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Driver Says His Tesla Car Computer Froze at 83 MPH on Freeway

Zoidz

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Yikes! Let's hope that Rivian has better error handling and watchdogs!

A new Tesla Model 3 owner faced quite the predicament while driving on a freeway last Thursday when he says his car’s main computer features froze up, leaving him with an unresponsive main screen and a car stuck going 83 miles per hour. The screen froze and numerous buttons and switches, like turn signals and hazard lights, stopped working, Javier Rodriguez said. The brakes continued to function but the accelerator stopped responding.
...
He said Tesla issued a repair report stating they had “diagnosed and found poor communication from charge port door causing power conversion system to shut off in order to protect on board components during drive.”
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Attesan997

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Who’s to say they will? With millions of Teslas sold this appears to be a unique failure, if it wasn’t I’d wager it would get more attention than an article on daily beast. It’s great to think there‘s functionality preventing this sort of thing from happening but even If that were true you can’t plan for every failure.
 

Mcdubjr

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Sounds like the same as an ICE car‘s engine dying, which I’m guessing happens every day (maybe Im very wrong here).
 

2020

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I've had that happen a couple of times on the Tesla and sort of happened yesterday on my Rivian. Not a big deal, the car functions fully without the screen. Just had to reset the screen.
Rivian R1T R1S Driver Says His Tesla Car Computer Froze at 83 MPH on Freeway IMG_DB4BE0551782-1
 

dduffey

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The article claims the car was "stuck going 83 miles per hour" which was not true.

When the infotainment screen freezes one can no longer hear turn signals, etc. That is certainly concerning as a driver, but the article or driver is overreacting assuming they were not working.

As the article already over exaggerates for clicks (it was not stuck at speed) it's hard to place any faith in the other claims.
 

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Dark-Fx

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Probably a good thing he wasn't going 88 mph, could have seen some serious shit.
 

ajdelange

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Screen blanking in Telsas whilst driving is unusual but it does happen. The driver still has full control of the vehicle but he's blind until he reboots which he does by simultaneously depressing the two buttons on the steering wheel.
 

User433

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Can you do a screen reset while driving?
 

Taycanfrank

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I like how dramatic that sounds. I'm willing to bet the car was still functioning (mostly) normally from a driving POV, it was just the displays that turned off and this guy panicked.

He probably thought the blinkers weren't working because they weren't making sound and if the accelerator actually stopped working how would he have maintained 83mph? :CWL:

Just pull over and call a tow. This stuff happens to every car ever made.
 

LeoH

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It is easy to say what the driver could've done and what they should have felt. But if he is going at 83mph, there are 100 things going through their head at that moment while they try and evaluate their safety; it looks this is the first time they were put in such a position.
 

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ajdelange

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Just pull over and call a tow.
No need. Just re-boot. No need, even, to pull over but that might not be a bad idea.

Now if indeed the inverters shut down, a re-boot isn't going to fix that.
 

gombater

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This makes me wonder how redundant the safety features are on these new vehicles. the more we leave mechanical controls and move to electronic controls [ie, 'fly by wire'] the more I wonder, what is a 'normal' driver supposed to do when everything goes blank? Functional Safety criteria is supposed to be used to determine potential failures and to assure mitigation [backup or redundant control systems] are in place, but often it's an engineers opinion on what they think the driver will do in scenarios such as this. A trained automotive engineer will act most likely differently in this scenario than your 18 yr old who wants to drive the cool car to prom, for example...
 

Mcdubjr

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What an exaggerated story. His car broke down. Wow! You mean he had to use his brakes and pull to the side! Never heard of such a thing! This is just anti EV/Tesla clickbait.
 

zipzag

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What an exaggerated story. His car broke down. Wow! You mean he had to use his brakes and pull to the side! Never heard of such a thing! This is just anti EV/Tesla clickbait.
It is freaky when it happens unexpectedly. But the implication that the car was uncontrollable is very unlikely. Tesla and I'm sure Rivian is designed so that a main computer reboot doesn't affect drivability.

But all new EV owners should be prepared that the main screen might go blank and to keep flying the plane.
 

Scoiatael

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I've had my Model Y screen go blank while in a parking lot. Car was still perfectly driveable. I just parked and reset it twice and it was back to normal.
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