Keyless start ICE manufacturer being sued for CO poisoning

Soolim said:

This News from CNBC is good news for Tesla and other BEV as well. Tesla Goes Forward another big step.

CO Poisoning. Moderator please correct my typo on the thread title.

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This kind of story drives me up a wall. A few idiots have left their keyless cars running in their garages and it is deemed a defect, not the user's fault. How many people have left keyed cars running? If manufacturers fix this "defect" then no one can get out of their car and leave the engine running in order to check transmission fluid level (engine needs to be running) or try to locate that odd sound under the hood, etc.

Frankly, it seems like Darwin at work. But, I suppose there could be a garage situation where a hybrid appear to be OFF when someone exits the car, but the engine fires up later to keep the battery charged....but how would someone enter the garage without realizing something was wrong?!

Ed Hart said:

but how would someone enter the garage without realizing something was wrong?!

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Poisoning might happen at home when people are asleep if the garage is downstairs and there is air flow from the garage to the rest of the house. Carbon monoxide is invisible and doesn't smell. I don't think any of the 13 people who died walked into the garage.

The lawsuit is not about the design of cars. It is about withholding information. After 27 people filed complaints with NHTSA, chances are car companies were notified about those but they kept quiet. If they told buyers there is higher risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, maybe then some buyers would have installed a carbon monoxide detector.

My key less 2015 F150 toots the horn twice if I get out with the engine running. Which is quite often.

The suit alleges that the manufacturers could have built a simple mechanism that shuts off an unattended vehicle after a few minutes. And you could also have a a single use override mechanism for situations where one has to work under the hood with engine running.

450 unintentional deaths every year due to CO poisoning.

An idiot is an idiot, keyless-go is a system that has been, to my knowledge, an ongoing tradition beginning within the abouts of the Mercedes SL-Series from early 2000's, so why is this news? Clearly if you leave whatever ICE vehicle on without noticing that you left the engine running on in a closed garage, you can die from CO2 poisoning.

Although a mechanism that shuts the engine off after a few minutes of idling can be useful, it can increase the costs or lead into unwanted situations.

I've never left my engine off like that and probably never will. I don't know about every country's rules when it comes to taking a driving license but in my country's, it's written in the books that one should check the car every time he or she enters and exits it, and 2 grams of brain would tell you the same.

If I hit the power button on my Prius too quick, the car sometimes doesn't shut off. Since the engine might not be running, I'm glad that the couple of times that I missed that the "power" light was still lit that the car beeped in a very distinctive way and put a big warning triangle on the the GPS screen when I got out of the seat.

Easy solution - ban all vehicles that emit CO.