Tesla responds to "bricking" issue | Hacker News Reader

Tesla responds to "bricking" issue

teslamotors.com

230 pointssephlietz240 comments

This is PR mastery.

Nowhere in the release does Tesla refute that owners have "bricked" their batteries. Nowhere in the release do they say that the battery can not be bricked by leaving it for a long period without a recharge. All they say is that it would take a period of weeks for a Tesla roadster to reach 0% charge, and that the Model S has battery disconnect technology that can extend this to several months. They also point out that the car will provide increasingly strenuous warnings to plug it in (which, no matter how loud they are, would be hard to hear from across the country, if you've left it in an airport parking lot).

If it were true that a Tesla battery pack couldn't be destroyed by letting it fully discharge, or that it had never happened, then they would have mentioned it in the release. In fact, they take the opposite tack, re-emphasizing near the top of the document that users should always plug the car in when parked.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still very enamored by Teslas, and I don't think that this is any different than the owner of a gas-powered car letting it run out of oil and seizing the engine -- it's neglect. If you don't get it by now, Tesla owners, you need to plug in your cars.

"mastery" is not a very correct word in my opinion. What they do is they provide absolutely 0 information, while still calling the blog a rumor.

I was very skeptical about the blog post up until now, when tesla essentially agreed to all it's claims, by not refuting any.

TL;DR; version of the blog: "Yes, it's true, we charge a lot of money for forgetting to plug in your tesla, don't do that or you'll regret".

This was my take away as well but the mastery part is where it sounds like they are refuting something. Basically, having read that post three times, I conclude that if you ignore the warnings and let your battery pack completely discharge your car will be unusable, aka a 'brick'. Which completely validates the 'rogue bloggers' point that it is a 'known issue' and one to be aware of.

I found the 'no oil' comparison to be weak. Sure if you run your gasoline engine vehicle with no oil it will likely seize up and require an engine block replacement. However, you can leave a gasoline powered car in a barn for 20 years and then re-discover it, fill up all the proper fluids and run it. (assuming it was in running condition when it was stored). You won't have to replace the engine.

The part that is missing from the Tesla response is, if your car is in this state (fully discharged), what can be done. Is there a way to 'reboot' the car? And if so what is the procedure? Can anyone do it or only the factory? And why? If the batteries become disconnected does that also brick your car? Or can you just re-attach them ? Why doesn't the Tesla vehicle have a 'full power down' state for storage?

"Why doesn't the Tesla vehicle have a 'full power down' state for storage?"

I assume this is because of the nature of Li-ion batteries. Even if you aren't pulling any current from the battery, they will still discharge over time, and eventually go through a chemical process rendering them unusable and/or dangerous. Having a "long-term storage" mode for the vehicle would only serve to make it more likely to happen by lulling owners into a false sense of security. Better to simply reinforce the need to constantly keep the vehicle in a charged-or-charging state.

I would like to understand where you get that information.

I've had a lot of experience with rechargeable batteries over the years in doing robotics, and a variety of chemical makeups. My experience is that the "self discharge" function is the result of the anions managing to convert by one means or another not related to electron injection at the anode. The mechanisms that enable this are things like electron tunneling which are probablistic, such that the discharge curve is asymptotic toward zero charge while never achieving it. That sort of discharge does not lead to the development of dendrites in the battery which would create shorts or other hazards to recharging.

My understanding is that because the Tesla has a constant drain on the battery it can drive the battery to zero.

It would be interesting to know the answer to the question can you just disconnect the battery for storage. Not willing to invest $100,000 to find out :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Safety_requ...

Here's a nice graphical rendition of what can happen. The undervoltage situations are not driven by current travelling outside the cell, they can happen even if the cell voltage drops by self-discharge.

http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm

Thanks guys for the links, one of the references in the Wikipedia section was this one: http://www.gpbatteries.com/html/pdf/Li-ion_handbook.pdf which has a bit more information.

According to the GPBatteries guys LiON have no self discharge if they aren't being drawn down by a monitoring circuit. But they also mention that embedded safety circuits can run the batteries down a bit until those circuits stop working because there is insufficient charge in the battery to run them, and then the battery can't be charged (aka its a brick).

Of course you could charge it if you could get around the safety chip in that case it would just require a bit of cleverness.

Again my experience with LiON cells is that once they get to about 3V if you don't put a load on them they don't discharge any further on their own. That would seem to be supported by the chemical energy needed to absorb the anions but I am not a chemist, just an aging EE. Thanks for the links.

It's really no different than early fuel-injected cars being damaged by running out of gas. The solution? Don't run out of fucking gas. That didn't stop fuel injection from becoming the dominant technology, and neither will this halt the rise of EVs.

I would think its a little different since the infrastructure was already in place for gasoline. There isn't the same infrastructure nation-wide for electric vehicles.

I'd say it was significantly worse under gasoline. Then, if you ran out of gas, the car was bricked.

Tesla is saying that even if you drain your battery driving, it would still take 30 days of failing to charge it to brick it. While the infrastructure for just "filling up real quick" may not exist for electric cars, the infrastructure certainly exists at a person's home, otherwise, they wouldn't buy an electric car.

I think there would be a much more compelling case for this if electric cars were being mass-adopted, and the education for maintaining them was poor. Neither is the case here. Electric cars are still largely in the early adopters phase, and Tesla is telling people to not leave their car unplugged for months on end.

Much ado about nothing.

Running out of gas doesn't "brick" a car. You can either push or tow it to a gas station, or you can deliver more fuel to it, and it will continue working without missing a beat. Letting a Li-ion battery discharge completely damages the battery, which means you have to replace the entire battery, not just fill it back up. This is physics; Tesla can't change the laws of chemical reactions.

What about not keeping enough fresh oil? I believe keeping a minimum charge on an EV is analogous to the common knowledge of maintaining a gas-powered vehicle's oil. The problem is that people don't have experience with EVs.

I'm sure in the early days of gas-powered vehicles, plenty of engines seized up because people were unaware they had to change the oil and keep it at a certain level. And it certainly still happens on occasion.

See my other post in this submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3630466

Timing is everything.

Assumine new vehicles, doing nothing to a Tesla for ~30 days means $40k. Changing your oil 6 month later than the service schedule in most cases means inmeasurable (by owner) reduction in overall engine lifetime.

I was alluding to an on an earlier post on this thread about when fuel injection first came around - running out of gas could do damage to the car.

> It's really no different than early fuel-injected cars being damaged by running out of gas.

Barring a fuel leak, your car won't run out of gas sitting in your garage while you're on a long business trip.

Non sequitur. While the circumstances surrounding the different engines and technology are wildly different, it doesn't change the root issue: if you neglect your car, it will break, and it will be a very expensive fix.

Sorry, but circumstances matter a lot in life, and you can't just brush them off because you don't like them. Try telling your insurance company that the circumstances don't matter. Or the hospital. Or the police. Or your boss. Or your customers.

He's not saying that the circumstances are completely irrelevant, he's saying that the specific circumstances don't matter (as long as they add up to neglect), because it takes different circumstances to cause different problems. That's not at all like trying to ignore who's at fault in a traffic collision.

Precisely.

There's a lot of variables at play here. The fact that the battery is so expensive vs. what a consumer has become accustomed to paying for vehicle maintenance on a traditional gasoline car. The tech is new. The way the vehicles operate is fundamentally different, and require different attention to different things. But it's all noise convoluting the argument.

The root: if you neglect your vehicle -- any vehicle -- you are in store for an expensive repair bill. It could be a $2,000 transmission. It could be a $10,000 engine replacement. Or it could be a $40,000 electric car battery. Because of all the aforementioned variables, the largest of which being the cost associated, there has been a massive amount of FUD surrounding bricking your Tesla. This response from the company is attempting to bring things back down to earth. If you plug in your car, you won't brick your car.

Which should really be common sense for anything at this point. Regardless of cost, if you take care of your possessions, they will last longer.

The circumstances do matter here. First, electric cars are novel which means the market is susceptible to FUD, and manufacturers like Tesla have to be sensitive to their customer's fears even if those fears are overblown. Secondly, I don't know of any conventionally powered car that can be permanently ruined simply by parking it in a garage for a month, unless that garage is on fire or underwater. For every other vehicle on the road, a reasonable person would say that leaving it parked in a garage is taking good care of it. It's up to Tesla to overcome the cognitive dissonance that comes from the idea that simply parking your car for a long time without plugging it in can actually destroy it.

It will not run out of gas. But it can - and will - get damaged if sitting unattended for too long.

It might be the tires (check your owner's manual!), it might be the AC (again, manual - it should be turned on from time to time), you might now notice a strange smoke due to new oil leaks inside the combustion chamber, it might make horrible noises for a couple of seconds (because the oil drained to the bottom of the engine), etc, etc.

Hell, last extended trip we went on, we had someone to start the engines (and the damn AC) for a few minutes at least every week. It is just good practice.

If indeed the battery management system on a Tesla is able to keep the batteries alive for months at 0% reported charge, then it is a non-issue. Noone is going to leave such a car unattended for months, really. Specially if it is a Roadster.

Yes, it is entirely different. Running an early fuel-injected vehicle out of gas didn't result in a repair bill that is approximately half the purchase cost of the car.

Secondly, you could leave your fuel injected car idle for months on and end without having to worry about the car slowly slurping the fuel down and then leaving you an empty.

So it is much easier to run a EV out of battery power and far more expensive to fix it when it does happen. No amount of PR spinning, FUD or wishful thinking changes that.

If you leave an IC car for a long period of time with 1/2 a tank of gas you can destroy the engine. Gas like everything else breaks down and if you left leave your car sitting for a long time you may need to completely drain the gas tank.

