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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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