I’m very surprised that there isn’t legislation requiring a way to stop the car if it does run away. (Although it’s quite possible that’s what the police used once they got in the car, and the user missed it in the panic)
Kinda like how you should know how to stall engine runaway on a diesel.
This was just a clickbait piece by the BBC. “Kidnapped by EV” gets clicks, “car malfunction brought to an end safely by police” gets no clicks.
Either the driver was not using the brake pedal and was expecting regenerative braking to stop him, or there was a serious malfunction of multiple mechanical and electrical systems, which could also happen on a non EV with the same result.
I nearly changed the title, honestly. It’s a bit “catch the bastard who shat down my chimney”.
The brakes on electric cars are not magic software defined wizardry they are normal hydraulics… so if one was to push hard on the brake pedal even with the motors engaged it would slow down. And it would be extremely easy to prove because the pads would be heavily worn presumably if he was stamping on them and the motors were so powerful to keep it at 30!
“Old man cant drive new car” until there is some more evidence. Sad really! Thanks for sharing for the lol
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A driver has told how he was “kidnapped” by his runaway electric car and forced to dodge red lights and roundabouts.
Brian Morrison, 53, from Glasgow, said he was heading home from work on Sunday night when he said his brand new MG ZS EV became stuck at 30mph.
"Then I heard a loud grinding noise that sounded like brake pads, but because it was such a new car I knew it couldn’t be a problem with them.
Mr Morrison initially called his wife in a panic to ask her to warn vehicles ahead of him that he could not stop his car.
Police asked Mr Morrison to throw his electronic key through their van window before driving off, and then tried forcibly shutting off the engine - but nothing could stop the car.
He was also asked to hold the power button for a couple of seconds which also failed to stop it and the entire dashboard lit up with faults.
The original article contains 773 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Scary story. But something that doesn’t quite make sense to me, as it wasn’t a self driving car as far as I could tell,
Morrison said: "Eventually I came up to a roundabout which slowed the car down to about 15mph and the police van was waiting for me on the other side.
Why did it slow down for this roundabout? Was it a coincidence, since previously the roundabout was taken at 30mph? Or was the car aware it was a roundabout and slowed itself?
Some cars have adaptive cruise control, and they use sat nav data to locate speed limits. He’s basically been on cruise control and didn’t know how to cancel it.
Edit - there was a malfunction, but the cruise control got locked and for some reason there’s no way to force it off.
And if you’re going along, then change direction, you’ll lose speed.
Honestly, it’s a pretty good job by the police. They worked out a way to slow it down cleanly, and went for it.
Cruise control does not force the car to stay at the requested speed if the driver is telling it to slow down (nor prevent it speeding up if the driver deems it necessary), that would be ridiculously dangerous. It just makes it a little easier to cruise at a constant speed.
It was a brand new car. Faulty off the production line.
Absolutely!
