See, this is one of the things that drive me batty with so much new hardware.

With an old car, if this happened you’d get warnings. If a door is open your car would warn you and beep occasionally. It was still an entirely functional car.

But now… cars won’t warn you, they stop you. It doesn’t even feel like my car at that point.

Car is not a gangster.

See, this is one of the things that drive me batty with so much new hardware.

With an old car, if this happened you’d get warnings. If a door is open your car would warn you and beep occasionally. It was still an entirely functional car.

But now… cars won’t warn you, they stop you. It doesn’t even feel like my car at that point.

Reading isn’t hard… If the front truck isn’t properly latched the vehicle’s speed is limited to 15 mph. Technically you can drive it to the service center.

Wait, you need to be towed if the “frunk” doesn’t close all the way???

Well if you rephrase it for a normal car it doesn’t sound so absurd. “If your hood won’t latch the car won’t let you drive at highway speeds?”

A failed latch on a front compartment can be very dangerous because it catches the wind if it opens suddenly at 60+mph. At best you are blinded, or it gets torn off to go flying into a car behind you.

As such, highway speeds should be restricted if the latch is malfunctioning. The real problem here is that Tesla doesn’t like dealers because they want that middleman money for themselves, so you often have to drive quite the distance to get it repaired. If this were a vehicle from any of the other major manufacturers most people are probably only a few miles from their nearest dealer.

Normal cars have two hood latches. Your primary latch (that you open with the hood pull in the car) and a secondary safety latch (when you reach under the hood to open it fully) so this problem is an extremely uncommon problem for a normal car.

But since this is a frunk it gets opened a lot more for storage and users would probably not be very happy about having to deal with the secondary latch on a regular basis. So they have motorized those latches for ease of use, and motorizing them adds a lot more points of failure.

But if you get in an accident and somehow blame the manufacturer then they could be liable, better to just stop you then risk lawsuits.

The US lawsuit happy culture lead to this imo

See, this is one of the things that drive me batty with so much new hardware.

With an old car, if this happened you’d get warnings. If a door is open your car would warn you and beep occasionally. It was still an entirely functional car.

But now… cars won’t warn you, they stop you. It doesn’t even feel like my car at that point.

In older cars you would die from the smallest crashes now they got all these pesky air bags ugh they are the worst

Coincidentally, I repaired the latch on my car today. There was enough grime on the bearing that the tension of the spring wasn’t enough to retain the hook screwed to the hood. Unscrewing the whole latch, cleaning the grease off and spraying some WD40 on it to prevent it from rusting fixed that right up.

It’s such a simple mechanism that the whole fix took 10 minutes, and it’s the first and only time that ever happened, after 125.000 miles.

It got stuck on a trip, the hood opened a little, right up to the second hook you mentioned, so I used some speed tape to hold the hood down and be extra safe until I made it home to fix the underlying issue. This option doesn’t exist on the ridiculous mess that is the Cybertruck.

It’s not that the idea isn’t right, it’s that they tried so hard to make it overly smart, but failed in almost every aspect.

In older cars you would die from the smallest crashes now they got all these pesky air bags ugh they are the worst

Well if you rephrase it for a normal car it doesn’t sound so absurd. “If your hood won’t latch the car won’t let you drive at highway speeds?”

A failed latch on a front compartment can be very dangerous because it catches the wind if it opens suddenly at 60+mph. At best you are blinded, or it gets torn off to go flying into a car behind you.

As such, highway speeds should be restricted if the latch is malfunctioning. The real problem here is that Tesla doesn’t like dealers because they want that middleman money for themselves, so you often have to drive quite the distance to get it repaired. If this were a vehicle from any of the other major manufacturers most people are probably only a few miles from their nearest dealer.

Normal cars have two hood latches. Your primary latch (that you open with the hood pull in the car) and a secondary safety latch (when you reach under the hood to open it fully) so this problem is an extremely uncommon problem for a normal car.

But since this is a frunk it gets opened a lot more for storage and users would probably not be very happy about having to deal with the secondary latch on a regular basis. So they have motorized those latches for ease of use, and motorizing them adds a lot more points of failure.

You likely already know, but just in case (and for any readers who don’t know).

WD40 is a water displacement compound and so acts as a degreaser and rust softener. It strips the oil and crap off a part, letting it move. It also strips the protective coating off as well. It will rust rapidly without this.

If you use WD40 you need to follow up with replacement oil, or other protection and lubricant. Without it, it will seize up again quite quickly.

I thought about adding a comment, but eventually got lazy. But you’re right - I also always make a point of reminding people WD40 is not a good lubricant, so I should have added that, PSA and all.

So, for the record: in this case, I followed it up with an all-weather synthetic chain oil since the stuff I have on hand does have excellent corrosion protection and does in fact lube the bearings in my particular latch mechanism, while lasting.

Thanks for bringing that up.

But if you get in an accident and somehow blame the manufacturer then they could be liable, better to just stop you then risk lawsuits.

The US lawsuit happy culture lead to this imo

Another stooge who’s swallowed the corporate propaganda of frivolous lawsuits.