Unintended acceleration in 2024 MG4 Trophy LR

[ReintjeWA]

Huh, that works? How often and at what speeds do you do that?

The only trick I heard until now was switching to Neutral and braking.

The car also uses friction brakes when in reverse, fyi. I scrub every now and then by switching to neutral on an empty road.

 

[gary333]

I researched this a bit more and this seems like a terrible idea. It can quickly overheat the discs or even damage components (they are not made to accelerate while fighting against the brakes).

So I guess I'll stick to braking hard a few times or switching to Neutral

Give it up, think about what you have typed here

 

[decrep]

He did say "light pressure"

 

[siteguru]

Is the theory that pressing the accelerator overrides the car's intent to increase the regen %age when pressing the brake pedal, so the physical brakes are used instead?

 

[Vlyn]

Is the theory that pressing the accelerator overrides the car's intent to increase the regen %age when pressing the brake pedal, so the physical brakes are used instead?

You can just put it into Neutral for that, then it's 100% friction brakes on the MG4. What they are proposing is braking while having the motor trying to accelerate at the same time. Which I guess can work, but when I read about it it seems risky and very taxing for the components

I'm surprised the car would let that happen at all as usually braking would switch off the accelerator.

 

[gary333]

Is the theory that pressing the accelerator overrides the car's intent to increase the regen %age when pressing the brake pedal, so the physical brakes are used instead?

Correct. The car won't try to regen whilst the accelerator is pressed lightly at slow speeds, although as we are talking about 5-10mph the level of regen would be tiny either way..

The person is confused if he thinks lightly pressing the accelerator and brake at the same time at c.5-10mph is in some how more taxing on the car than it would be accelerating fast or braking from speed. Clearly has been researching driving an ICE car and what happens if you put full brake pressure on and full accelerator in an older manual car.

We're talking about lightly scrubbing the brakes here, we're not talking about trying to pull tree stumps up.

 

[gary333]

You can just put it into Neutral for that, then it's 100% friction brakes on the MG4. What they are proposing is braking while having the motor trying to accelerate at the same time. Which I guess can work, but when I read about it it seems risky and very taxing for the components

I'm surprised the car would let that happen at all as usually braking would switch off the accelerator.

Yet you're happy to cause strain on the reduction gear placing it from Neutral back in to Drive......

 

[Vlyn]

Yet you're happy to cause strain on the reduction gear placing it from Neutral back in to Drive......

That's where you're wrong, fast acceleration or braking with recuperation puts much more stress on the reduction gear. Coasting in neutral just disconnects the motor / lowers the resistance, but the only force on the reduction gear is its own inertia when you then brake with the friction brakes.

As for going Neutral to Drive, the MG4 has a VCU that first syncs things up and gradually applies torque. Without that you're right, the sudden jolt would damage things.

 

[gary333]

That's where you're wrong, fast acceleration or braking with recuperation puts much more stress on the reduction gear. Coasting in neutral just disconnects the motor / lowers the resistance, but the only force on the reduction gear is its own inertia when you then brake with the friction brakes.

Re-read what i said, i said when "you put the car back in drive"! Obviously when you put the car back in drive from neutral it places minute strain on the reduction gearbox, the same level of minute wear and tear the motor and reduction box would be under by lightly pressing both pedals.

 

[Vlyn]

Re-read what i said, i said when "you put the car back in drive"! Obviously when you put the car back in drive from neutral it places minute strain on the reduction gearbox, the same level of minute wear and tear the motor and reduction box would be under by lightly pressing both pedals.

Sorry, I edited my reply, read the second paragraph. The VCU is prepared to handle this and avoid the strain. While we have no clue what happens if you apply brake and throttle at the same time, it's not built for it.

 

[gary333]

Sorry, I edited my reply, read the second paragraph. The VCU is prepared to handle this and avoid the strain. While we have no clue what happens if you apply brake and throttle at the same time, it's not built for it.

The car can do it, it's not built for it. Just like the car can have the accelerator pressed lightly and brake pedal pressed lightly. They are exactly the same type of scenarios which the car could, if it wanted to either allow, or disallow. The fact other cars allow this to happen shows it's intentional design.

If you take one second away from your AI searching you would see that very slow speed and small levels of brake pressure are NOT going to cause any excess wear and tear compared to driving the car normally.

And finally, if it wasn't obvious, what i said about the reduction gear was said as tongue in cheek to show the ridiculousness of the argument you put forward (that wear and tear would be caused by the action of apply slight amount of braking force whilst driving forward). The car attempts to mitigate the action of returning to drive but still an amount of minute wear and tear will be encountered (moving from neutral to drive whilst still moving), however either way have so little perceptible risk that the car permits this to happen.

And for the record I perform both scrubbing at slow speed, and from high speed using neutral, and have done for at least the last 10 years of owning electric cars.

