Tesla: Not so easily bricked
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There are any number of easy ways to 'brick' an internal combustion engine, and yet we're not all torches 'n' pitchforks over them. Partially because ICEs have been around so long that the relatively short list of "things to avoid" is burned indelibly into the popular consciousness. Partially because over a hundred-odd years of continuous engineering, a typical ICE can take a hell of a lot of abuse before it fails.
And note that the "shit that might happen to you" column still isn't trivially dismissed on the ICE side, even after 100+ years of safety engineering. We physically pump highly-flammable liquids into our gas tasks; people still occasionally get burned or even die doing that shit!
Couldn't find many stats, but this is interesting: http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/Research/FireSafetyVehi...
Let's assume the $40k figure is at all likely for a vehicle owner that RTFM'd. I'm pretty sure anyone ever burned in a gas-fueled vehicle fire would gladly go back in time to fork over $40k to avoid that experience.
It strikes me as a design problem of sorts, you've got a relatively expensive and sophisticated sports car with piles of electronics. I would think that maybe they could detect a certain critical level of energy is left in the batteries and flip a toggle that just shuts them off which wouldn't last forever but could buy you some more time maybe.
My grandfather's Buick has GM's onstar stuff in it, couldn't your roadster send a text message or something? Maybe they could have some sort of emergency mechanism to just plug a normal car battery in to gain a little charge from.
I like what Tesla is trying to do, they're changing the conversation and ultimately when I look at the auto industry I think more startups are needed. They're a startup though, the Top Gear story, I don't think it was bad or inaccurate, the Tesla just doesn't look like it's in the same league as many of the other sports cars they drive around and then this battery thing, rare as it might be they need a good story for it. How many drivers have run out of gas when they are experienced and know better? Stuff happens, it's more common than you might think, with an ICE it's just embarrassing and inconvenient, with a Tesla it might set you back some serious money.
I realize that you are quoting the article, but the owner's manual is simply not in agreement with this sentence.
From the Roadster 2/Roadster Sport owner's manual (italic emphasis is mine):
"Important! Caution: If the battery’s charge level falls to 0%, it must be plugged in immediately. Failure to do so can permanently damage the battery and this damage is not covered by the New Vehicle Limited Warranty. Also, if you allow the battery to fall to a critically low level it may not be possible to charge the vehicle. If you are unable to charge the vehicle, contact Tesla Motors."
[...]
"However, situations may arise in which you must leave the vehicle unplugged for an extended time (for example, at an airport when traveling for a couple of weeks). If this is the case, it is your responsibility to ensure that the battery does not become fully depleted."
[...]
"If for some reason, you are unable to keep the vehicle plugged in when it is not being used, it is up to you to preserve battery life by paying attention to the charge level and the temperature [...]"
The original article seemed to be stating or implying that the car's own on-board systems would continue to draw power well past the danger point, drastically reducing the time to destroy the battery.
This article seems to be stating that the car's systems will stop drawing power. The battery will continue to discharge in this situation, due to natural processes, but discharging to a point that destroys the battery takes much longer in that case.
This means there is still a risk that, if left unattended for extended periods (on the order of at least weeks, perhaps longer), the battery will become unusable. But this is not the same as the original claims which seemed to be arguing for design flaws which would hasten that process.
So in other words, the original blogger was not claiming that "normal driving" will brick the Tesla. So talking about how the battery management system won't let it brick itself while you are driving it is a misdirection tactic. It does not rebut the claim.
There is a fundamental problem when any rechargeable battery is discharged and then left to sit for months. Any boat owner understands that that's why you plug in a trickle charger when the craft is put into storage. The same should be done for any electric vehicle. However, to imply that the Tesla Roadster has a fundamental design flaw because of the nature of electrochemistry....
The rest is the lovely art of spin. It reads like a rebuttal of the bricking claims and vindication for Tesla, doesn't it? In every superficial aspect, that's what it is, but the substance doesn't match the form and tone. Welcome to PR.
In that case, Homer Simpson would never want one in his house. Also, why are they in the car business? I what their battery management system. It, apparently, can make energy out of thin air, to counteract the losses in the batteries.
Not many, right? I've certainly never even come close to running out of gas, and I can only think of one time in my life where anyone I knew ran out of gas (and that was only yards away from the gas station).
