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Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

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

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...

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 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.

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