[Bill W]

I have a 2019 I Pace and I have had three separate incidents of sudden unintended acceleration days (or weeks) apart in different environments, circumstances, and drivers (my wife and I both).


Has anyone else experienced sudden unintended acceleration with their I Pace?


Thank you.

 

[sciencegeek]

Was this while you had adaptive cruise control on, you were following a car but below your set point, and when you changed lanes it accelerated? That would be normal behavior. Perhaps there are other regimes where it accelerates unexpectedly when you have cruise control set. Without cruise control I'd be hard pressed to explain this in any way other than a bug or defective hardware.

Welcome, by the way!

 

[SeanM1]

I have a 2019 I Pace and I have had three separate incidents of sudden unintended acceleration days (or weeks) apart in different environments, circumstances, and drivers (my wife and I both).


Has anyone else experienced sudden unintended acceleration with their I Pace?


Thank you.

Sorry to hear that. You should log it. I never had this issue , I called two other ipace owners as well, they said no. but it seems many people have this issue with tesla. There is an investigation going on regarding this with tesla.

 

[jsimon7777]

With cruise control on, following, and a car gets out of the way or I change lanes, I forget I had cruise on at a high speed and it accelerates.
That's it. User error.

 

[epirali]

Never had anything like this, cruise control and manual. So this sounds very strange indeed.

 

[Sbingham60]

I have a 2019 I Pace and I have had three separate incidents of sudden unintended acceleration days (or weeks) apart in different environments, circumstances, and drivers (my wife and I both).


Has anyone else experienced sudden unintended acceleration with their I Pace?


Thank you.

One person posted an issue with sudden accelleration in Reverse, but not forward.
Others have reported delayed response and sudden acceleration when using adaptive cruise control. So it would be good to know if you are using Creep, if you are using Cruise, and other preferences. Things your service department will want anyway.

You should report it. Every major car MFG has had reports of sudden acceleration for a few cars and others where there is a need for a recall. This doesn't seem like recall territory.

 

[gtquan]

There were a few reports of sudden acceleration in this forum under "sudden accelatation in reverse". No follow up details were ever given by 2 of the posters and it was their only post on this forum. Makes me wonder how credible these reports are. Funny how these show up when Tesla is being investigated for this - which by the way is being "driven" by a Tesla short seller who doesn't actually own a Tesla.

I haven't had a problem with any unintended acceleration in my Ipace. By far the majority of these cases are user error - driver hit the gas thinking they were on the brake. It would be nice to get further details from anyone who has experienced this - highway speeds, stopped, had you just started the car? Did you just change gears? Where were your feet?

If this happened to me and I was sure it wasn't driver error, I would absolutely not drive the car and take it in for service. I would also want to see telemetry reports from the car.

 

[Jtdavi3]

If the stories are real, almost certainly user error (this is true for the Teslas also, btw - I'm not convinced it's being "driven by shorts" but this has been investigate in the past with no findings).

 

[CurtSprings2]

I've had the opposite problem of sudden deceleration while using adaptive cruise control. If a car in front of me changes out of my lane and then slows down the I-Pace will continue to track the vehicle and decelerate. I've had this happen on both highway and city streets. I've come close to being rear ended as the driver following me is completely surprised.

 

[gtquan]

I've had the opposite problem of sudden deceleration while using adaptive cruise control. If a car in front of me changes out of my lane and then slows down the I-Pace will continue to track the vehicle and decelerate. I've had this happen on both highway and city streets. I've come close to being rear ended as the driver following me is completely surprised.

Never had this happen to me yet but I could believe this happening. I actually rarely use min. Smart software is not that smart yet. There are reports of Teslas slowing down going under bridges/underpasses - suspect the software is interpreting shadows as a slowed car or stationary object. Autopilot is not yet ready for primetime in my opinion.

 

[CurtSprings2]

Never had this happen to me yet but I could believe this happening. I actually rarely use min. Smart software is not that smart yet. There are reports of Teslas slowing down going under bridges/underpasses - suspect the software is interpreting shadows as a slowed car or stationary object. Autopilot is not yet ready for primetime in my opinion.

I agree. Few autonomous driving features are ready. The only one that gets consistently good reviews is Cadillac super cruise but it's still limited to highway driving.

 

[jsimon7777]

Never had this happen to me yet but I could believe this happening. I actually rarely use min. Smart software is not that smart yet. There are reports of Teslas slowing down going under bridges/underpasses - suspect the software is interpreting shadows as a slowed car or stationary object. Autopilot is not yet ready for primetime in my opinion.

An engineer customer of mine said he spoke to an autonomous driving engineer about this. He claimed the Tesla system uses regular cameras, so it struggles with the sudden darkness of freeway underpasses. Encountering this, Tesla has since used GPS locations to come up with a kludge. Every time the car hits a known underpass, it overrides the software's decision to suddenly slow the car. Nice.