I still think you could design some better fail safes in and then if it is as rare as they say, why not cover it in the warranty?
Replacing the engine in the car was something like $7,000.
I see your point about safety - gas clearly isn't the safest substance in the world. But neither is electricity. My cousin is currently a police officer, and before that he was a first responder for car accidents. He has had specific official training to deal with hybrids becuase you have to avoid the battery cables after an accident when using the jaws of life and what not. And those batteries are more stable than lithium ion, in those cases they are simply concerned about compromising the battery cables. So it kind of cuts both ways.
This is a problem lithium ion powered electric cars. We shouldn't sweep it under the rug. It should be solved now while there are 10,000 electric cars and not 10,000,000 electric cars. It seems like the solution is a combination of educating/warning owners & notifying them by phone or email if the car starts to get too low. That isn't exactly the end of the world. But ignoring it is not the solution.
Which, for many drivers, may as well be $40k.
> the solution is a combination of educating/warning owners & notifying them by phone or email if the car starts to get too low
I never advocated ignoring anything. My point is not that "Tesla is great" or "boo ICE yay electric," it's that all the hysteria around "OMG car bricking" doesn't actually promote whatever communication/engineering solutions would actually make the product better or more consumable for people.
Did you really go ahead and conflate $7,000 and and $40,000? $7000 buys me a decent used car. $40,000 buys me a brand new Toyota Prius (MSRP $24,700) with almost enough change left over to buy a brand new Hyundai Elantra (MSRP $15,345).
$7,000 is not a small chunk of change, by any means. It's a lot less, however, than $40,000. Conflating the two does no one any good.
Your reasoning is similar to a company computing the cost of web hosting using only the initial cost of one server, without accounting for the cost of downtime or multiple backup servers. Maximum effort does not imply a process with 99% reliability is 100% reliable, and that the cost of failure can be written off.
This is not making a claim in regards to Tesla or the accuracy of the $40k figure, merely that cost matters.
Telsa should institute a completely unconditional agreement to replace your batteries should they fail for any reason for $7K (or less).
They are the ones that actually are more aware of what can brick one of these things so let them demonstrate the unlikeliness with their pocket book.
And we both agree that $XK leads to no difference in attention from the owners.
But the second reason people are worried about this is killing that last 5% and bricking the battery happens by doing nothing. Bricking an ICE while it is unused, sitting in your driveway takes decades. With a replacement $50 battery and $30 oil change I've restarted engines that have been sitting unused in junkyards for 40 years.
I keep an eye on my odometer and on the gas gauge and know when it is time to get gas. My car doesn't have a low fuel light warning so paying attention is definitely required.
And yes, I cede all claims of being a car genius.
When I was a child, my mother "bricked" our car by ignoring the oil light and taking us out for a nice drive in the country.
PS. If the battery management system won't allow the car to reach dangerously low level of charge, if it is very unlikely that I will damage my battery by accident - why won't Tesla guarantee it and subsidize battery replacement? Make it a $1K repair, that's enough money to keep people from not plugging their vehicles out of pure carelessness, but don't make it a $40K event that in insurance terms would be a total loss.
In the ICE case, X is "maintain a minimum oil level while the engine is running." In the Tesla case, it's "maintain a minimum battery level, even during storage."
Given that the underlying drivetrain technologies actually are worlds-of-difference apart from each other, that strikes me as a pretty minimal difference in terms of routine maintenance. Unless it's somehow difficult to understand or costly to implement, we should assume Tesla customers aren't f'ing morons and go about our business.
ICE: park it out the back... or in the street
Tesla: Park it out the back... plugged into a trickle-charger... which is a $2k specialist item you have to have installed... and you can't use a long extension cord... and you can't just have it in the street, it'll need to be undercover, protected from rain... and away from the public, even in a nice neighbourhood...
From the article, it seems that while the roadster owners aren't burger-flippers, they're also not so wealthy that they can take a $40k loss on the chin.
Interestingly, the same applied to some models of RX-7. If you ran out of gas, you'd potentially need a service to re-prime it.
Didn't stop me from buying one.
// Not sure if myth. Never ran out.
This is a perfect example of what is happening here--any new technology is going to have hiccups. Fuel injection had _lots_ of hiccups, that have mostly been resolved. EV is bound to have hiccups, and is bound to get resolved.
