As I mentioned on discord, this is completely nuts and I have some thoughts. First and foremost, when these SUA reports started coming to light, I was entirely convinced that they were cases of pedal misapplication. The angle of the cabin design and position of the drive relative to the pedal box puts you physically in a position where it’s conceivable to me that an inattentive operator would simply press the wrong pedal more often than other brands I’ve driven. This is apparently not the case, and I’ll apologize to every single person I made this argument to. I could have never conceived of such a slapdash design making its way to production vehicles.

Nest, IANAL but I feel like this leaves Tesla open to quite a lot of legal liability. First and foremost the lawsuits Tesla filed against customers for “defamation” can all be called into question at this point. Second, the property damage, injuries, and fatalities all seem like they’d be ripe for any lawyer willing to take on the case. The design is extremely poor in my non-EE opinion and if they could get an expert to testify in court that using an unfiltered 12v reference is a mistake that no engineer should have made, then they seem like they wouldn’t stand a chance. Additionally, any lawyer engaging in discovery over this issue just might find communications from engineering staff to management warning of this issue either during design or testing, if any testing was actually done. If such documents exist, it would demonstrate that Tesla knew of the deficient design and still charged ahead claiming customers were at fault. These all seem like likely scenarios to my non-expert mind.

Finally, the claim that NHTSA was told there wasn’t enough evidence for an investigation and to stop their inquiry is a major misstep by any government agency. Once the crashes started adding up, it seems to me that any inquiry into a deficient electrical or mechanical design was warranted. Especially with some of the speeds measured in these crashes and their locations at such public spots. We’ve seen pharmacies, grocery stores, small shops, large event spaces, arenas, major US intersections, and tiny european streets be the scene of so many of these crashes that I simply can not imagine dismissing an investigation. I don’t know what liability an agency like NHTSA or ODI could face, but this is a pretty serious screw-up on their behalf. It also calls into question whether a larger systems review or analysis will be done against Tesla’s vehicles. It seems like we’re relying on the private sector too much for this work, and I’m concerned there are larger systemic failures lurking under the covers here.