PS: Gas can noticeably degrade in as little as one month depending on ambient conditions. But, condensation is the largest risk for mid term storage. After 1 year you will probably have trouble starting the engine even after replacing the battery. And 3-7 years your probably looking at major repair work.

All very true; but I don't think very many IC engines have died just because the owner took a longer than expected trip and came back to the airport to find their vehicle's engine is destroyed. Furthermore, the costs of any such IC repair wouldn't be nearly as high as what it is in the Tesla.

The point is simply that Tesla should give more warning and attention to the very high cost of repair when you forget to plug the vehicle in or leave it unattended for long periods of time.

I've done this plenty of times. It's a common risk in cold climates when tractors, cars and lawnmowers are parked outside and one forgets to drain the tank. It gums up the carburetor. So you rebuild the carburetor, which takes 1 hr and $5 to do at home, or $100 at the dealer. Not $40,000. It also doesn't "destroy the engine". There is a high probability either don't know what you are talking about and made that claim up, or you are intentionally being misleading in order to promote a viewpoint using false claims.

First off most cars build after the 1980's don't have a carburetor and generally use fuel injection. Also, to much water in the tank can easily lead to a blown head gasket among other things.

Second most cars don't cost 40k, but if your talking about a say a bugatti veyron it's not that hard to do 40k of damage. If you want to compare it to the cost of the car then for an older car having a few thousand dollar repair bill can easily cost more than the car is worth.

I really don't see the problem. Tesla clearly states in the manual that completely depleting the battery and then leaving it without charging it will cause damage to the car. This would be completely analogous to running a brand-new early car without oil, destroying the engine. It's a serious neglect of your maintenance duties.

I mean, yes. You can "destroy" your car by not charging it. You can also destroy it by accidentally running it into a brick wall. No PR spin will change that either. That the repair would be very expensive is a moot point - this is a maintenance responsibility to you as the owner. As long as you are aware that this is an issue - just plug it in. It's not like you can forget by accident when you're aware that letting it completely deplete over a couple of months will cause an incredibly expensive repair job.

So where is the problem?

I don't know that there is a problem except when people compare it to running a car out of gas. One is a minor annoyance; the other a hugely costly repair. The fact that EVs also consume battery while idle makes the comparison even less useful.

You can destroy a Tesla by running it into a brick wall too. Yet there is no warning in the manual for that. Probably because it's not a risk unique to Teslas. Leaving your car at the airport for two weeks and coming back to find it suddenly worth $40K less than when you left it is more-so unique.

Tesla seems to be somewhat downplaying the high costs involved in forgetting to plug it in or leaving it too long.

Yeah, I think the comparison to running out of gas is extremely misleading and very prone to spreading FUD. The Tesla doesn't destroy itself when you're driving and it runs out of range, so I think we should stay far away from saying things that sound like that, because that's what many less tech savvy people will immediately think.

The problem is that this isn't common knowledge yet and it needs to be.

Is this Tesla's fault? Not entirely. But let's be honest, a small warning in the middle of the owners manual is not good enough.

I'm sure they feel it would be stupid to advertise something that to the general public looks like a defect with the technology. But I think it would have been better for them in the long-run if they were more informative. Now they are doing damage control, and a number of people have probably been turned off due to this whole saga.

tl;dr This information needs to be common knowledge amongst owners, Tesla could have avoided this if they handled it upfront instead of waiting for it to leak out on a blog.

>The problem is that this isn't common knowledge yet and it needs to be.

They definitely inform the owner that completely depleting the battery will damage it. Why does everyone seem to think they don't?

The newer Roadsters even come with a system to notify Tesla if the batteries are too low. What else could they do to educate the owners? Make them take a weekend class?

The problem is that obviously some people have not been aware of the issue. Tesla has (supposedly) only given very vague warnings in the instruction manual, without much emphasis and with no clear description of the consequences of reaching 0% charge. Except for a "You may risk damaging your battery".

It's not reasonable to assume that ordinary people know the inherent risks in lithium ion batteries. As such, the massive risk should have extreme emphasis in the instruction manuals, be explained in detail by the sales people, exist as clear warnings in the car, and so on.

How did they resolve this with modern fuel injected cars?

I routinely drive mine until it runs out of gas (don't ask) and I haven't had any adverse problems.

I've heard that can be really hard on your fuel pump.

I commented above about this, it actually happened to my car. The pump overheated.

There were some natural gas kits sold that would not disable the fuel pump when you switched to gas. Some owners, when running out of gasoline, would switch to the gas. The fuel pump would keep running dry and melt. Something like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WafeVL7IZss/S5VP0fVNvuI/AAAAAAAAJP...

I believe the problem (or at least one of them) with early fuel injection was that the injectors would overheat if they didn't have have the fuel passing through them to cool the solenoid. Newer cars won't even attempt to fire the injector if a high enough fuel pressure isn't sensed.

Sounds like you knew all along that the Tesla battery could be bricked by running out of charge? That would make you one of a very small minority.

The original story got play because it was a surprising, unknown, and frankly, sucks.

If all of my fuel-injected laptops had never been damaged when they ran out of fuel, I would be pretty shocked and disappointed when it was a problem with the Kugelfischer. Much like the Tesla owners this affected.

Tesla isn't a "cause" it's just a product. So whatever happens to Tesla one way or the other has a smaller influence on "the rise of EVs" than you can imagine. Mahalo.

Except that this problem is inherent in battery technology and the same thing happens to all EVs.

>Sounds like you knew all along that the Tesla battery could be bricked by running out of charge? That would make you one of a very small minority.

Comprising all Tesla owners. It's in the Owner's Manual, and I would be very surprised if new owners aren't informed of it when they purchase the car.

It's good to know that you agree with the blogger who wrote the article, and agree that Tesla is lying when they say his claims are unfounded rumors.

I'm actually pretty surprised at how few people knew this about lithium batteries. I guess that goes to show how much protection is actually built into the devices, and how rarely it actually happens. This problem isn't fixable, but it happens very rarely and is easily avoided.

And even so, Tesla (and others like Nissan) has made available a warning system just in case, and all the blogger managed to do was to point out the privacy concerns with this solution.

It's a little different. Replacing the fuel pump and injectors cost maybe 5% of the cost of the vehicle. Replacing roadster batteries costs 40%.

Repair cost doesn't matter. It's up to the owner not to be an idiot, and to take care of the vehicle. The vast majority of owners of early fuel-injected cars knew not to let them run out of gas, and didn't. Similarly, when Tesla tells you not to let the battery go completely flat, you take care of your property and follow their instructions.

If I leave my house long enough, the roof will decay and I'll get massive water damage. Halfway-intelligent homeowners know they need to get their roof done once in a while. Bike owners know that if they leave their bike in the rain, it will rust.

Many of the trappings of modern day life require active measures to ensure they work properly, and this is no different.

It's up to the owner not to be an idiot

Actually no, the common wisdom is that you should expect your users to be idiots when developing a product.

I wonder, is running the batteries down when driving an electric car with a very limited range and general unavailability of high current outlets more, or less likely than running out of gas in a car with a very large range and widespread availability of refilling stations?

Many of the trappings of modern day life require active measures to ensure they work properly, and this is no different.

It's different because people are familiar with all the things you mention: roofs and rain, bikes and rust. People aren't familiar with electric automobiles. Once someone buys them, sure, they'll become familiar and the vast majority won't brick them. Tesla's problem isn't the owners, it's the people thinking about becoming owners. And those people (if they've heard the story) are now fearful of bricking their cars, where they're not at all afraid of bricking the Mercedes they were considering as an alternative to the Tesla. Now they're thinking, maybe I'll wait another few years on this electric car thing. That's Tesla's problem right now. Not bricked cars, but the fear of bricked cars. And that's why they should cover this under warranty.

If I leave my house long enough, the roof will decay and I'll get massive water damage.

If that happens in the space of 1-2 months of no maintenance, you have a very, very, very shoddy house.

Any details on fuel-injected being bricked if ran out of gas? Never knew about it...

So you agree, as we all do, that if you do what the "blogger starting an unfounded rumor" describes, then you will brick the car, as he claims will be the result. So you agree the blogger is telling the truth and the PR release from tesla is a lie, correct?

This is the second time[1] you have said precisely the same thing in response to a comment of mine in this thread. I don't care about whatever agenda you're trying to push; stop being so belligerent in your attempts to get me to say something completely orthogonal to my point.

[1] The other: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3631295

So you agree the blogger is telling the truth and the PR release from tesla is a lie, correct?

Times like this I wish I could downvote people who reply to me.

Interesting fact: I managed to break the fuel pump on my Ford Ka by running the car for too long with low fuel.

Apparently, some fuel pumps are cooled by the fuel itself. If the level gets too low, it can't dissipate the heat fast enough and the pump fails.

It didn't "brick" right away, but it got increasingly harder to start, because the pump could no longer pressurise que fuel line fast enough.

> (which, no matter how loud they are, would be hard to hear from across the country, if you've left it in an airport parking lot).

Which is presumably why they're doing this:

> Starting with Roadster 2.0, owners can also elect for their car to contact Tesla headquarters once the state of charge falls below a specified level, and we can then contact the owner.

Well, why don't they just let the car contact the owner directly then?

Probably easier to have one non-changeable email/phone number in the firmware than have to modify/update it for every person they sell the car to.

Plus, it means the company gets to have a personal connection to all of their users, and when you're talking about a $100k buy-in, that might be the sort of attention a lot of these owners are expecting.

Same reason Apple doesn't let you copy individual files from your iPad to your iMac, you have to let Apple servers be the intermediary.