It might run, but you really shouldn't.
IMO, there are two things Tesla could do, one is an automated notification when your battery runs low, presenting you the options to a) let it just sit, b) turn off all electronics to preserve a little more battery and c) to let a Tesla service guy come to save your battery.
The other thing is, that you should be able to enter tow mode just from an external power supply, so it will be trivial to pull it out of your garage.
The reason gasoline is dangerous is that it stores a lot of energy. You need a lot of energy to move a heavy car a couple of hundred miles, and keep the occupants comfortable with heat and/or air conditioning. A battery in a Tesla contains a lot of energy. The dangers compared to a tank of gasoline are different, but in either case, the sudden and uncontrolled release of that energy can do a lot of damage.
I bet I can find some blogger who can make a better argument about the holocaust never happening, then this lousy excuse for a journalist. Then again, that individual would still be a minority among the knowledgeable populace.
Hey, lets give it a go here. Electric is the new comer to the party. They have to prove themselves. ICE proved itself. ICE isn't on trial here.
If you form all of your opinions worrying about all the idiots or evil people who might happen to agree with you, or use your arguments to further their own nefarious ends, you're destined to lead a very quiet life.
> ICE proved itself. ICE isn't on trial here.
The usability and cost/benefit of electric drivetrains versus the status quo is relevant. My point was not "we should distrust ICE," so much as "we should discuss cost/benefit tradeoffs of technology like reasonable people instead of resorting to ZOMG BRICKING".
Secondly, my argument is not that you should worry about who also supports your argument, -but if you are going to agree with an article, find a better poster child. Otherwise, your argument holds little value as the original article refuses to support itself with research or references. I am certain that there is an article that accomplishes your opinion AND supports itself with evidence of some kind. Instead it sounds like before you even read the article you had your opinion, found the first article that agreed with your opinion, and called it a day.
Gee, where might he have gotten that idea? Tesla's website and documentation, perhaps? "Custom microprocessor-controlled lithium-ion battery with 6,831 individual cells."
Not 8K, huh; talk about getting your technical facts wrong.
"Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false. The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge."
Just asserted it was blatantly false and admitted it was true that full discharge damages the battery in the same paragraph, hoo boy.
"But there's an antidote for this type of misinformation: confronting it with facts."
Looks more like he meant to say that the antidote for these facts is misinformation, yow.
No. He stated that, while discharging an individual cell below a certain voltage will damage it, the battery management circuitry on each cell will not permit the battery to discharge past that point. It simply disconnects the battery from the circuit, which means the only leakage is chemical (self-discharge), and thus very slow.
To clarify this point: "discharge fully" =/= zero percent. You will never want to go below a certain percentage of absolute charge.
"It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery."
The electrical meaning came much later, possibly from the electron discharges which looked like artillery attacks.
I have no idea where battery cage came from. The original battery cages were warmed with electricity - maybe an actual battery?
A battery of chickens is an organised group of chickens. The chickens don't batter anything, and neither do the cages
A doctor might order a battery of tests on you, or a schoolkid might take a battery of academic tests - both of these things mean 'organised and related grouping' and not 'batter you down'.
The idea of organised grouping probably came from artillery battery, but in the current day, one of the meanings of battery is most definitely 'an organised, related group'.
The problem here is that not everyone lives in California, and most people think of cars as durable (vs. perishable) goods. Those two things cause problems for people who are edge cases. In places like Michigan or New York or Massachusetts, it's not 70F all year round. We have this quaint concept called "winter". In the winter, the local governments dump salt on the roads, snow and slush make driving dangerous, and when it doesn't snow, you get dusty blowing salt on the highways.
Because of this, people with the means to buy $50,000 sports cars leave them in garages for the winter. Or they head to the Caribbean for a vacation. Or both. For a car with an internal combustion engine, you usually remove the battery or trickle charge it, but the consequence of not doing so is buying a $100 battery at your local mechanic.
Another thing to consider is the meaning of "normal" as it applies to the market. If you're a working stiff, you drive every day. You may even drive to get to your vacation. People buying $50,000 cars with the limitations that electric cars have today aren't working stiffs, and their leisure patterns are probably quite different than most folks.
