Tesla Model X Owner Says His Vehicle Crashed Itself
A California man is looking for answers — and repairs — after he claims his five-day-old Tesla Model X unexpectedly accelerated into a building at full speed as he was attempting to park.
Puzant Ozbag took to the Tesla forum to describe the June 5 incident, which launched his vehicle into the wall of an Irvine store and left his wife with minor airbag-related injuries.
In his words:
Our 5 day old Tesla X today while entering a parking stall suddenly and unexpectedly accelerated at high speed on its own climbing over 39 feet of planters and crashing into a building.
The airbags deployed and my wife’s arms have burn marks as a consequence.
This could have easily been a fatal accident if the car’s wheels were not turned slightly to the left. If they were straight, it would have gone over the planters and crashed into the store in front of the parking stall and injured or killed the patrons
The acceleration was uncontrollable, seemed maximum and the car only stopped because it hit the building and caused massive damage to the building.
Following the crash, Ozbag called his Tesla delivery consultant, who put him in touch with the automaker’s roadside assistance provider. The vehicle was towed to a AAA storage facility.
When questioned by forum commenters, the owner said the vehicle was operating at very low speeds, wasn’t in Autopilot mode, nor was it using the “summon” feature. Ozbag said Autopilot only engages at speeds above 18 miles per hour, and he was only going three to five miles per hour at the time.
Ozbag told the forum he wanted Tesla to find out why his Model X behaved the way it did.
“That is the question I want Tesla to answer,” he wrote. “A software glitch or a computer malfunction, either way the results could have been much worse and needs to be fully investigated.”
Regardless of whether the crash was caused by a malfunction or human error, the Model X has been a thorn in Tesla’s side since it first rolled off the assembly line. Most consumer complaints target the vehicle’s signature “falcon wing” doors, which can unexpectedly open and close on their own.
The electric automaker is currently being sued by a man who says door glitches rendered his Model X unsafe and undriveable. During last week’s public shareholders meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk delivered his most recent apology to Model X owners for the inconvenience, and said that imminent software upgrades will tame the wonky doors.
More by Steph Willems
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If the vehicle has hydraulic brakes, and those brakes are in reasonable operating condition, application of the brake (the actual brake, not the pedal to the right of it that you mistook for the brake) will stop the car. End of discussion. The only exception MIGHT be if you travel at highway speeds riding the brake long enough to cause terminal brake fade. I'm not even sure if this can be done except on a four wheel drum brake vehicle. End of discussion. Laws of physics.
So, when I was 14, my auto mechanics teacher used to let us move vehicles around the parking lot and in and out of bays. Once, When moving a vehicle, I managed to stomp on the accelerator instead of the brake. Thankfully, The vehicle was still in park! I would never of realized what I had done had the engine not spooled up, however - if you asked me, I'd have told you I pressed the brake. I've seen two occasions where someone pulling into a parking spot instead gunned it over one of those parking lot medians and scraped the crap out of their undercarriage. Thankfully both times they seem to have recovered, reversed, and no worse the wear except for their pride and scraped up undercarriage. The local drug store near me had THREE instances of someone running through their front door in a year. They now have huge metal-and-concrete barriers up to prevent that sort of thing in the future. I think what's more surprising to me than the fact that this happens, is that we don't really have a good "fix". We don't really want cars to not accelerate when we want them to, but anecdotally, this seems to happen quite a lot, and I'll wager property damage isn't the only issue sometimes. How do you solve it? Should modern cars, which have SBS systems to brake when drivers do not, also detect when a vehicle is too close to an object in front and refuse to accelerate?