Agree with the mastery.

And the release doesn't reference the actual blogger which is this:

http://theunderstatement.com/post/18030062041/its-a-brick-te...

They reference an ad hominem of sorts about the "rumour" at this link:

http://green.autoblog.com/2012/02/23/tesla-bricked-battery-s...

which has the title: "Tesla bricked battery story may have a short circuit"

If it is PR mastery (not convinced) it's in the tone of the writing.

It reminds me of a notice of late payment I received from The Economist magazine some years back. It was so darn polite and diplomatic, I kept it in a shoebox ever since.

Now, whenever there's an outstanding payment issue with a client, I read the letter for inspiration.

I'd love to read that letter! Any chance you could scan it or type it up?

Hey, sorry it took me so long. HN was giving me a "you're submitting too fast" error for some unknown reason. Had to open up another account.

Anyway, here`s the link: http://www.picamatic.com/view/8244745_economist-invoice/

This is almost PR mastery. PR mastery would be saying that the blogger is correct before listing the facts about how insanely long you have to leave the car unplugged for the battery to become inoperable, and detailing what steps Tesla is taking to make this less of an issue (i.e. making it more prominent in their manuals, working on "deeper" sleep, etc.)

As it stands, this makes me think that Tesla likes to play with words to dance around hard truths. They also didn't mention the privacy implications of them being able to remotely track your car by GPS, which is a bit worrisome.

Saying "the blogger is correct" at the top of the post would cause a significant portion of the readers to close the tab and never think about buying a Tesla again. To me that's a PR fail.

Also, nowhere in the post do they mention GPS--only that the car (optionally) phones home its charge level. As best I can make out that's an unfounded rumor based on a single incident.

Real PR mastery would be to issue a modification to the warranty to include this condition within X years of owning the vehicle and be done with it. If it really is rare, it will cost them a lot less to cover it than the PR costs of fighting bad press every time it pops up.

Such condition would be tempting to abuse. Warranty expires in 6 months--drive to 0%, wait a month and call dealer.

Instead manufacturer could make it very clear in on webpages, in owner manuals, PR materials etc. the importance of keeping batteries charged. Make it common knowledge. Then they would be morally right to treat bricked batteries same as running with no oil or with flat tires.

I never heard of a battery warranty that wasn't prorated over the life of the battery. You know, if it fails 1 month before the end of a 5 year warranty, you get a credit for 1/60 the replacement value, often redeemable only as a credit towards purchase of a new battery of the same brand from an authorized dealer.

I am sure you have heard of prorated battery warranties and are familiar with them, aren't you? Granted that, why would you make such an intentionally misleading post suggesting that warranties are prone to abuse when this is a solved problem?

> I am sure you have heard of prorated battery warranties and are familiar with them, aren't you?

I'm not. I've never heard of any such thing. Perhaps it is you being misleading?

It's actually more common with tires, but there are battery manufacturers like Interstate that give prorated battery warranties (of course there are all kinds of stipulations on the warranty protecting them from negligence claims)

Hm, interesting. Anyone who has owned a car has had to replace the battery at some point and they all have warranties and all car battery warranties are pro-rated. (Maybe there is some exception, I've never seen it.) Same for lawn and garden batteries for driving mowers. It's possible some of the overseas readers here have never owned a car though and just haven't ever needed to buy a car battery and weren't familiar with this.

I've always just bought new batteries. They weren't expensive enough to bother with any redeeming a prorated warranty. If a battery goes out after several years, how much I going to get anyway? $10?

There are definitely car owners who have never dealt with battery warranties.

Here's a photo of a typical car battery that is sold in the US, in fact this is one of the top brands, Sears DieHard.

http://s.shld.net/is/image/Sears/02833023000-2

Sears has a nationwide network of car maintenance shops called Sears Auto Center that has been quite popular for tire, battery, and alignment work for decades.

http://www.sears.com/automotive-services/c-1023947

Information about its warranty are printed in large letters on the side. It would be quite difficult to purchase this battery without understanding it has a warranty. This is not atypical. It is extremely common for batteries to have such information printed legibly on the side. Furthermore, car batteries typically have a punch out on the top designating the month and year of purchase. These are punched out at time of purchase and enable the warranty can be honored even in the event of losing one's receipt.

Battery displays in stores nearly always contain comparative information about the warranty periods, with premium batteries highlighted for having longer warranty periods.

I find it astonishing that people can buy batteries and never notice any of this, and some of these people are here claiming that owners whose Teslas become bricked are at fault because the manual obliquely suggests in an obscure section that bricking is possible, a possibility that is at the same time denied by the same group.

It says "3 Year Free Replacement". First, what does this have to do with the assertion about prorated warranties? Second, I don't know many people who have to replace their battery within three years.

The comment said the person felt people didn't know about battery warranties. But their existence is written on the side of the battery for brand names. Many Prorated ones like this Sears one have a period over which the prorated value is 100%. After the 3 years, the 100% declines on a linear slope, ending at 0% at 100 months. You could of course have looked this up rather than ranting and making dumb comments.

I think if you'll look back through the thread, I've made two brief comments demonstrating how your assertions that we should all know about prorated battery warranties are faulty. Others have made similar comments. This is neither ranting nor dumb.

If you don't want to be challenged on your assertions, you should probably find somewhere other than HN to make them. It's kind of what we do here.

Note that this requires you to look at the battery.

My BMW, for example, has its battery in a very obscure location (behind the seats) and there are mere terminals in the hood for jumping.

Not many people would bother keeping the receipt for their vehicle batteries.

Hadn't heard of prorated battery warranties, but yes, makes sense. This fixes intentional abuse. But I imagine with free brick replacement, people would more easily and frequently forget to keep the battery charged. Without the risk of $40K, brick rate would probably go up.

I imagine with free brick replacement, people would more easily and frequently forget to keep the battery charged.

It wouldn't really be free; the car would be out of service for some time. And Tesla could charge some kind of nominal-but-not-insignificant service fee. I doubt that the bricking rate would be sensitive to the actual dollar cost: as Tesla points out, it isn't that easy to do. Just being careless isn't sufficient, there would have to be other circumstances like a long trip away from the car where the cost of repair wouldn't have any impact.

I disagree. You buy a car that only needs maintenance once a year, but you have to plug it in at least once every few weeks. They are willing to go well above and beyond what most would expect in order to remind you of that. I think that's a pretty good deal.

Responsible owners do not let the battery charge reach zero. The consequences are serious enough that owners with unusual usage patterns that make this difficult will go out of their way to make sure it doesn't happen. There is a strong negative financial incentive for owners to do a simple thing like plugging in the car.

Modifying the warranty means Tesla accepts financial accountability for owners' (in)actions that are beyond Tesla's control. That's a bad deal for Tesla. It could mean financial ruin if there are too many irresponsible owners.

This thing is so blown out of proportion. When I first read the blog article I was thinking it was pretty bad. Once I had some time to think about it I realized there isn't anything unreasonable about this except the price of a new battery, but that's the cost of being an early adopter.

If you let a high end sports car sit in a garage for months with a tank full of gas and then go drive it fast you are going to wreck it. It's going to be expensive to fix. That's if you can even get it to start in the first place. A responsible owner starts the car every couple weeks or has someone else do it while they are out of town. What's the difference in effort between that and plugging in a Tesla? The only difference with the Tesla is the cost of the repair.

I think this is a case of some people being ignorant of their responsibilities as owners and failing to properly maintain their cars.

I screwed up once and my car ran out of gas. Had to walk 3 miles. Didn't cost $40,000 to fix.

Discharging a Li-ion battery completely chemically changes it so it can't be recharged and can set on fire if you try. And they lose charge even if you shutdown all circuitry and just let them sit.

To fix this problem you need your car in a garage, a replacement pack of 6000 high-tech niche market batteries shipped from wherever they are made, mechanics skilled on a niche sportscar, and responsible disposal of of the old battery pack.

To 'fix' your problem, you need to pour easily available cheap liquid into an empty container. There's no comparison and it's not a Tesla design flaw, it's a battery technology limitation which applies to other li-ion cars, laptops, etc. too, if left long enough to drain past the controller reporting 'empty'.

You have to realize that when a Tesla or your laptop hits 0% battery, the battery is not actually fully discharged - it keeps some in reserve so that it can still sit for a very long time.

And it wouldn't with a Tesla, either. The car shuts down before you can discharge the battery enough to damage it.

If, after you ran out of gas, you didn't fill your gas tank for weeks and ignored the car's insistent complaints that it should be filled with gas, then you would have a point. But I doubt you've ever done that.

I've driven my car until the tank was empty, then left home to go on a trip for two weeks. When I came back, there was still enough fuel to let me go get more.

Everyone seems to think that Tesla owners are housebound in these threads.

Clearly, if there was fuel left that you could derive motion from the thing, it wasn't quite empty...

And yet in your "$40k to fix" scenario you were wealthy enough to be able to afford a $100k+ exotic electric sports car, in the first place.

If you buy and wear a $20k watch, and you irresponsibly destroy it or lose it, it'll probably cost you $20k to replace it. And the obvious lesson for people considering buying $20k watches is you shouldn't buy one if you couldn't afford to lose it or pay to replace it. "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."

I call foul on the "if you paid 100k for a car you should be able to pay 40k to recover from a mistake" logic.

If we were talking about a regular gas car - many families have cars worth $60k and we'd still be asking serious questions if, by inaction, we ended up with a $24k repair bill.

And to continue your logic, if you buy a new car for $20k, it's entirely possible through neglect and failure to follow manufacturer's maintenance requirements that you'll end up with a car that no longer works and requires at least $6k to get the engine and transmission back into good shape again.