Live in CT, own a two seater that's never seen snow, for the reasons you mention. It's on a trickle charger to avoid having to replace a regular battery that would go dead if discharged fully, but still had to replace tires that got flat spotted during last year's particularly long winter.
Knowing that about regular batteries, I'd be even more careful with a Tesla, even w/o reading the manual. "Hmm, my regular car battery has to be replaced if completely discharged, and this car is all battery ..."
I think the "different patterns" should actually increase awareness.
This alleged "expert" can even get the number of cells right (6,831 by the way).
The article should be retracted.
I have a Civic Hyprid, which is pretty underwhelming, but functions pretty much like a regular car. If I don't end up giving it to my step-daughter, I almost assuredly will keep it until the more efficient electric vehicles are as reliable.
If it was to be a rebuttal, the claim would be "Tesla cannot be bricked" or something like that.
This article did not do any background work. Why didn't he talk to the Tesla service manager(s) who were quoted in the original article? Even if he managed to talk to 1 of the 5 and showed that it was not a bricking, then he would have a point. But the way it is, the current article does almost nothing to refute the original.
If the cars were easy to brick there would be a significantly larger number of documented cases than what currently exist.
Tesla's PR people are particularly misleading by comparing the situation described above to someone draining oil and then taking a car on a cross country trip. Draining the oil requires action by car's owner. Leave a car in a garage for six months and the oil will still be there. The whole point of the OP is that inaction destroys Tesla's vehicles.
So, to be clear, my understanding of this post, with full clarity, is: "A full discharge is disastrous. However, the situations reported were not full discharges. The controller in the battery shut them off before full discharge. The reported situations did require being towed, but once towed, it was trivial to recharge the batteries."
There is a fundamental problem when any rechargeable battery is discharged and then left to sit for months. Any boat owner understands that that's why you plug in a trickle charger when the craft is put into storage.
The line above indicates, on the contrary, that yes, if you don't drive it for a while and it wasn't plugged in to a sufficient power source, your car will in fact be bricked, and potentially damage its batteries. Apparently this is a problem with boats too, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a problem with electric cars.
This "response" is in fact full of double speak... Check this one out:
Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false. The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions.
"This is blatantly false"......."under normal driving conditions". The original article was not talking about normal driving conditions. This reads like a deliberate attempt to mislead.
If anything, it seems to me that this article validates the claims made in the other article. It states:
This is the most likely explanation for the five "bricks" that the blogger claims to have heard about. They probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing.
This is hardly the kind of certainty-filled rebuttal that one would expect if the original article's claims were, in fact, incorrect.
Also the author stoops to ad hominem by insinuating that the author of the original post is part of a conspiracy to discredit electric vehicles. The author of the original post claims to have a $5000 deposit in on a Tesla X which, if true, is not the usual behavior of an EV skeptic.
Your attack on this point is spot on. The point of the original post this one fails to rebut is that the cars are in need of servicing! Maybe that posts use of the word “bricked” is imprecise, but the real thrust of it was that it costs $40,000 to perform this servicing, which this post does not even dispute.
For the sake of electric vehicles, we need to know which of the three scenarios is true.
I'm not sure what happens to the value of the dead battery pack when they fit a new pack. Do you get to sell the dead battery back to them or to anyone else? Or is that included in the $40,000 charge?
Yes, you've hit the stronger point: why should you have to pay $40k, and it's not covered by your warranty or insurance?
How does it _directly_ contradict that? Ok so he mentions how the management system will stop the charge from dropping too low. How does it do that, does have a robotic arm and goes and finds the nearest outlet, does it expand solar panels, because batteries will discharge even if completely disconnected. And it also highly depends on the ambient temperature. So I don't see a direct contradiction I see this post building a straw man and then proceeded to demolish it.
Look at this another way. So let's say this post is correct and those Tesla roadsters were not bricks. Why in the world would Tesla then charge owner $40k then? Is it saying that a routine recharge and tow costs $40k? Or did Tesla, like a shady mechanic decided to scam the guy and make $40k off of him?
Did they? I'm not being glib. Was that conjecture in the previous post, or was it an established fact?
They do very little fact checking, if any.
However, being well-established might make them an easier target for libel / defamation. That doesn't seem to scare them into better reporting, though.
The orignial post appears to have better sources than this one, so I would say that it has been contradicted, but not refuted.
