The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Tennessee recently published this press release.
…Mohammed Al-Abadi, 51, imported counterfeit motor vehicle airbag parts from China and assembled the parts to make counterfeit airbags. Al-Abadi then sold the fake airbags on eBay to unsuspecting automobile repair shops and individual customers for prices ranging from $100 to $725 each.
A 22 year old mother of two was just killed in Florida by one of these counterfeit eBay airbags.
In related news, the Japanese Takata airbag explosion deaths, a problem tracked since 2015, apparently just climbed to 26 victims.
This death [in a 2003 vehicle that did not follow a recall] is the first one of a passenger airbag explosion and brings the total number of deaths in the United States linked to Takata airbag explosions to 26, the administration said.
In just one recent crash a victim’s family was awarded nearly $3 million after proving the airbag killed him.
Tocarious Johnson’s death was initially being investigated as a homicide after authorities believed he was shot. However, police said an autopsy showed the 20-year-old died from his injuries he sustained when the 2010 Dodge Charger he was driving left the roadway and crashed.
Beasley Allen and The Vance Law Firm represented Johnson’s family in securing the settlement. According to a news release, lawyers uncovered evidence that the driver’s side door airbag inflator “ruptured violently during the accident, much like a hand grenade, shooting shrapnel from the metal inflator” toward Johnson.
Notably, Stellantis just ordered a new recall of nearly 70,000 Dodge Chargers to replace the airbags installed between July 2018 and May 2021, and included this line:
As of February 21, 2024, FCA US is not aware of any accidents or injuries potentially relating to this issue in all markets.
Related? Tocarious Johnson’s death.
More cases in court like this are expected as even American airbag companies like ARC in Tennessee are refusing to recall their product despite seven deaths.
In a May letter to ARC Automotive(opens in a new tab), U.S. regulators blamed “over pressurization” for the issue and said airbag inflators “when not defective” are “designed to save lives.”
“Air bag inflators that project metal fragments into vehicle occupants, rather than properly inflating the attached air bag, create an unreasonable risk of death and injury,” a the letter from the NHTSA asserted.
The company has so far refused to act, setting the stage for a potential legal battle.
Perhaps in a tragic way the Chinese counterfeits on eBay will force safety issues to be better handled by American airbag companies. If all these bags are potentially defective death traps, why pay higher prices for domestic dangers? ARC is destroying their own market by flagrantly ignoring safety, opening the door to competitive Chinese products that also can kill Americans.
A new owner seems surprised that Tesla “auto steer” is unfit for use. A video was just posted to YouTube claiming Autopilot tried to kill them.
The failure of sensors is easy to explain when watching the video. A concrete barrier suddenly shows reflective yellow safety stripes to the left, while the left shoulder is a solid yellow line.
The Tesla abruptly veers left across the solid yellow into the shoulder towards the barrier, thinking that’s the new lane because it falsely registered the vertical reflective concrete barrier stripes as a horizontal road surface marking.
On Friday, March 22, Yuma police said Ray was driving a 2022 Tesla eastbound on County 16th Street at a high rate of speed and did not stop at the stop sign at Avenue 3E.
The Tesla then crashed with a 2006 Toyota Scion driving southbound on Avenue 3E.
Yuma police said Gonzalez, who was driving the Toyota, was ejected from his vehicle and died.
You don’t have cables coming out of your walls, you have outlets to plug into. It’s perhaps obvious that this is how the EV market should also work.
Yet, for some odd design reason in America, EV chargers always have cables permanently attached… which in reality means octopus-like chargers are damaged when their ugly, long and floppy cables are stolen.
It begs the question why an EV isn’t designed for a retractable cable like every other major electrical appliance (e.g. oven or dryer). Or have a cable that detaches on both ends, like everyone’s laptop or phone.
In fact, in the EU everyone uses the outlet and brings a cable, meaning anyone can pull their EV up to a light pole on the street and plug in. Easy, reliable, no mess, plus far less risk of failure to charge because a socket design on existing light poles is so much simpler to secure from damage.
Tesla talks nonsense about branded, proprietary, competitive charging cables… while the EU quietly and professionally deploys 99% more infrastructure as outlets.