R < B and R (is proportional to) B

The pattern being that sometimes things which are expensive to buy are also expensive to repair. In a gas-powered car, the engine+transmission is probably the most expensive component to brick and replace. In an electric car, it seems to be the battery system.

Neglected maintenance on a $500k house can easily create situations requiring $100k in repairs or liability.

How much neglect do you need to get a car's engine and transmission to fail?

Even if you didn't change the engine and transmission oil for 18 months that wouldn't happen. I bet it wouldn't happen if you didn't change it for 24 months.

Compare and contrast with not plugging in a car for < 4 weeks.

I think this is a case of some people being ignorant of their responsibilities as owners and failing to properly maintain their cars.

You're absolutely right. Nonetheless, it's Tesla's problem. Why? Because electric cars are new. After 100 years of internal combustion, there's a common understanding that cars need their oil replaced if it all leaks out. No one would gain any traction with a story about ruining their engine by running it with no oil. But a story about a driver who left his car at the airport for a month and bricked it will gain traction, and will cost Tesla money by spreading FUD in the market. More money than simply covering that case in its warranty, which I predict is exactly where they're going to end up if this story gets picked up by the mainstream media. They're just taking the long way around to get there.

There is a strong negative financial incentive for owners to do a simple thing like plugging in the car.

Which the author of the original article discussed, along with Tesla's obfuscations and downplayng of the issue.

"That's a bad deal for Tesla. It could mean financial ruin if there are too many irresponsible owners."

On the contrary, if there are too many irresponsible owners then Tesla is ruined if they DON'T cover it. Imagine what "too many Tesla bricked cars" would do to their product image.

Look, this is very simple. Warranty systems are underwritten like insurance policies. It's little risk to Tesla -- the question is the underwriter's risk assessment. If the underwriter won't cover it on affordable terms, it suggests the risk is too high and the product is poorly designed. At that point, the path of failure is chosen (expensive underwriting policy vs expensive PR debacle) is irrelevant. The only issue is whether the risk assessment is accurate -- it becomes a gamble.

> Don't get me wrong, I'm still very enamored by Teslas, and I don't think that this is any different than the owner of a gas-powered car letting it run out of oil and seizing the engine

Unfortunately, that's exactly the issue: many uninformed people are getting people like you wrong simply because they lack perspective on the Tesla "bricking" issue. Electrical cars are a new technology and people don't have the perspective to shrug off serious but very unlikely problems.

This is why Tesla's post isn't simply "PR bullshit" -- it provides context for the discussion and perspective. As others have pointed out, perspective exists with ICE vehicles today: we know that there are potential bricking issues, but we keep perspective and shrug them off because we understand how unlikely they are.

It's fair to over-focus on the Tesla bricking issue, but it's more fair to place this discussion in a context: how likely is this problem to occur, and what can be done to prevent it, to spot it before it occurs.

Right. It's well-executed PR, but if you read carefully, you will note that if you have an older model, discharge it to 10-20% and leave it at the airport for 2-3 weeks, you might indeed end up with dead batteries. Which I think is entirely reasonable and something I would expect.

IMO, this was horrible, horrible PR. They basically confirmed all allegations, while still coming out as snotty jerks (talking about "unfounded rumors"?!). Linking the ad-hominem attack was just low.

They are in a difficult situation, as the problem is real, and difficult to address. In fact they are clearly doing a lot trying to address it, which is to their credit -- now if instead of downplaying it, they presented it clearly, and focused on what they are doing and planning to do, and thought about more solutions, it would do them much good.

And solutions don't have to be just technical -- offering insurance (even if high-deductible) would do quite a bit to calm some fears, as would the GPS based service if explained and offered right. Either way, without some kind of fix for such problems, they will never see any adoption beyond the "toys for the rich" market.

My thoughts exactly. Very bad response, indeed.

Totally agree. Good PR lets the bad news out all at once, and the good news out in drips.

Day 1:

We are very sorry that a handful of our thousands of users has had battery problems. It is true that a battery can be irreversibly damaged by a "deep discharge". It has not been covered by our bumper-to-bumper warrantee, as it is considered to be a misuse. This is only possible if a car is not being used on a regular basis, and provided our cars are left with a 50% charge they can last for months without a problem. Please do not leave your Tesla with a low charge if you will be away for a long period of time. This should not be a problem for the vast majority of our customers, but some may need to take special precautions, if they will not be driving their car for a long period of time.

Day 2:

Compare old Tesla to new Tesla. Note how long the new Tesla can last on 50%. Note that all cars have problems (oil, radiators, fan belts); and that it takes time for the new rules to sink in. Note that only a small handful of customers have been bitten, despite it being a completely new system. Note how many people have their engines get cooked, even after 100 years of oil burning cars. Note that electricity is fundamentally simpler, and easier to maintain, and that will only get better with more design work, and as people become accustomed to it.

Then wait a while, and find (or make) some good news. Free replacements for the handful of effected customers?

The more time people spend reading and arguing over the fine points of PR spin, the more time your name is dragged through the mud. Get it over with quickly.

The two-month period to reach 50% has nothing to do with the original poster's issues. He said that in unusual circumstances - driving it heavily, then not charging it for a short time - was sufficient to brick it. If it only takes two months for a 50% charge to drain, how long does it take a 10% charge to drain?

> Nowhere in the release do they say that the battery can not be bricked by leaving it for a long period without a recharge.

I happen to have first-hand experience with a gas-powered Porsche that was left parked for so long (years), with no starts, that the engine eventually became effectively "bricked", and had to be written off. And I had to fork out 1000's of dollars on engine repair (attempts) to even reach the point of deciding it had to be written off. This is with a gas-powered engine, a traditional car. So there is precedent where a car owner can misuse and/or fail to maintain the vehicle properly per the manufacturer's guidelines, and it becomes bricked. This is not a new kind of problem introduced by Tesla.

Deposition line of questioning suggested after reading this piece:

Q. Is it true that the battery has catastrophic failure when it drains to zero and is left in that state for a sustained period?

A. The company has built in countless safeguards to ensure that the battery never drains to zero.

Q. That is not what I asked. Please answer the question.

A. It is an unfounded rumor that many owners have incurred such a catastrophic failure and only an irrational fear would permit anyone to believe that.

Q. I didn't ask about many owners, only whether it is possible to incur a catastrophic failure as described. Please answer the question.

A. Our documentation clearly tells owners that it is vital to keep their car plugged in and we give them ever-escalating warnings to ensure that no rational person could ever let the car get close to that state.

Q. I didn't ask about the likelihood of this happening, only whether it can happen. Please answer the question.

A. We value our customers more than you can imagine and it is slanderous to suggest that we would subject them to risks that can be avoided.

Q. Again, not what I asked, please answer the question.

A. Every car has risks of catastrophic failure if it is badly misused.

Q. Does this mean the Tesla does too with its engine?

A. We will not dignify a mere rumor with an answer to that question.

Q. And is it true that it costs $40K to replace the battery?

A. I object to that as irrelevant.

Q. And that it is not covered under warranty?

A. Ditto - irrelevant.

Q. And constitutes an uninsurable risk?

A. We really are off track here. I will not answer.

Q. So you do not regard it as worthy of disclosure to your buyers that, should their battery drain to zero for any sustained period, the only remedy is to replace it at their own expense at a $40K cost.

A. That disclosure would not fit with our marketing plans. Plus we say something of the sort at page 487 of our owner's manual.

Q.Well I guess this was all pretty pointless.

A. Of course, nothing wrong here. Ignore the man behind the curtain. What a stupid thing to ask about anyway. The revolution is apace and you shouldn't bother me with little details.

Answer to your first question: No. The battery is fine, the stupidity in understanding that Li-ion batteries must never be fully discharged is the only catastrophic failure here.

Why can't I down vote your post? :(

PS: Don't buy any RC model (or diesel engines!), they all suffer from the same "catastrophic failure".

What about diesel engines? I have a diesel, have run out of fuel (clogged filer), have had air in the system - bled it out, was dangerously low on radiator fluid but no ill effects.

All that over the span of ten years and I still drive it actually the engine is the best part the rest of the truck is falling apart around the engine.

Add to those no spark plugs, no spark plug wires, no distributor, a more durable engine design, higher efficiency compared to a gasoline engine.

> Is it true that the battery has catastrophic failure when it drains to zero and is left in that state for a sustained period?

This question is answered multiple times in the owner's manual and buyer contract (where buyer is required to initial after reading). I'm not sure why it would need to come up in a depo.

Here's one of the problems that I have with this whole thing:

My iPod goes dead all the time, so does my phone, so does my laptop, my camera, my remote, my everything.

I think that every single battery-powered device I've ever owned has, at some point, gone "dead" (as in it won't power on).

NONE of these things have ever been completely incapacitated because of this. I've never had to replace my laptop because I let it go flat.

I'm sure some of the 5 owners who have had this happened knew that the car would go dead, but I'm sure that all of them figured that that just meant that they would have to charge it.

Tesla: here is how to fix this, and I'm asking that you do this on behalf of all electronic vehicle manufacturers (to keep people from being scared off the things by blogs like this).

Release a statement that follows the standard 3-step press release of oops:

---

1) "Own it". -- We fucked up here. This was our bad. We were stupid to believe that the general public would understand that letting the battery on their car go dead would cost them $40,000. This was incredibly stupid of us, and is 100% our fault. We take responsibility for this.

2) "How we're fixing it" -- The 5 people who have had this happen have all been contacted by Tesla motors. We're shipping a tech and a battery to all of them, and all of their cars will be back on the road by next week.

