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Comment by stevev | Hacker News Reader

Hack fix are subjective. That same logic can be applied to any car makes. Repairs are not a black box. They’re not using duck tape. A fix is a fix

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If you take an engineered system and apply a non-engineered fix, I'd say it's a hack, even if it works. Did this person do a metallurgical/chemical engineering analysis before changing the material type? OEMs do this on their cooling systems.

No, they used a standard off-the-shelf fitting out of convenience.

Will it work? Probably. Is it a compromise in terms of engineering design and testing? absolutely. Mind you, Tesla owns this car, and they probably would like to keep it in the condition in which they lent it out.

I think some of the outrage is Tesla owning the car, but essentially demanding the renter keep it in like-new condition.

Legally subject to the terms of the lease, of course. But it feels unfair not to accept normal wear and tear and reasonable repair.

Lease monthly payments are charges for depreciation plus profit, so they do expect you to keep it in like-new condition. Tesla's screw-up was giving the customer the car and not verifying that they have comprehensive insurance, which is what Tesla relies on for keeping it like-new.

I bet they do have comprehensive insurance, but their insurance company told them that this is a collision loss. Just read my policy, which is written by a very large insurer -- and this would, in fact, be a collision loss under mine.

They didn't have comprehensive insurance but Tesla didn't verify it's mentioned in the video.

Collision with an object in the road should be a collision claim anywhere in the US that I’m aware of. Maybe he’s confusing the two.

Depreciation is variable though, and dependent on fair market value at lease termination.

If Tesla designed the car with a part and sold said part, everyone would be better off: Tesla (less risk of catastrophic repair expenses), insurance companies (lower repair costs, less variability), and the customer (cheaper repairs and insurance).

I get that's not a trivial request, but other car manufacturers manage the task.

As they say in the original video, it's just plumbing for a low pressure system. This is only a hack by the loosest definition.

Cooling system corrosion has killed plenty of vehicles. I'm not saying it probably won't work for a long time, I'm just saying that it is now technically an engineering unknown.

If it were my car, I would probably do it. If I were lending my car to someone, I probably would not want them doing it.

It seems clear the original engineering was also an _unknown_. Planning for failure cases is part of engineering: making a $16k part that is easily damaged and non-repairable is simply shoddy engineering.

Tesla doesn’t market their cars as exceptionally repairable, I don’t think that repairability was an engineering priority. Prioritizing certain product attributes above others is not “shoddy engineering”, it is part of the normal textbook engineering process.

The project management triad is a relationship between Cost, Quality, and Timeline. Elon wanted to be the first-to-market with an affordable modern electric car. And he accomplished exactly that.

Ah yes, prioritizing important features like crashing into things at high speed, remotely making the car a brick if it gets written off, writing an unnecessary amount of data to flash until it wears out, misaligned panels. Just what are people actually paying for here? A shit experience?

My comment wasn’t an invitation to shit on Tesla. They make a product that’s different than other products. Some things people like, some things people don’t. The same applies to anything ever made. Nobody has ever made a perfect product for everyone.

I drive a Toyota, but I know why people drive Teslas. I’m not them. They’re not me.

I wish unrepairable expensive products are correctly labelled.

I wish so too, but I certainly wouldn’t market my own products/services by highlighting their shortcomings.

Regulation or third-party analysis is the only real way to solve that problem.

It doesn't matter, the industry as a whole has marketed cars as repairable (mostly indirect marketing). They had to 100 years ago and it stuck.

Tesla doesn't have a choice as the precident is already set in law

Meh, that legal precedent is pretty weak. They have to sell you parts for 10 years and are held to some basic standard of warranty.

It’s 100% legal to make it a complete PITA to repair a car both in the cost of labor and parts. Italian exotics have been doing it for decades.

Have you watched the video? The guy who installed the brass coupler said it won't be corroded by the coolant.

That is only one of the several failures that could theoretically be caused. The fitting could potentially cause galvanic corrosion in other parts of the system as well.

In any case, I’m not saying this is likely, or that the system won’t work. I’m simply saying that it’s no longer the same system designed by the automotive engineers at Tesla.

What are you on about with the galvanic corrosion? The brass part is joining two plastic parts!

My mistake, I meant the opposite: electrolytic corrosion. There are potential (non-electrical) chemical variables too. The chemistry involved is complicated and I can’t claim to fully understand it. Even big automakers sometimes get it wrong from the factory.

It's more likely they used plastic simply because they could mould the whole thing.

I am sure that is the case. I was never suggesting that this part was intentionally chosen to be plastic because nothing else could work. There’s hundreds of materials you can make a fitting out of, and likely dozens of materials would work, with varying pros and cons. I’m saying this is typically a problem that would have a carefully engineered solution.

All this says to me is that you don't have any experience fixing plumbing, HVAC, or anything related. This whole line of reason has been completely ridiculous, and you ought to just stop.

I think you are reading too deeply into my comments, and thinking I am arguing something I am not.

The worst case scenario is probably totaling the pack. So why not give the "hack" a try first. It wouldn't be dangerous since the car can sense overheats and shutdown before a cooling system malfunction would cause a fire.

As I said elsewhere, I would totally do this if it were my own car. It seems kind of unethical to do it to a car you don’t own, though. And if the leasing agreement didn’t prohibit this before, I’m sure Tesla lawyers are working on that now.

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