However, many of the people that bought a first gen Tesla are also the type of people when told 'you just lost 2-5% of your total range don't do that again.' Will say, just replace the battery. And when told 'That's 40k' they will say 'I don't care just replace it'. Which is a different situation.
PS: Don't forget you need to buy a 100,000$ car and not drive it for months before this becomes a real problem. Most people that can afford to do that have a vary different view of money than the average person on HN.
And the point of the article was that as you increase the number of users from 2500 to 25000, the number of bricked cars will increase substantially and will lead to bad headline risk for Tesla.
If you leave the car unplugged for a long period of time the battery will be ruined. If the battery is one huge battery pack or 8000 smaller batteries doesn't matter.
Also, having a car plugged in for months is a lot different that driving cross country with no oil.
$40k bill is not a "servicing" - it's a new car.
My problem with counter-arguments that use "drained oil" as an example, is that oil change is done every few thousand miles (say, 3000 miles in case of my car). Now, this is recommended (albeit, strongly) frequency. This means that if I drove my car around 3000 miles, then went to airport, left my car sitting on the parking lot for a month, chances are I'll drive back home sound and safe, and my bill for oil change will be the same $30, as it would if I get it change on or below recommended 3000 miles. Note that I don't need to trickle-change the oil in this case.
Now, if we compare battery drain to fuel tank depletion (which is technically more correct, since battery is the fuel for Tesla), then comparisson is even less pleasant for Tesla.
Having said that, I don't see anything wrong to bringing the potential battery bricking issue up (especially in light of arrival of more affordable vehicles from Tesla) - Tesla should've used this as an opportunity to educate people and do right by the owners of bricked cars by picking up part of the repair bill with some strings attached.
There is simply no comparison between a internal combustion engine vehicle and a plug-in electric vehicle as the engines work very differently.
Also $40K service (reboot) is NOT a service, is a COMPLETE REPLACEMENT for the battery packs.
http://jalopnik.com/5887499/who-is-trying-to-smear-the-tesla...
Any lithium battery is damaged after 2 months at 0% charge. How isn't that a mistake?
1) Tesla warnings were weak, and part of the Tesla documents said it's fine to leave the car unplugged for weeks.
2) Total discharge of batteries is possible under certain extreme conditions, and has happened to 5 people
3) Total discharge of batteries bricks the car, leaving it un-towable and needing a $40,000 battery replacement fix.
> Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false. The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge.
So, is it possible to totally discharge the battery pack or not?
So the 'confront misinformation with facts' tone of this article ends up being a little over the top, the blogger is interpreting the facts differently than even Tesla.
Physics says "yes".
> There is a fundamental problem when any rechargeable battery is discharged and then left to sit for months. Any boat owner understands that that's why you plug in a trickle charger when the craft is put into storage.
Yes, it's an excellent strategy to assume that your car buyers will also be boat owners, and therefore know all the things that boat owners know without you needing to explain them. Because who doesn't own a boat, right?
* You are vebally told about this.
* You are then shown a document to sign that you were told about this
* Your car will beep loudly when its under 5% charge
* If its a newer Tesla it will beep and also log an issue with the service center, who will then continue to call you to tell you to plug it in.
No boat experience required.
When you buy a Tesla the following happens: You are vebally told about this. You are then shown a document to sign that you were told about this Your car will beep loudly when its under 5% charge If its a newer Tesla it will beep and also log an issue with the service center, who will then continue to call you to tell you to plug it in. No boat experience required.
That omission is either just monumentally bad PR, or they're not really that fastidious or consistent about educating the customer. (Not that I doubt drzaiusapelord, but if they were, you think they'd be shouting that from the rooftops rather than leaving it to random commenters on HN to explain.)
[1] http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/22/tesla-roadsters-ev-accuse...
Note: I do not know how Tesla designed their systems, they possibly could do a better job to extend the storage time, but it will still be a problem. Any car with an electric start has this problem, if you don't charge the battery in storage it will require service/replacement. Of course it won't be $40k...
Do anyone have similar stories from other electric cars? Is there a maximum storage time listed for the Prius, Volt, or Leaf?
The article says that the facts will shine through and prove them wrong, but it's amazingly absent of facts. "The design of the car will prevent that, trust me".
If you read between the lines though, he does admit that a full drain of the battery will destroy it.