3) "Why this won't happen again" -- From now on, we're including a physical battery disconnect. A device will attach to the battery terminals that is normally off, and requires that the battery be at 5%[1] charge to close. If the battery drops below this, it physically disconnects the battery from the rest of the system, and doesn't allow for any parasitic electronics to drain it further.

[1]: 5% is a made up number.

---

Of course this won't happen, but a PR-spectator can dream.

Tesla: you bungled this one. Badly. You're hurting the entire EV industry. Suck it up and admit you were wrong.

The problem is, I think, that a battery will discharge even if it's physically disconnected.

I do wonder why the batteries become 'bricked', though. All I've heard so far is just that 'they do', not why.

"sounds" answered that previously http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3619112

He referenced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Electrochem...

"The overall reaction has its limits. Overdischarge supersaturates lithium cobalt oxide, leading to the production of lithium oxide, possibly by the following irreversible reaction:"

The hell? Batteries are not magic black boxes, that when disconnected, will be removed from this world only to be recovered at a pleasing time from a distant galaxy back to you. They will continue to discharge, even if you completely disconnect them. Which is a stupid thing to do, because then the microcontroller drawing <~500mA won't be able to warn you of the impeding battery death.

You can get a microcontroller to draw far less than 500mA. There are plenty of microcontrollers that can spend most of their time in a low power sleep mode where current draw is measured in microamps.

> NONE of these things have ever been completely incapacitated because of this. I've never had to replace my laptop because I let it go flat.

Maybe you're fortunate, but I've definitely had to replace laptop batteries because they got bricked. If you leave your battery discharged for a long enough time, you can never charge it again.

Now that you mention it, I've probably seen a couple of 'bricked' laptop batteries. At the time I didn't realize that was an issue inherent in the technology, but looking back that's probably what killed those batteries.

Well at least this whole saga has taught me more about Li-ION batteries. I feel like this information is something that should be more generally known amongst the population, not just for cars but for all the products we use with Li-ION.

Every rechargeable device I've ever owned has had various warnings in its documentation about battery care. If you've never read the manual, that is 100% your fault. No one can force you not to be stupid, it's up to you.

I mentioned this yesterday [1], but I am repeating it here, because I believe that it is a critical piece of the conversation.

The consequences of failing to maintain the battery are clearly stated by Tesla Motors in the owner's manual.

Is it the fault of Tesla Motors that an owner did not read, understand and follow the maintenance procedures outlined in the owner's manual? Is it not the buyer's responsibility to perform due-diligence in this regard?

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 [...]"

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3625527

You can put whatever you'd like into the warning. The fact of the matter is that this is a car. When a car runs out of gas, it's not forever bricked. People will, due to a hundred years of experience, expect the same from a new car that has a different power source.

They can fix this. They have the technology.

What kind of technology is going to keep a battery magically charged if left alone? Self-discharge is a built-in phenomenon of these batteries. The fix they have is that the car can "phone home", and that's what Tesla and other car manufacturers are doing.

I know two people who have bricked their gas-powered cars by going too long between oil changes. This isn't a novel problem for complex machines. You need to maintain them if you'd like to continue using them.

No, but if it runs out of oil, and especially if you let it sit for a while, your engine can make a very good mimicry of a steel brick, and that's one of the more expensive pieces of your car to replace. Probably more than 4/10ths of the cost of the car, in many situations.

We haven't fixed this. Have we the technology?

Yes, it is Tesla's fault. Clearly. You shouldn't need to read a manual to drive a car. Tesla has to make sure things behave like people expect them to behave. That's how people are going to see it, anyway. Owning up to it would be a small price to pay for Tesla.

> You shouldn't need to read a manual to drive a car

I thought it would be clear enough that this is not "your average car".

Everyone buying electric car would automatically know the difference. If I would buy it, first thing I would ask myself is: OK this is $50,000 piece of machinery [a car] and there is new key element here: there is no gas injection, rather electronic plug. here come the question: "how do I maintenance the battery/vehicle not to fuck this up".

Simple.

How is neglect of the car owner (assuming the rumors of these owners cars "bricking") the car manufacturers fault? If I buy an electric car I expect to plug it in regularly.

I'll make an assumption here; most people expect to have to plug in an electric car on a regular basis. The expectation is to plug in the car regularly.

I don’t think you can allow yourself to think that way as a company. Fussy debates about whose fault it was – when your customers didn’t do anything outrageously unusual – lead nowhere, just to bad PR.

They did something outrageously stupid. No conventional car should be left sitting for months at a time without appropriate preparatory steps, and neither should an EV unless it's connected to power.

The EV actually has a distinct advantage here -- all you really have to do is plug in a power cord. A conventional car has several much more involved steps to be taken.

The only reason that we don't need to read a manual for normal cars is that we have grown up knowing that they need basic maintenance, and what that maintenance is.

Imagine the flip side, that electric cars were normal, and internal combustion engines were unusual. Then we could have stories about owners ruining their engines because they never changed their oil.

"Imagine the flip side, that electric cars were normal, and internal combustion engines were unusual. Then we could have stories about owners ruining their engines because they never changed their oil."

No you wouldn't because an oil change is part of the annual service for the car. Everyone knows that if you neglect to follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule for a car you might get problems. On the other hand, many people see charging the car as analogous to filling up a tank with fuel - not as maintenance - that's why they are surprised that failing to do so for a few weeks could "brick" the car.

And plugging in the damned car is part of the daily routine of owning an EV. You're only making his point for him.

But it’s new and unusual. If there are really only these vague warnings in the manual (manuals tend to have all kinds of crazy warning that you usually don’t have to take all that seriously) then this is absolutely Tesla’s fault and they have to own up to it.

First of all, the warnings in the manual are anything but vague.

Second, again you're proving the point. If EVs were the norm and suddenly internal combustion engines burst onto the scene, people would be breaking those because they're not used to what you can or can't do.

Electric cars have an uphill battle in front of them. As a company you cannot have fussy debates about whose fault something was.

That may be true, but it's orthogonal to the point I was responding to, which was "You shouldn't need to read a manual to drive a car." The only reason that statement holds with gas-based cars is that the things one needs to do to take care of them is common knowledge. New technologies have new quirks, and those who adopt them will have to read the manual. Eventually, when the technology becomes common, how to take care of them will become common knowledge, and then no one will read the manuals.

You're making a point about what is best for Tesla from a marketing perspective.

Which is the only perspective that matters for the company.

Which is a fine position to have, but a non-sequitur in this discussion.

You are absolutely right, and Tesla has no liability for these batteries.

That does not change the fact that the thing -- and especially its' handling -- is an absolute PR disaster that WILL greatly (likely fatally) hurt any wider adoption. If Tesla thinks that saving 5x40 = 200k is worth it, they are free to do whatever they feel like.

"The consequences of failing to maintain the battery are clearly stated by Tesla Motors in the owner's manual."

For sure they are well documented in the owners manual.

However, the idea of getting a $40,000 repair bill for a car is going to turn many buyers off. Tesla should cover it for the sake of their business. If Tesla was paying for these repairs I guarantee you they'd figure out a way to prevent the failure.

Yes, if these kinds of failures are truly rare it won't cost Tesla much to cover them. Then they can reduce the loss rate further both by improving technology and emphasizing to their salespeople to ensure that the buyer knows to never let the battery discharge. The prospect of having their car out of commission for the replacement, and maybe a token service fee, should be enough disincentive to keep owners from being cavalier about charging.

At least with the 2008 manual I looked through, the warning (which doesn't seem to be as detailed as the more recent one) appears in section 5-2 of the manual. Well past all the dire warnings about using seat belts and how the car may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer. I wouldn't conclude--based solely on this evidence--that everyone would be fully aware of the seriousness of letting the car discharge fully.

Of course, Tesla may emphasize the point in other ways.

That's the general problem with the omnipresent safety warnings you get with products. The important and possibly non-obvious get drowned out by the all the boilerplate silliness.

You really can't fault Tesla for putting the battery warnings after the legally required warnings. They most likely have no choice. Now, if the battery warnings aren't immediately after the legally mandated warnings, that is Tesla's fault, but you have to keep in mind that it is totally reasonable to expect a first-time EV owner to read the section on charging.

They're not: http://www.scribd.com/doc/24701291/Tesla-Owners-Manual

I don't really disagree with you though.

I'm not going to point out how Tesla car batteries have to follow the laws of physics. Other people did that already.

Tesla cars aren't mass market products (yet). They're for early adopters who can afford what is essentially a $100.000+ toy. If you then don't read the manual and leave the car on a parking lot for months, then yes, you can ruin the battery.

So let's compare it to other early adopter technology. It took decades before motherboards didn't occasionally die during a BIOS update. For decades stereo equipment (and other expensive electronics) had a little slider on the back of the power supply labeled "110v - 220v". It wasn't always in the right position when you bought the device. If you forgot to switch it to the correct setting the device breaks, simple as that. Expensive cameras that you couldn't clean on the inside -- take them to the beach once and they're ruined forever. Cars with breaks that would fade so quickly that driving down a mountain became tantamount to suicide. Or how about power tools? They don't come with any manual and if you use them in the wrong condition you risk severe injury. Forget to turn off the stove before you leave for holiday? Your house might burn down.

So let's not lose perspective here. If you forget to plug in your Roadster before you go on holiday, in the absolute worst case scenario you have to replace the battery. Not the end of the world. As with any other piece of equipment, you can break it if you're sufficiently careless.

>So let's not lose perspective here. If you forget to plug in your roadster before you go on holiday, in the absolute worst case scenario you have to replace the battery. No big deal.

