software should also bear some of the blame.” This is significant for Tesla, which has ever more driver assistance technology in its cars, more than any other car maker. If Tesla prevails, that will continue. If not, it will face financial and legal consequences, and the shift to driverless cars will slow down measurably.
The Post did an analysis of federal data which found that cars guided by autopilot have been involved in more than 700 crashes, at least 19 of which have been fatal, since it became a feature in 2014. Plaintiffs contend that they were misled into believing that cars on autopilot are “safer than a human-operated vehicle.” Banner’s lawyers argue that the technology failed when it didn’t brake at the oncoming truck or issue a warning about it.
Litigation remains ongoing, and the outcome of this case for Banner's family remains unclear. But whatever the result, their husband and father is dead. And all of these incidents are evidence that we're getting way out over our skis on this new, still-evolving technology. Tesla should go back to the drawing board, and the rest of us would do well to stick with the tried and true gas-and-diesel cars which have served us so well before. until something better and more reliable comes along. If it ever does.
Article tags: Britain, Canada, electric vehicles, Scotland, Tesla
Climate Brat Greta has EV a Nisson Leaf
...and what about all those electrical connections, electronic components, and "driver assistance" technology on EV's and other new automobiles?
In ten years of wear and exposure to humidity, salt used on roadways, and electrolysis a lot of components will fail. Will it be the driver assist components? We better hope it puts the brakes on and stops rather than having no brakes or a stuck accelerator circuit. Not unlike these new therapeutic vaccine treatments that have not been thoroughly tested, nobody really knows the outcomes, but a lot of us can intuit what's coming.