Anecdote is not evidence, but last year I had a dealer offer to reset my cars computer to reflect a scheduled inspection for $220 when it was in for a windshield replacement - this wasn't for the inspection, which is part of any routine service, but for resetting a 32,000 mile cycle which displays a warning.
The reset process is relatively arcane, but only took me about five minutes, including digging out the printed instructions which I had downloaded from the internet following an oil change and a couple of false starts.
So it wouldn't surprise me that a dealer would seek $40k to reset a system.
So I guess while the original article was overly sensationalistic, this one is overly optimistic — if you park your car with batteries very low at the airport and leave for vacation, you might kill some cells.
I like the trashing of a bad rumor against technology as much as the next geek, but this Tesla response was spin and speculation thrown against more substantial-sounding reports of a problem. It was weak and since the strong alternatives are easily imaginable, it was likely weak for a reason -- ie, the reports of $40k bills were relatively accurate.
You would think with 8k individual cells, if you left it unplugged for just a couple of weeks (instead of the 6 weeks needed to brick the entire battery pack), using a normal distribution you could expect that at least some of the cells would reach zero. Would that permanently reduce the capacity for the entire battery pack?
That said, if a cell goes bad or has an extremely low capacity compared to the rest, there's not much you can do...
If such batteries become prevalent, I would think that monitored charging garages and bonded maintenance services will spring up.
Even the owner's manual state this (except for the $40,000 cost of course).
Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false. The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge.
This is just plain wrong. If the car is not charging, self-discharge will happen and nothing can stop it.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073312_is-tesla-brickin...
The part that really registered with me is the request for a simple phone call. Why didn't Tesla call the owners and warn them about the battery discharge issue? Why didn't they just upgrade the original cars to include that low battery notification service? What do you think the actual real cost of that upgrade is in hardware and work hours? $100? $500? How much would they have spent having some people call the owners of those 500 original roadsters? A few hundred dollars to personally notify their first customers? It was a 100K+ car was it not? This guy might be foolish for not closely scrutinizing the warranty/owner's manual, but Tesla's customer service and PR response are horrible.
Seems trivial to setup an insurance scheme for this rare, but exceedingly costly event, either internally, or via an external insurer. It may not be cheap but this PR issue can be fixed in an afternoon talking to Farmers insurance or the like.
The other thing is, that you should be able to enter tow mode just from an external power supply, so it will be trivial to pull it out of your garage.
the problem isn't that an EV is battery based which has this flaw. the problem is that its not really addressed enough for people who dont daily drive their EV.
The battery management system is in not position to not allow the battery to discharge itself over time. It can only stop the car from powering up to prevent active battery usage.
ICEs depend on a single form of stored energy. The single source dependency creates a dependency between the functioning of the one's country's economy and the stable supply of a difficult to obtain resource from many countries with potentially hostile attitudes towards the country.
ICEs require a massive active infrastructure for refining and transporting oil. With EVs, you suddenly don't need to drive energy around in heavy chemical form except to a much smaller number of locations which can be serviced by much more efficient freight trains.
ICEs are extremely inefficient at extracting energy from oil compared to large turbines at power plants. So not only do you not have to spend energy and human labor driving chemical energy around to deliver it all over the place, you get more from that stored energy.
ICE cars are mechanically more complex than EVs, and they require more in the way of maintenance than EVs (the Roadster, an exotic sports car, has a recommended maintenance interval of once per 12k miles). EVs can be more modular, since they can have a simple electric motor on each wheel or axle instead of having a single engine with a complicated system of driveshafts and gearboxes to transfer mechanical forces all around the chassis. Also, no oil changes and no emissions checks.
Keep in mind that the problem described here mainly affected the first 500 cars Tesla ever built, and was largely mitigated in later versions. Overall, I think it is obvious that if the cost can be reduced to ICE car levels for 200+ miles of range, EVs will be the most practical form of automobile for all but long trips, and I think even the long-trip challenge will eventually be solved. I think it's really silly and a bit embarrassing to call the future of the electric vehicle into question over an early design flaw which exacerbated a problem which is really easy to mitigate, even in a fashion that requires no user intervention. The up-front cost of the vehicles due to the cost of batteries is 1000x more important in practical terms, and what we should be focusing our energy on.
