Braking point: Elon Musk’s Tesla Model 3 lurching from one crisis to the next
The beleaguered Tesla Model 3 has already faced a production crisis and a 123 percent price surge. Now it has another major problem – a report says the car brakes slower than a pick-up truck.
The problem was pointed out by the US magazine Consumer Reports, which exposed the alleged braking issue with the Model 3 sedan.“The Tesla’s stopping distance of 152ft from 60mph was far worse than any contemporary car we’ve tested and about 7ft longer than the stopping distance of a Ford F-150 full-sized pickup,” it wrote.
The Consumer Reports test is designed to determine how a vehicle performs in an emergency situation. Testers speed up a car to 60mph (96kph) and slam on the brakes until the car comes to a full stop, then measure the braking distance.
CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the situation is under control and will soon be fixed. “With further refinement, we can improve braking distance beyond initial specs. Tesla won’t stop until Model 3 has better braking than any remotely comparable car,” Musk wrote in a tweet.
The report comes at a time when Tesla’s safety is being questioned following the accident involving a Tesla Model S driving in “autopilot” mode when it crashed into a stopped firetruck in Utah.
Tesla’s braking problems described in the Consumer Reports have been previously covered by Car and Driver. The magazine published a test, which said Tesla Model 3's one stop from 70mph took “an interminable 196ft.”
“I’ve been testing cars for 11 years… And in 11 years, no car has stood out with inconsistent braking like this. Some trucks have. . . . It was just weird,” Car and Driver Testing Director K.C. Colwell said in an interview with Consumer Reports.
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