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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-m ... r-68500233

A runaway electric car had to be boxed in between police cars after an electrical fault left the driver unable to brake on a motorway.
The driver of the Jaguar I-Pace had been travelling on the M58 at about 14:15 GMT on Wednesday before calling police to plead for help.

Officers were able to escort the car on to the M57 and then the M62.
It was finally halted 25 minutes later between Junction 11 for Birchwood and 12 for Eccles, police said.

I heard a report that a minimum number of buttons - maybe including an indicator "stalk" - would be required in future (good) but I can't find it now. It reminded me of a comment here about indicator controls being in the middle of the steering wheel, I thought that was mad: what if you wanted to change lanes on a roundabout - when the steering wheel was quite likely to be upside down?

The mother of all nightmares , in the olden days you could just take the ignition key out.
It has crossed my mind with my own EV, there is no ignition key, hand brake or other mechanical devices like clutch or gears.

A long time ago in a Rover 216 I was driving through France on a skiing trip and my throttle cable froze up at 90 mph. I had 3 passengers who where all asleep and I tried the brake but its very difficult to slow the car down more than about 20mph let alone bring it to a stop.

I pushed the clutch pedal in and of course the engine revved to the red line and I did not want to damage the engine. I thought about turning off the ignition but I thought I would probably right off the catalytic converter so I did not want to do that either. But of course I would have done is there was no other option.

The motorway was empty and straight so I just cruised for a few minutes whilst I awakened my 3 passengers and tried to figure a way out. When the two girls in the back realised what the situation was they started screaming. I tried to calm them down by repeatedly slamming the accelerator down to try and free it. At this point the girls started to hysterically scream even more.

Eventually my bashing of the accelerator pedal finally freed it, I pulled over to the hard shoulder and sprayed all the linkages with WD40 (the fixer of everything in the ICE age). Its the sort of thing I can laugh about now.

That's a very good story! (I have nothing that comes anywhere close...)

This story smells fishy to me.
Every case that's been reported globally of "unintended acceleration" in an EV that resulted in an accident turned out to be driver input error - ie they pressed the accelerator instead of the brake, or were just going way, way way too fast for their skills and road conditions.

I can't quite believe that he didn't try taking it out of drive, or pressing the brake? Or just using the hard shoulder?

AE-NMidlands wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 10:57 pm That's a very good story! (I have nothing that comes anywhere close...)

I had a vauxhall carlton estate that the cruise control became permanently on as I was driving south from Northumbria. It wouldn't respond to the control stalk or the brake but de-clutching worked, I had to remove the control cable from the carburetor to get home safely. I just managed without cruise control until I retired it and have never used cruise control since, and that was when Tony was prime minister.

dan_b wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 8:40 am This story smells fishy to me.
Every case that's been reported globally of "unintended acceleration" in an EV that resulted in an accident turned out to be driver input error - ie they pressed the accelerator instead of the brake, or were just going way, way way too fast for their skills and road conditions.

I can't quite believe that he didn't try taking it out of drive, or pressing the brake? Or just using the hard shoulder?

I think it might well be genuine as there was a very similar story a month or two ago - so similar that I read this one carefully to see whether it was the same incident being reported again for some reason.

AE-NMidlands wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 9:24 am

dan_b wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 8:40 am This story smells fishy to me.
Every case that's been reported globally of "unintended acceleration" in an EV that resulted in an accident turned out to be driver input error - ie they pressed the accelerator instead of the brake, or were just going way, way way too fast for their skills and road conditions.

I can't quite believe that he didn't try taking it out of drive, or pressing the brake? Or just using the hard shoulder?

I think it might well be genuine as there was a very similar story a month or two ago - so similar that I read this one carefully to see whether it was the same incident being reported again for some reason.

Apparently he did use the hard shoulder to avoid the slower traffic, I read that from a different source.

I'm fairly sure his brakes did work but as I found to my experience decades ago its very hard to come to a stop before they overheat and you have brake fade, with the extreme torque of EVs, even harder.

Why could he not put it into Neutral ?, well our BMW i3 will, but our Telsa M3 will not !. I've only had the car over 2 years and I was not even sure, so I've just had a go and even at 15mph you get an error message saying speed to high to shift gears.

So if the spring goes on the accelerator sender, it sticks or goes faulty, its .

I'm an I-PACE owner and of course SWMBO is now a little bit freaked out.

The driver of the car in the article that was reported on Weds evening also reported the same thing happening in September last year. JLR had looked over the car after that incident and reported nothing wrong.
It's worth noting that in every case of sudden unintended acceleration by Tesla cars has been put down to "user error" or, in some cases, aftermarket floor mats becoming loose and laying on the accelerator. The I-PACE's case raises so many questions that I'm having issues believing this wasn't "user error" too. Questions such a:, having brought the car to a stop, what was done to shut it down? Why couldn't this have been done by the driver immediately after he realised there was a big problem?

I notice another article appeared today featuring some Z list "celebrity", who once had trouble stopping his I-PACE at some lights. This is probably a completely different issue. I-PACE's regenerative braking is apparently affected if you have a defective 12v battery, and you needed to give the pedal a really good shove to make the car use the friction brakes.

nowty wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 10:31 am So if the spring goes on the accelerator sender, it sticks or goes faulty, its .

I read somewhere that brake pedal input on a Tesla will take precedence over accelerator input.

I'd try this on my I-PACE but it's just been collected to go for some minor accident damage repair. Somebody drove into it in a local car park

If there was 'user error' and a carpet interfered with the pedal then there should still be an over-ride of some description. The Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) was the butt of many jokes but you still had an on/off button to get rid of it and do a fresh reboot.