All I am saying is if people are going to refute the original blog post as "nonsense" and will "confront it with facts", then do so convincingly and without contradiction.
The oil analogy Tesla and others are using just doesn't work. A normal car doesn't total itself after sitting idle for a few weeks to few months depending on whose side you believe.
Imagine your new car of choice having a 5 gallon gas tank, and if it goes empty, your car burns to the ground. Oh, and the gas evaporates at rate of half a gallon a week.
I don't know about you, but that fear would keep me from enjoying the vehicle. I think the stress of always making sure it's charging would beat me down.
Actually as a former car owner (city dweller now), my biggest concern was making sure the car was still there when I came back later.
Really the biggest responsibility this car has is for the owner to keep batteris charged up, not check the oil, not check the coolant, nor check the break fluid or transmission fluid. When did spending a lot of money on a car mean you could also switch your brain off.
When you talk about tire deformation, this is rare and would not happen before many years of disuse. And engine seizure? Again, unlikely to happen even if left to sit for a decade. You're more likely to have issues with rust in the gas tank and bad, coagulated gas, than a seized engine.
The point is that it is relatively safe to leave a vehicle unattended in a garage for long periods of time. The vast majority of its value will remain undamaged. Contrast to the Tesla, where if left for a year with a low charge it is alleged that it's likely to lose fully half of the car's value ($40,000).
This is a big deal.
Now, add further that all of the rubber hosing, if your car was built in the last two decades, will likely have dry-rot, and the vehicle is unlikely to run again without replacement on all of them. Should a rear main, or other important seal have been damaged, you'll be looking at around $1,000 in labor alone to disassemble the engine. How much was that car worth again?
I've had lifters separate on me while driving taking out the engine block, radiator, and several other components along the way - the cost to replace with a -new- engine and radiator exceeded 40% of what I paid for the vehicle. (Don't be confused by the pricing on a used, junk-yard engine, and a new crate engine. Gets even worse with a V8 - have you seen the price on a 6.1L crate Hemi?)
I still don't see what the big deal is - if I leave -any- electronic device with an li-ion battery in it discharged for a long period of time, that battery is toast. You think it's absurd that the battery in the car costs $40k? I'm sure mac laptop batteries would be even more expensive once you chained enough of them together to get to that level of sustained discharge capability.
If a car is left to sit for a year the gas will be bad, but there will likely be no further repair necessary other than flushing the fuel system. This is relatively cheap. Even if one mistakenly tries to start it and gets water in the engine, the repairs are far less costly than the $40,000 battery price tag on the tesla.
I had mentioned a decade specifically in regard to engine seizure -- you will not have this problem over a shorter time period such as one year. Nor will you have dry-rot of your hosing or any other major mechanical malfunction. Ruined gas and a dead battery are about the limits of damage in the one year period -- possibly a tire may go flat.
The big deal is that if I leave my $80k gasoline car in a garage for a year it will take very little to get it running again. Probably a few hundred bucks. Perhaps up to several thousand dollars if I foolishly try to start it and get very unlucky. But you can't reasonably construct a scenario where a garaged gasoline car is likely to sustain $40,000 in damages just from safely sitting out of the elements. It's just not possible, period.
If Adama had to plan for an FTL jump ever 33 days instead of 33 minutes, the Galactica crew wouldn't have been nearly as frazzled.
It's not the fact that maintenance is required, it's the short timeframe in which a mistake can cause you to have a 3k pound immovable object and/or a 40k bill. (I have no idea what it weighs, just made that up)
My Ford owner's manual says otherwise. According to it, the tires will be damaged at a prolonged period, if the car sits at the same spot. Maybe not deformed per se, but damaged. It's recommended that the car should be placed on supports if long-term (say, more than a month) storage is required.
My personal experience says otherwise.
Your statements about seized engine and deformed tires are not valid in the timeframe we are talking about here. It's unlikely even for the battery to go, and if it does that's a trip to the store and $100, not a $40k service plus getting an UNTOWABLE vehicle to California.
Oh, and those abandoned university cars are normally beaters that barely made it to the campus after many years of neglect, not a brand new premium vehicle.
It's interesting that they did not refute this untowable claim in their rebuttal.
I can empathize with why they wouldn't though, as this seems like a (ahem) charged and highly public issue.