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Comment by scott_s | Hacker News Reader

My understanding of what this post meant is that a full discharge is prevented by the controller in the battery itself - much like in laptops, and much like everyone here was surprised that the Tesla battery does not have.

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."

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Actually, it seems to me the article doesn't really contradict the accusation at all.

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.

Agreed 100%. This post was kind of a non-denial denial by focusing on "normal driving conditions" and not some of the scenarios the previous author brought up like leaving your car at the airport with 5% charge while you go on a trip.

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.

> 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.

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.

It would cost $40k to replace the batteries, it would obviously not cost $40k to recharge a battery that had shut itself down for safety. I doubt every instance in the original post actually required a replacement, though it was implied.

You may be right - I don't have any outside sources that I know of (yes, okay, or care to) to corroborate either side.

Yeah, that is what I picked up from this post. But, I still don't understand how towing and recharging the batteries can cost $40k. Either the original claim about the cost involved in recharging is wrong, or this post claim that the fix is to recharge the batteries is wrong. There is a third highly unlikely case that Tesla is fleecing the customers, who in its mind, made the mistake of letting the charge fall down to zero.

For the sake of electric vehicles, we need to know which of the three scenarios is true.

The other article suggests that the cars cannot be towed when bricked; and that the battery pack is not rechargeable after bricking but needs replacement.

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?

That's actually the weakest point of the other article - any towing company will be able to move your bricked car even if the wheels leave skid marks all the way onto their tow truck.

Yes, you've hit the stronger point: why should you have to pay $40k, and it's not covered by your warranty or insurance?

I interpret this post in the same way, but this contradicts the original post, which said that a car was sitting at a Tesla service center and required $$$ for battery replacement. If all that it takes is a recharge, why is the owner unable to pay?

If it was trivial to recharge the batteries, then why were the owners told that it would cost $40,000 to repair their cars?

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