 

[CyberSlug]

While the kludge is interesting, that's also dangerous. If there happens to be a car hitting the brakes as they go under the overpass, the Tesla following it will be screwed. Hopefully it also looks for trace amounts of red light in front of it.

 

[jsimon7777]

To my knowledge, most if not all sophisticated "AI" systems have such kludges. Most if not all large software projects do too. Engineering is difficult, and my Google search results are mediocre on average.

 

[Bill W]

Sudden Unintended Acceleration

No cruise control on in any of the three times it happened. Two of the times we were parking (going less than 10 MPH) and one time I was coasting (regenerative braking) downhill at 40 MPH.


Where would I log this event?

 

[SeanM1]

Check to make sure you have H264. Log date and time and tell your dealer. Tesla is know for this issue but not ipace. Jag has been pretty solid post H264. BTW, I noticed you just joined , did you just get your car ?

 

[GuyDreaming]

Having driven an EV for a few years - BMW i3 - (and followed numerous EV sites - incl Tesla) this is what I believe.


It is extraordinarily unlikely that any 'Unintended acceleration' takes place and certainly not in Teslas as detailed in their response and evidenced by software experts etc. Therefore I doubt the iPace has UA unless it has a fault - unlikely too as it will have checks and balances for this situation.


But I have been caught out in our i3 similarly to as described above. Cruise control set at a lower speed than one is driving, lift off and regen kicks in until the set speed is reached and then the car stops slowing on regen and it FEELS like the car has accelerated......if this happens as one approaches an obstacle, it can be unsettling and confusing! User error...


In reverse when looking over one's shoulder with feet hovering over the pedals to accelerate or brake, I have touched the accelerator instead of the brake momentarily and in tight confines that can feel like UA - driver error. Especially as regen can confuse the situation as well


Our i3 has a minor fault which BMW can't reproduce where the accelerator pedal occasionally doesn't completely go to zero on liftoff so the regen doesn't kick in (and the car will creep very slowly in traffic - irritating!) and this can feel like a failure of sorts in traffic - especially if one relies on regen.


I believe the main reason EV drivers report UA more than ICE cars is because the regen can fool some drivers into thinking that the accelerator pedal is a 'brake', so if the car at slow speeds is not slowing as required (on regen) the accelerator is pressed in error.


The instant and sound-free EV acceleration then takes drivers by surprise and they 'freeze'/panic rather than lifting off and/or braking (which will over-ride the accelerator whether they lift off or not). Of course if they then push the accelerator they will arrive at the garage door/fence/wall rather rapidly.


We have lived in a world of slow responding, noisy and non-regen ICE cars so long, our sub-concious driving instincts won't die so quickly. EVs are sold/bought and relished on this instant silent response but for many drivers it can be problematic unless they stay alert and adapt.


I even read a motoring review in the UK newspaper of an EV, where the reviewer claimed that regen braking was dangerous (and should be turned off!) because drivers 'relied' on regen and were not prepared to move their foot over to braking!! He said he was a safer driver because his foot 'hovered' over the brake when he needed to slow in an ICE car due to lack of regen.....No accounting for incompetents!

 

[epirali]

@GuyDreaming: only exception I experienced was bad design. The i3 would release the regen breaking when you turned the front wheel, which meant the car started accelerating into the curve (when it has been breaking before). No other EV I had showed this behaviour and is insane driving dynamics (and from BMW no less).

 

[GuyDreaming]

@GuyDreaming: only exception I experienced was bad design. The i3 would release the regen breaking when you turned the front wheel, which meant the car started accelerating into the curve (when it has been breaking before). No other EV I had showed this behaviour and is insane driving dynamics (and from BMW no less).

That's an interesting observation - I have not noticed that so I'll try it out next drive!


What model i3 do/did you have? - we have a 94Ah model 2017/18 (demo built late 2017 but registered and called a 2018). We test drove a previous 64Ah 2016 for a few days and the regen was stronger (which I liked) but it was softened for the 94Ah (apparently too many people couldn't drive it smoothly in traffic...!) and some regen shifted to the mech brakes.


Maybe the regen on turning was changed as well?


Your comment re BMW and vehicle dynamics reminds me to say that much as I love the i3, I think the suspension/steering geometry is sorely lacking and the steering is wayward and the car wanders on irregular road surfaces - astonishing from BMW of all people?!!

 

[epirali]

I had an earlier one (first gen) and that may have been fixed. Another thing that fixed later was when the cruise control would detect an object would immediately kick in full region even at high-speed. This, in combination with phantom detections on a highway was “fun.” Later years they changed to a coast before braking allowing the driver to take over.

It was almost like the i3 team had never met or talked to anyone on the i8 team, or any other car group in
BMW. It had behaviors that seemed designed by engineers with no real life experience. Another one was trunk auto lock, and no button or lease in the back, so you had to carry your key, or go back in the car to release the trunk when you hopped out.