Have you read the original blog post? (http://theunderstatement.com/post/18030062041/its-a-brick-te...) Battery replacement costs $40k in cash and all of Tesla's documentation only gently "suggests" that the car be plugged in when convenient.

That article includes an incident where someone parked their car at a garage and the battery died within less than 2 months.

I read the original post. $40.000 is roughly 1/3rd of the original cost of purchase. So it's completely reasonable. If you can't afford that you have no business buying a first-generation $100.000 toy.

As far as I know Tesla strongly recommends owners buy a charging station for their home and plug in their Roadsters every night.

Then you also know that the Model S that's being aimed at average consumers is rolling out soon with the same shortcoming, negating your expensive toy argument.

The Model S will be hitting the streets soon with the same fundamental physics limitations, but much better systems to mitigate that problem. (ie. lower idle discharge rate and more reserve capacity)

The article mentions that it would take 30 days of being at 0 charge before the battery break.

From the article: "Of course you can drive a Model S to 0 percent charge, but even in that circumstance, if you plug it in within 30 days, the battery will recover normally."

So just discharging the battery to 0% gives you a month to charge it back; if you're at ~50% and leave it in the airport, it will be fine for over a year. (12 months to discharge to 0% and more time after that while it's still recoverable.)

Did that article provide any proof or detail about these bricked vehicles? It's easy to make claims and scare people, much harder to do real reporting.

It sounds like Tesla has put multiple redundant systems in place to protect the owner from a bricked battery. Warning lights and sounds. An alert to Tesla that triggers them to respond. A sleep mode that preserves the life of the battery for up to a year.

Yes, the car requires a minimum level of effort. Barring that, it provides many chances for the owner to see the problem coming.

Forget to turn off the stove before you leave for holiday? Your house might burn down.

This is the best example I've read so far. If you own expensive stuff, you have to be careful. That's life. If you're not careful, don't buy a $100,000 electric car. Buy a $750 used pickup truck or something. That way, if you break it, you'll be able to afford the replacement.

No, if you pay good money for something, you expect the product has good feature to pamper its user. It is more true with a car where if you pay good money for a car, the car should take care of you more than the other way around. If not, it is not worth the money to buy in the first place.

Your way of reasoning is pretty much the same as when iPhone 4 first came out. You pay good money for something that shatters easily. At least, in iPhone case, Apple came out, admitted faults and tried to make its user happy.

This problem is due to the laws of physics rather than bad product design, however. There is no battery technology that would scale to a car and not self-discharge. Yes, the thing discharges to keep some systems online, but even if it didn't, the battery would still brick itself over time.

The iPhone is a mass market product with millions of users. Tesla's cars are experimental products for early adopters, with a few thousand users. Completely different situations.

I believe all lithium-ion batteries have a low-voltage threshold that once crossed they can not be charged again. It's similar to a fuse - once tripped - there's no* getting around it. This protection is to guard against shorts in the internal circuitry. With the current technology there is no way around it.

* Edit. Missed the 'No'.

You have never had to replace batteries in those items because they are not completely dead when they will not turn on. They are designed to prevent users from killing the battery.

Of all your devices that have run out of charge, have you let them sit that way for months? If not, then you're making an invalid comparison.

OK. I have to say I think you're acting bizarrely entitled. "Bizarrely" because you're acting like you're entitled to fictitious, impossible technology. Objects that exist within the physical world require maintenance to retain their use. Even with that maintenance, they will eventually degrade. Things fall apart. Tesla's maintenance requirements - "plug your car in once every twelve months" - are absurdly reasonable.

The conversation surrounding this issue reminds me of an adult explaining to a child why their goldfish died. If you don't feed the fish, the fish dies. If you don't take care of your toys, your toys break. In this world, entropy is the natural order of things. And there's no world but this world. So stop complaining and plug your car in.

As a few dozen people pointed out, these batteries can become bricked even with a physical disconnect. They're not bricking because of being drained, they're bricking because they're drained and then left for months. Do this to any other Li-Ion device and the same thing will happen.

More generally, you jumped to conclusions based on personal anecdotal evidence, ignored the entire preceding discussion, then pretended you were some kind of PR expert based on stuff you just made up.

(Edit: I guess the accusations are that some earlier battery models discharge in a week or a few, not months. I'm told the charge management circuitry of the 6000+ cell battery is extremely complicated, so improvement over time is to be expected. Nevertheless it's not a case of "duh just disconnect the battery"--these things self-discharge and also discharge very slowly over the disconnection circuitry!)

Except that for the Tesla it's days after reaching zero charge, not months.

From the manual "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."

Of course the manual is going to say that. If the manual said it took weeks or months for the battery to discharge then people would dilly dally and forget and suddenly there would be a lot more bricked batteries out there.

If you tell people to plug their cars in IMMEDIATELY then maybe they won't let it sit around for more than a week or two.

It looks like one of the specific cases on this, Max Drucker's Tesla, was it bricked two months after bringing it to 25% displayed charge level. So the car wasn't even run all the way down. Presumably the time to failure is much shorter if you bring it to the 0% displayed charge level at which point it shuts down. Your guess of days is probably correct.

In the first link here you can even see the emails between Tesla representatives and Drucker, so Tesla is 100% aware that this car was bricked and the cost to fix it was over $40,000, which was the "friends and family" price for "loyal supporters", not the standard repair rate, which is presumed to be much higher.

Because they have emails on the subject, which note that even Musk is aware of the situation, their PR efforts to suggest the cars can't be bricked and the allegations in their statement are not only false, but are intentional lies and misrepresentations by Tesla, showing bad faith. It is absolutely a cover up, coupled with the start of a media smear campaign that we see getting in gear in the technical press.

http://jalopnik.com/5887499/who-is-trying-to-smear-the-tesla...

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/02/the-tesla-roadster-...

edit: I see that people are so threatened by reality they are paralyzed into downvoting because they have no coherent response and so censorship is the only action that makes sense to their tiny reptilian brains. Above are actual emails between Tesla and an owner that prove Tesla is aware of the problem, bricking is possible, the repairs are a minimum of $40,000, the blogger is telling the truth, and Tesla is blatantly lying and misrepresenting the situation in their response. Downvote all you want, it only shows what a failure you are and won't change reality.

>More generally, you jumped to conclusions based on personal anecdotal evidence, ignored the entire preceding discussion

I didn't ignore anything, nor did I "jump" to any conclusions. The preceding discussions have been talking about the vehicle doing things like "phoning home" and issuing audible warnings.

This stuff doesn't come for free. You need the battery to power this.

You know those things take virtually no power, right? These are 50KwH+ batteries and you're worried about I don't know how many fractions of a millijoule.

Do you have any hard data on this, or are you just "jumping to conclusions"?

I'd love to see a comparison on how long the battery can sit if it is physically disconnected from anything drawing current, and how long it can last when plugged into Tesla's phone home system.

You missed the part where they say that it's fine if you plug it in in less than 30 days.

I've had plenty of devices nearly bricked (only working with an external power source, battery lasts seconds/minutes) by leaving them unattended for months. My 1st gen iPod dies in less than an hour after being left at 0% charge for a few weeks.

Am I the only one face palming from reading "Here is why the rumor is unfounded" followed by the first two paragraphs confirming exactly what the blog stated? That batteries must be kept charged, and that if they get too low will contact Tesla HQ?

The rumour is unfounded because you have to try really hard to get to that state. You can leave your car in storage or at the airport for weeks as long as it has enough charge to hold, and even if you get to 0% charge you still have 30 days to plug it in before all is lost.

TL;DR; A single blogger is spreading a rumor about electric vehicles becoming inoperable. We'd like to confirm the rumour.

Seriously, I find it breathtaking, for all the reasons people have already given. It's a case study in saying "yes" while giving the impression of saying "no".

Why is this thread so filled with hate? This all sounds very reasonable to me. They clearly acknowledge that the battery must be maintained properly and they seem to be doing to the right things to minimize the risk. They then show very clearly that the total amount of maintenance is less than that of a gasoline vehicle, w/ oil and scheduled maintenance. There are a bunch of things like breaking your timing belt that will break a gasoline engine. This all sounds very reasonable to me. Why is everyone freaking out?

Tesla is a corporation, they make money by selling things. Sometimes those things have limitations or imperfections. By the rules of anti-capitalist internet logic that makes Tesla an evil Robber Barron trying to scam people.

A surprising number of people, even within the technology field, don't like change that disrupts their personal habits. Hence the constant low-intensity warfare over the various Linux distros and interfaces.

In this case a lot of folks are getting emotionally involved because this story serves as proof that electric cars can't be maintained with the exact same habits that an ICE car is maintained. Habits are a personal things, and can be difficult to change. A lot of people will fight to preserve them rather than adapt them.

This is the weakest "anti-rumor" corporate response ever. After all that lengthy passive-aggressive "We're great, but you need to charge your battery", there's not a single statement about what would happen if the battery runs out, which is precisely what the original article is about.

Tesla, stop beating around the bush like a politician, grow up and answer the million-dollar question like a man:

What will happen once the car's battery is completely depleted?

(life-line hint: it will get bricked)

Here's something I'm still unclear on: how strongly were owners warned about this beforehand?

If Tesla cars come with a bright red warning on the driver's side window saying IF YOU DO NOT KEEP THIS CAR CHARGED THEN YOU RUN THE RISK OF REPAIRS COSTING UP TO $40,000 then I'd say Tesla is completely in the right here.

If they didn't mention this anywhere and it's just something owners discover because they use it in a way that Tesla didn't think they should, then Tesla is completely in the wrong.