 

[OriginalBigAl]

I’ve had a similar thing this morning in my brand new m4 ev lr trophy Pulling into a parking space at supermarket, came off brake to cruise in to space and car just accelerated and hit car in front right out of their parking spot.
Terrifying the rate it picked up. I keep thinking did I slam on the accelerator but no warnings/ beeping or anything prior to hitting the car, and my foot was over the brake as I tried to slam it on as I realised what was happening so can’t have been

I did the same this morning , again pulling into a parking spot with right lock on, slightly distracted by another car leaving about 4 spots down . I went for the foot brake to scrub off the last bit of movement and hit the accelerator instead with quite a bit of force because I was expecting the larger resistance of the brake pedal. The sudden lurch caught me unawares for a brief moment before jumping on the brake pedal and juddering to an ungainly halt. No damage done but very unnerving and embarrassing, I sat there for a few minutes and gave myself a not to polite stiff lecture whilst the hairs on the back of the neck settled down.

 

[Vlyn]

I did the same this morning , again pulling into a parking spot with right lock on, slightly distracted by another car leaving about 4 spots down . I went for the foot brake to scrub off the last bit of movement and hit the accelerator instead with quite a bit of force because I was expecting the larger resistance of the brake pedal. The sudden lurch caught me unawares for a brief moment before jumping on the brake pedal and juddering to an ungainly halt. No damage done but very unnerving and embarrassing, I sat there for a few minutes and gave myself a not to polite stiff lecture whilst the hairs on the back of the neck settled down.

How does that mistake even happen? Do you use both feet to drive?

My left foot is firmly planted on the left side and I've never confused the brake vs the accelerator with my right one in 17 years of driving.

The worst I've done in my MG4 is trying to hit the clutch with my left foot (twice)

 

[decrep]

Body twisted, looking sideways?????

 

[OriginalBigAl]

How does that mistake even happen? Do you use both feet to drive?

My left foot is firmly planted on the left side and I've never confused the brake vs the accelerator with my right one in 17 years of driving.

The worst I've done in my MG4 is trying to hit the clutch with my left foot (twice)

You have only been driving 37% of the years I have so you have got plenty of time to catch up. At your age I could not believe that all the old age gits wearing glasses should be allowed to share the roads with me ! I guess that early appeal of Logan's Run has faded now muscles are aching and tired with the occasional glitches.
I applaud your aptitude in never confusing the brake and accelerator, many other people say the same, but should add ( confessed ) after never , to make their statements more believable.
Age, it comes to us all ,,,,,,,, how easy is it to cross the border from Austria to Switzerland?

 

[JonnyG]

Some AI Perplexity research raises concerns in italics below:

MG UK deny the Xpower has a vibration fault so who knows whether they would deny if there was a sudden acceleration glitch issue that couldn’t be repeated on a test drive ? If they (MG UK) denied it, obviously the AA chap took the blame to get the car fixed.

“There is no specific exact number reported yet on how many MG cars have been inspected for sudden and unexplained acceleration. However, there have been multiple incidents and investigations reported involving MG electric vehicles experiencing sudden acceleration or acceleration-related safety issues.

MG faced serious allegations after a series of uncontrolled acceleration incidents in Europe, including UK and other markets. One UK MG5 EV was declared unsafe to operate after a sudden acceleration incident during a recovery operation, leading to a 40km test drive inspection with no malfunctions found by MG but the inspection was initially charged to the owner.

Similar issues have been reported for MG ZS EV with incidents involving stuck accelerator and loss of braking power.

Owner forums and community discussions have multiple reports of unintended acceleration and ongoing MG investigations, but no public disclosure of the total number of inspected vehicles has been found.

In summary, while MG vehicles have been inspected in some cases after reported sudden acceleration events, the exact aggregate number of inspections has not been made public or found in available recent sources. The issue appears to be a serious ongoing concern with multiple customer cases but no official widespread inspection count disclosed yet.”

 

[MattyS]

Asking an AI for research is not really research though is it? They have a habit of hallucination. Did you check those statements for honesty?

 

[JonnyG]

Well they do state all the sources in teh output and we know the "UK MG5 EV was declared unsafe to operate after a sudden acceleration incident during a recovery operation," as that was covered in the Guardian Newspaper.

 

[OriginalBigAl]

In that recovery operation the AA man was driving the car , a mechanic not necessarily a professional driver and he accepted ( for whatever reason ) the blame. I would imagine its AA policy for their staff to wear safety shoes and no doubt he would be used to driving a Transit van ( or other ) with a different pedal spacing layout. He could have been wearing bulky clothing and thought I'm only giving it a short test , so did not alter the seat position . Driving an unfamiliar car and possibly under pressure and distracted with the back seat passengers breathing down his neck I wonder what possibly could have happened.???

 

[JonnyG]

Agreed who knows for sure !!! ... It's the same as the perhaps not so serious glitches MG have had with "locking drivers in their car" and the lady who had her keys locked in the boot. Probably no one believed the first person to say this happened to them at first but I think subsequent reports have proven these latter two to be a glitches on certain cars and software