The EU will completely outpace the US on EV infrastructure because of such intelligence in quiet and almost hidden distributed power, reflecting the lack of any need for America to slowly roll out large wasteful concentrated “stations” covered in advertisements.
Given 2 lbs of copper runs in a large charging cable, and the rush of copper theft, it makes even less sense that Tesla has been building centralized ugly zones where an attacker can quickly hit a strangely numbered 88 of their cables, to recycle them at around $10-20 each.
Tesla owners often choose standard EV chargers over Tesla chargers, but they have trouble seeing both signs. Note Tesla has wrapped their charging stations in orange to help, but their cars still keep knocking them over.
Concentrated charging stations into a single area, is a truly dumb concept. Why did anyone ever think this made any sense at all? Centralizing charging stations with all their expensive delicate cables to be dangling and damaged, instead of spreading out simple reliable sockets, are even dumber. Outlets are the future like it’s 1924 again.
Electricity runs practically everywhere today. Trying to undo Westinghouse and go back to Edison’s dream of limited reach is peak ignorance in American history. And what could be more ironic than a company named Tesla doing the exact opposite of what Westinghouse would do?
Westinghouse was horrified by the reports of Kemmler’s execution [by Edison’s cruel designs]. “It has been a brutal affair,” he said. “They could have done better with an ax.”
Even more to the point, Tesla unnecessarily modified EU charging equipment made by Mennekes to put their brand on it. They could have left it a standard Mennekes product instead.
Tesla owners have never heard of Mennekes. Note the outlet in the original design.
Terrible concepts, terrible designs, terrible operations… that’s the T now in Tesla.
The Houston Police Department tells KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding that 18 of the 19 charging stations had their cables stolen, according to a report that was filed by a Tesla service technician on Monday.
Kind of them to leave one cable behind, I guess? Here’s another case with local analysis included.
Thieves are targeting high-powered Tesla and other EV charging stations and stealing the heavy cable for the copper metal inside. In Vallejo, someone cut cables from nine charging stations…
“You know, they left five charging stations. I’m pretty sure after they racked up, I don’t know what the quantity was, but almost 20 cables with the nozzles. Those are extremely heavy, so I’m imagining that’s all they could haul at one given time,” [retired Marine and former investigator] Beckler said.
This has been going on for years already, with far too little discussion about the basic risk economics. The plug end and cable typically are the most expensive parts of a level 2 EVSE. Here’s the big news from 2022:
…a Tesla Supercharger at a Meijer grocery store in Cincinnati, Ohio, had its cables cut. The post notes that a Tesla mobile technician arrived to repair the cut cables and reportedly told people that this was the third time in a week that cables were cut at the Supercharger station.
So you think Tesla should just keep putting cables back on repeatedly, at huge expense in time and materials, to be cut again? With no changes in design?
Ugh. Enough already.
Two obvious fixes for this, which can rapidly advance the safety and security of EV charging.
Switch regulations so the US moves away from fixed cables and to an open socket design. Drivers bring their own cables, always (with liquid-cooled DC extreme chargers perhaps being an exception). Have a simple secure door covering the socket, which can be tied to payment. Have a simple electromag cable locking mechanism during charge.
Switch regulations so the US rapidly pushes charging sockets into existing infrastructure. Light poles on streets and in parking lots, and especially at gas stations, should have standard EV charging sockets. Every gas station should be mandated to provide at least two high speed charging sockets, like how they already have been forced to provide the public restrooms, air and water.
Come on people, this is not that hard to solve. Blink even announced US light pole charging in 2020. Why is every city in America not jumping in this option already?
The pole mounting system is also beneficial in communities transitioning their streetlights into power-efficient LED systems. These LED system lights allow the excess power to operate the pole-mounted EV charging station, turning every streetlight into a potential charging destination.
Get rid of the cables and any light pole is an EV outlet!
Tesla (with the real Tesla rolling in his grave) is doing the Edison thing with EV chargers because they were trying to get everyone stuck into their centrally planned, centrally controlled system of scarcity to enrich one man. That’s more Edison than anything, opposite of the real Tesla.
Of course the Tesla plan, in its ahistorical backwards thinking, is going to fall apart from the most basic known threats. We’ve known since the time of Egyptian pharaohs.
It’s way past time for America to move on step up and get serious about EV infrastructure.