If they did something in between, then it's in between. I may have missed it, but so far I haven't seen this explained.

These (apparent) e-mails between an owner with the dead battery issue and Tesla seem to indicate that there is a a 'built-in notification system' for this, but it wasn't added for the first 500 cars : http://jalopnik.com/5887504/tesla-emails-gallery/gallery/1

A problem like this really needs advance warning, not just a notification when the problem is about to develop, since the owner may not be in a position to get the car plugged in if they don't know it could occur beforehand.

Which is why there are warnings in the manuals. Which puts it on par with changing the oil in a regular car, if less culturally-obvious. Reading a manual for something you spent $100k on seems a reasonable prerequisite, especially if you have any interest in keeping it running.

No technology or system is perfect, there is a certain level of "acceptable use" that we always need to comply with. I don't think charging a Tesla is that big of an issue, and if you're fortunate enough to own one, you're probably also intelligent enough to plan ahead.

In Australia (where I'm originally from) LPG (Propane to everyone in the US & Canada) conversions on Petrol (Gas?) cars is a common thing. Its the same situation, LPG is not available everywhere, and while most LPG cars can run on both fuels...you simply think ahead before you go on some unusual route. It becomes part of your planning for a long trip and that's all there is to it. If you run out of LPG, its a bad situation...you cant just go grab bottle of LPG, its a compressed gas, you actually need to either run the car on normal fuel (Petrol) or get it towed.

My bias opinion here is that someone probably mistreated their car, and Tesla told them something like "We tried to help you before this happened, but you ignored us...its in the terms you signed when you bought the car and now there is nothing else we can do to help"

Completely reasonable.

What a terrible release. Is it still a rumor if the company who makes the product just confirmed that it's true? What happens when the battery runs all the way out? Why does it happen? What's being done to resolve it?

PR mastery indeed..

I wonder if as much digital ink would have been spilled on this whole kerfluffle if the original article had not used the term 'bricked'.

Bricking, at least in my mind, is something that happens suddenly usually when attempting something at least slightly risky. Jailbreaking iPhones, replacing your laptop harddrive, desoldering components in an audio amplifier and other 'warranty voiding' all carry some 'bricking' risk.

The situation with Tesla is more akin to leaving your (very expensive) bike out in the rain: Given enough time it will rust up and need to be extensively repaired but I don't think you would say you 'bricked' it...

That would be the context that the term "bricking" is most often used in but the term itself simply means the object in question has been made just as useful as a clay brick.

It need not be risky or warranty voiding. Bricking has been applied to software updated pushed out by vendors in the past, so I don't think it implies anything more than something that causes something to lose all function and become inert, like a brik.

A vendor software push is risky even if well tested...

> "something that causes something to lose all function and become inert"

add "suddenly and without warning" and I'd agree with that definition.

This is a good release, however there is a better way to present it.

By now, gasoline powered cars have been around for a hundred years. Everyone knows they are complex machines with lots of movings parts, and that they require regular maintenance to keep in working shape. What Tesla is putting forward here is the fact that the same principle applies to their electric cars: they need their own kind of TLC to be kept in good shape.

However, there is another point Tesla fails to get across. Over those hundred or so years, not only has the need to care of a gas-powered car entered into the public psyche, but also how that care must be carried out. Everyone knows that cars need oil changes and exhaust checks and all that. It's obvious by now.

However, that sort of awareness doesn't exist when it comes to electric cars. Saying they need care is great, but Tesla is missing an opportunity to develop the same sort of intuitive public awareness with regard to their vehicles. It's not just 'these cars need care,' it's 'these cars need care, and its of a kind you don't expect, that's OK because you haven't need raised on these vehicles since you were young.'

This way, the message would move from being an ever-so-slightly condescending implication that you forgot that electric cars need electricity, and refocuses on the need to augment the way in which people think about maintaining their vehicles.

This is a textbook example of a non-denial denial:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-denial_denial

> The earliest Roadsters will take over two months to discharge if parked at a 50 percent charge without being plugged in.

What exactly are the conditions for this statement to be true? My laptop battery has lost some of its capacity over the past 2 years - how much capacity do Roadsters lose over time? If I had bought one of the first 100 or whatever, what would that discharge figure be now?

Wow. Great example of PR spin. It totally confirms the bricking claims by refusing to outright deny them. Instead it just repeats that you are supposed to recharge it and not let the batteries deplete, which is something everyone already acknowledges is true and is not a point of contention.

There is also a jab at a "single blogger" bringing the issue up, as if he is some rogue on a vendetta or looking for attention. But then not denying his claims makes this look like an insidious corporate attack on a journalist who actually brought to the public's attention a serious flaw with a product. Very similar to how GM's attacks on Ralph Nader back in the 1970s started. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Industry_re...

I read this as, "yup, you'll brick your car if you don't keep it plugged in."

On the other hand, I manage to keep my cell phone charged at all times, so I can imagine that I'd be able to keep my car charged at all times. But I ride a bike, so this doesn't really affect me.

Assuming Tesla PR is correct, then:

1- All modern battery packs, including laptops, have internal management circuitry that, among other things (like controlling charge so that they will not explode) not allow the damn thing to deplete. When 0% charge is reported the battery still has plenty of juice left.

2- With the given parasitic drain, the battery will last for at least a month left at 0% charge

3- If you leave you car at the airport, you kinda expect to be able to get back, so you won't leave the car at 0% when you depart. And even at 0%, you have a month to plug it in

So, barring a zombie apocalypse, what is the expected use-case that actual owners would encounter, to be able to destroy the batteries? It is certainly not normal usage.

Tesla, what's the cost of bundling a solar trickle charger in with your vehicle? Either build it into the roof (next generation, obviously) or just buy one that sits on the dashboard and throw it in with purchase.

"Please to be using this when leaving vehicle at airport. Thank you much, Tesla."

Maybe there's some reason this won't work, but... you need to work with your customers' expectations. Some of them are going to leave the vehicle unplugged for a while, and they're going to be pissed if the vehicle battery is destroyed.

30 watt drain. You will need 720 watt hours per day which will be around a square meter of solar cells.

Won't work in the parking garage, snow, or Seattle. Just don't leave your tesla at the airport of 12 weeks. That's expensive all by itself.

Do you need the full 30W to keep the battery alive, or is that for the whole electrical system on standby?

I suspect it is dominated by self discharge. By that is just guessing at the load.

I can't remember ever saying this before, and it's not even really plausible considering how relatively small HN is, but some of the comments here feel like they're directly from the mouth of Tesla.

I mean seriously. Cost doesn't matter? Time doesn't matter? Equating going on vacation without your car to never changing your oil?

Just because someone says it's neglect, or even has a contract that defines it that way, doesn't mean it's reasonable or even anywhere near the realm of common sense. That's just lawyer speak that is.

The comments here seem to fall into two unrelated categories: "Tesla isn't telling customers the whole story" and "What did people expect to happen when they left their car unplugged for months?"

Both are valid points. Why are you arguing? The points don't seem mutually exclusive to me. Tesla has a lot going for it. They make innovative cars, and I would love to own one. That doesn't make the company's PR responses any less defensive and cagey. The response for this particular issue is a big turn off for me. I would definitely prefer that they didn't contradict themselves within the first three paragraphs.

I get it. Owners of Tesla cars need to charge their cars or they will be out $40,000. That makes sense to me. Batteries don't last forever. My Mother however doesn't care how the car works. She just wants it to work. She'll do the maintenance that you ask her to do, but she's not going to know why. So, she won't know why she can't leave the car at the airport for a month.

That's why it's important for Tesla to say, "yes this is an important issue that is part of maintaining your car." Not, "A single blogger is spreading a rumor about electric vehicles becoming inoperable." If my Mother read that last sentence, she might say to herself, "oh, I guess that blogger was just lying," and move on without reading the whole article, now assuming that it's not possible to "brick" her car.

I also lay some blame at Michael Degusta's feet. I don't think that it was appropriate for him to title his article "'It’s A Brick' – Tesla Motors’ Devastating Design Problem." I don't see this as a design problem. It works. The potential for bricking your car is just something you'll have to watch out for, just like not changing your oil is something you need to watch out for.

I think that Tesla was just reacting against the accusation that they had a design flaw. As long as they make sure that all of their customers know of the issue, it's not a design flaw. At that point it's maintenance. That's where I think that Tesla failed today. They skimped on their responsibility of informing the customer of important facts, so that they could come out smelling like roses.

P.S. Incidentally, if I were to take a trip to my mountain home in Italy for half a year, roughly how much would I expect to pay in electricity to keep my Tesla vehicle charged? Does it draw a constant amount of power for the entire time that I'm away?

If you can afford a $100,000 car, you are not going to leave it parked at the airport for a month. Tesla does not make cars for people that need a utility vehicle, they make toys for rich people. Some day, this technology will be mass market and the batteries will be more forgiving. Today is not that day.

I agree with you. But now that you mention it, it seems like utility vehicles get used more often. Rich toys often stay in the garage with the other rich toys.

If you don't do the basic, fundamental things to maintain your vehicle, it will no longer work.

If you are, in fact, unable to grasp that, then you will pay the cost.

How is this even a thing?

Um, because maintaining a gas/diesel/lpg vehicle (or a laptop) doesn't include keeping it continuously fueled up at the risk of $30K damage.

You don't keep your laptop or phone charged on penalty of battery replacement, so why pretend that you're not surprised at the Tesla result?

If you completely discharge a battery, it will take damage.

Also, quite obviously, the batteries used in the Tesla are the same kind used in your laptop or phone, just a vastly greater number of them.

So yes, maintaining a laptop means keeping it charged.

(How do people not know this? Battery 101)

Raises hand.

I did know that it's not good for the life of a battery to continuously deep discharge it. (Though I've seen so much different advice over the years about various battery technologies that someone might easily think it was better for batteries to run them down now and then, a belief that had at least some relevance to NiCads.)

However, I confess to not knowing that running down, say, a laptop and then letting it sit uncharged for a long period was a very bad thing.

Who says they don't inform a buyer about these things, it's nothing to make a promo video about.

Who just leaves his car for 12 months somewhere, without caring about it? I know someone who left his motorcycle outside for too long and now rust killed it.

This sounds a lot like breaking a timing belt on an engine with an interference design. (When that happens the cylinders plow into the valves and there's a lot of carnage).

On my car that's a $6-7000 fix if it happens. I bet if there were only 2,500 of those engines in the world it would be a $40k fix, but economies of scale have made it cheaper.

quote "spreading a rumor"

turns out in this case the rumor is true...

well the first automobiles needed to be started with a crank on the front grill. sometimes the crank would catch and whip around an break the user's arm.

its a neat thing that even in this day and age, people aren't completely shielded from being on the cutting edge.

the 2020 Teslas are going to be amazing.

Even if it is in the owner's manual - and even if it is prominent in the manual - how many of you have ever actually read the manual when you get a new car? I know I have only ever looked when I actively needed something: the meaning of a warning light, how to operate the disc changer, something like that. It is entirely conceivable for someone to own a relatively new car for years without needed to look in there.

edit: and yes, I realize it would probably make sense to check it out when buying a type of car that is relatively new, but that doesn't mean even a significant minority of new owners will.

Two words: Nissan Leaf.

Quote - "Nissan spokeswoman Katherine Zachary tells Motoramic that the all-electric Nissan Leaf "will never discharge completely, thanks to an advanced battery management system designed to protect the battery from damage." Thanks to a combination of different management and battery cells custom-designed for the car, Nissan has sold 22,000 Leafs and never suffered a similar failure. Tesla's acolytes may find no fault in the charges, but other automakers know there's little margin in blaming customers for not asking the right questions."

The comparison of a fully discharged battery to the negligence of running a car with no or bad oil is disingenuous and likely manipulative. One is a passive issue of forgetting or not knowing a car requires charging when _not operating_, the other is an active negligence of operating a car that is unfit to run. I can neglect a car in storage for decades and getting it started will not require more than the cost of the car. At best it will require a tune-up and a full tank of gas.

I registered at Tesla motors website so I could comment, but it says to login to comment, even when I'm logged in. When I click 'login' it says I'm already logged in.

I would like to ask if it's true or not that any batteries have become inoperable due to being drained completely. Also If that does occur, what is the cost of replacement, and is it at all covered by warranty.

It doesn't seem like that answer is forthcoming...

It seems pretty clear to me that they do not plan on offering warranties against batteries sitting unplugged for long periods of time.

And so marks the conclusion of yet another Internet shitstorm. Sound and fury, gnashing of teeth, forgotten in a week.

All this has happened before, etc.

Isn't the whole point of "electric cars" to save energy?

Here we learn that they need juice constantly to run "vital systems" and therefore consume energy at all times, even when not running. The owner cannot choose to let his car unplugged because then it'll break down completely and need to be repaired at a cost of 40% of the original price.

This is not progress.

Incidentally, does anyone know why the wheels of a 'bricked' car would be locked up, preventing towing?

Yes, because the systems for disengaging the wheels from the drive train won't work without power.

Is that a fail-safe or the opposite of a fail-safe? I can't decide...

Consider a battery failure while parked on a hill

Does it not have a "park" setting? How does "park" work in a car with an automatic transmission anyway?

Doesn't it have a handbrake?

Park usually does two things--it slips a fixed tooth (pawl) into a gear on the output shaft of the transmission, effectively locking the driven wheels (i.e. front wheels on a front wheel drive car.) It will also unload the gears of the transmission the same as the neutral setting. This is why on some AT cars, the idle speed will creep up a tiny bit after put in PARK or NEUTRAL.

Does it require more power than a tow vehicle can supply to provide that disengagement?

What happens if you leave a gasoline car for 6 months without driving it?

That is the comparison I would like to see.

Typically? You'll probably have to jumpstart it. If it is sitting outside you could end up with the parking brake, in particular, stuck. It's not good practice to just walk away from a car for this long (should disconnect battery, put it up on blocks, etc.) but nothing terrible is likely to happen--especially if it's protected from the elements.

The running down of batteries in an electric car to the point where they're damaged is definitely a corner case. It's not one that's out of the realm of possibility. (Someone goes to winter house for a few months, leaves car in garage, and the charger isn't hooked up properly or something.) It sounds like the current generation vehicles make it even more of a corner case although I have to wonder what the failure modes of the various protection systems are.

Not 6 months but about a year:

* Fuel starts to turn into a syrup from evaporation requiring you to drain the tank. (This is a big issue on 2-stroke engines, you need to do a lot more work)

* Oil should be replaced due to acidic oil eating away sediment from crank case.

* Depending on time of year coolant should be flushed (depends on what mix is already in).

* Battery will be dead.

* Brake fluid might need to be changed as well.

Half of these you can ignore but it will cause wear and isn't good thing.

If you disconnect one of your car battery terminals, it will be perfectly fine for six months. Reconnect the terminal and drive away. It's not necessary to do anything else.

The main danger is things like squirrels moving into your engine block, if it's outside.

Not sure why you were downvoted. Seems reasonable to me. And the animal threat is real.

Devices are not pets or children. They should not die through owner inaction.

What is wrong with you people?

You are really trying to kill off cars because you got a horse carriage at home. The horse can when coupled reproduce itself, all it takes is some food and water to keep going, its unlikely to break down, you can be flexible by changing from a one-seater to carrying raw material in the blink of an eye.

Obviously, the horse is vastly superior to its new "car" competitor. Only a moron would invest in further developing the car, given that it was irrefutably shown to be inferior.

-- On a more serious note, I really can't believe this. This is supposed to be a technologically informed crowd, but you are instead acting as if we've got an infinite amount of oil "somewhere down there" and that it's unacceptable to deviate from the three ton monster SUVs that roam the streets in the USA.

I feel you on this one, but building an industry on misinformation is not the way.

Another thought: maybe we need to stop being so obsessed and utterly dependent on cars in general. Live locally, support your community, become more self-reliant, leverage personal technogy.

I can hardly see that Tesla has provided any misinformation. They have apparently told owners that it is important to keep the batteries charged. Which owners will in the typical usage scenario.

Maybe a big, red warning sticker on the door would make people happy?

From everything I've seen, Tesla's been pretty up front as far as what the battery needs, and what sorts of behaviors to expect.

As to your other thought, some of us do not want to ghettoize ourselves. Some of us have friends in areas that are, unfortunately, difficult to reach via public transportation. Living locally would mean disconnecting from a great number of people that I care about quite deeply.

I don't think people are arguing against electric cars as such. I'd like to think most people here want to buy (or make) a product which is very easy to use and idiot proof. That is an important part of what makes a product desirable. Having a car which breaks because someone trips over a power chord while you're on holiday isn't really ideal.

The original blogger and all the naysayers were completely insane to think this was some sort of design oversight and that the Model S would not include significant improvements.

Even though this response doesn't address everything that was brought up by the original post, I still find this whole thing fascinating.

I'm still a bit astonished that they didn't implement a deep-sleep in the roadster, but it's good to see they will do it for the Model S.

Seems like a little upselling going on in the defense. That is mastery.

tl;dr don't take your tesla camping, or it will 'discharge' coughbrickcough

One key issue that Tesla PR accidentally omits is whether owners are still responsible for 40K replacement if battery does indeed fail.

40K replacement basically tells user that go get a gas-powered car. If a fuel-injected engine fails, would it still cost just as much to replace? How about a BMW? or Mercedes? or Lexus?

I doubt that was accidental.

Exactly. The first article didn't attack the fact that the "bricking" occurs nearly as much as it attached the cost of replacement.

Of course you have to pay if you are stupid. Same thing if you destroy your gas-powered car on purpose using some other method. It is not a 'fail', which implies a manufacturing error or similar.

Except in this case you wouldn't be destroying the battery "on purpose" obviously, but rather through neglect or ignorance. It's a fail in the sense that this technology has been exposed to be clearly unready for wide-scale adoption, and the company in question has barely even acknowledged the issue, let alone outlined steps it is taking to fix it or improve the design.

You can neglect and ignore maintenance of gas-powered engines too. Stop getting oil changes and never check/refill it and see what happens to your engine.

It will eventually be "bricked".

Just like gas-powered vehicles need to be maintained, so do electric ones. EVs actually happen to require less maintenance. Simpler too. I would say that the EV equivalent of oil changes is to keep it charged above some minimum.

Err...it will take a very long time for a conventional gas engine to get 'bricked' as you put it. And the cost to repair will not be $40K. This line of argument from the apologists it a little weak methinks.

The point is that the cost of repair an EV seems way more than a fuel-injected vehicle. It has nothing to do with stupidity

Is it true to say that other battery only electric cars don't have the same potential, sorry, to become a brick? If so, this PR response is pure fluff.

Other EVs have the same warnings in their manuals.

tl;dr - A Tesla car can in fact be bricked.

The blogger should write a follow-up article: "Tesla admits that cars can be bricked. They are just a little harder to brick than assumed."

So, I guess they are saying you can brick a Tesla roadster.

Just to add to the PR observations, I like how they have a few positive comments, but it is actually impossible to make comments on the post.

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