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Comment by firecall | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering if they did infact submerge the part of the car in water.

They all but say that in the article.

The headline is Tesla clickbait, as it clearly wasn't just related to driving in the rain, but rather submerging part of the car in water. Probably from driving through a deep enough puddle of water on the road!

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I still feel like it's a design flaw. Smartphones went through a similar headache period. Water damage killed countless phones, and the standard reply back then was it's your fault - pay up. In this case, it is arguable that cars should be more resistant to getting wet than phones.

I guess my question is, why isn't the battery and its early connecters better sealed off from water, and is there anything you can put in place to prevent bricking a $17k part if it detects water intrusion.

I agree. They should be much more robust against this than they are. I think Rivian does quite a bit better.

I'm not sure how other manufacturers compare.

If you seal it too well it becomes an explosive

Great point. It's also much harder to service which is also true for phones. But we discard phones after a couple of years, cars should be serviceable for decades.

Yet somehow you are far less likely need to service sealed phone...

And are waterproof phones blowing up more often than phones a decade ago?

The scale is few orders of magnitude off

They already run coolant through tesla batteries so they must be water tight to some degree. The connectors got wet in this situation. That's just poor craftsmanship.

I agree, but internal combustion engines also die if you drive in a surprisingly shallow flood. I think it’s a design flaw for them too.

Not if you have a snorkel on the engine.

really? Is a meter of water shallow flood?

Its a car not a boat. Unless you are an offroad vehicle, do you really expect cars to be crossing anything bigger than big puddle of water?

Offroad. As in SUV. Isn't that car supposed to be an SUV?

>I guess my question is, why isn't the battery and its early connecters better sealed off from water, and is there anything you can put in place to prevent bricking a $17k part if it detects water intrusion.

You should read walter isaicsons new book on Elon. Elon maniacally checks every requirement and process. They literally talk about this in the book. It was deemed "Stupid" to have inserts to make the bottom of the cabin waterproof.

I live on a road that floods regularly and I'm always amazed by how many drivers are willing to drive into water that is over two feet deep[1]. Car after car, they plunge in like amphibious operation is a standard feature on new vehicles, sending water over the hood and a wake across my front lawn. All that is to say, I would not be surprised if these people forged ahead into deep waters and are playing dumb when it didn't work out.

1. https://i.imgur.com/htJzqJY.jpg

I looked at your photo and that water is barely over the wheel hubs, it seems like a pretty standard small beer ask of a car.

Caveat: I live in Australia, we have cars with higher ground clearance and snorkels for when the water gets properly deep.

Water over the wheel hubs is a big deal. If you read your owner's manual submerged hubs requires re-lubing, at the very least. If you submerge a diff or crankcase those have to be drained and redone as well.

I'm not seeing the issue .. we already ramp and block cars and trailers about every 18 months and relube hubs etc, have done for years (since ~1960 by my recollection).

I mainly leave that to my father who was born and 1935 and still loves doing that kind of routine maintainence, he used to ride ring pounders through the Kimberley floods back in the day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47q6RiwcILg

It's just routine vehicle maintenance, make it a habit and tthey last for years.

Maybe routine maintenance in your parts (which would make sense if you're frequently fording rivers). For most car owners it's something that needs to be done... basically never. Can't blame them for not knowing something like that.

Any modern vehicle 1 ton and smaller doesn't have hubs that you can repack with grease (except Ford E350), and hasn't for the last 20 years. Everything has unit bearings that you can't disassemble, except full floating rear axles where the wheel bearings are bathed in the differential oil.

Edit: I see you're in Australia, so 70 series Land Cruiser also has spindles in the front axle.

My BS detector goes off whenever someone that is trying to explain something that might be there fault uses "honestly".

> I honestly can’t remember any huge puddles or anything like that

Something tells me he remembers a fairly big puddle.

what is the max puddle depth for a tesla?

I’m not arguing your point. I don’t use “honestly” as a colloquial phrase or crutch word, but I think this has at some point passed into the vernacular as a crutch word.

I’m not defending the parties making the claims either. Just an observation.

> They all but say that in the article.

This is a good point, they do not say that they submerged a part of the car anywhere in the article.

As I kid I rode along as my neighbor drove his pickup truck up to the headlights through a flood in order to save some animals from drowning. If the truck had a stalled we probably would've been pushed off the road and ended up heading down the river.

Electric cars have to do better than this.

What they don’t tell you about vehicles designed to do this (a deuce and a half can go almost submerged with the right snorkel kit) is that you get to replace the grease in basically every seal afterwards.

It wasn't designed for it. A f150 I think. He had it for years after that.

Apples and oranges. An EV truck maybe but an ICE sedan wouldn’t have made through the puddle either probably.

Gotta be careful with this. Many vehicles have to be modified so the exhaust is higher, electric, etc. Also, I've always heard that cold water on a hot engine block can cause cracks, but not sure how true that is. Most cars can't ford water like this.

There’s more:

Your differential probably has a vent. If you get your axles good and hot and then shock-cool them driving through a cold puddle, the air inside the diff may shrink and suck water in through the vent.

Gear oil plus water equals a substance which will not lubricate your differential gear and unless you drain out the foamy oil/water soup, you’ll have Problems.

Almost any car driven with water 'up to the headlights' is in extreme risk of getting hydrolocked by water getting into the air intake. If that happens, the motor is toast and needs to rebuilt for many thousands of dollars (easily 10k+ for a new car). This isn't any different, in my view.

Four horses and a few dogs would've drown if we hadn't gotten them to higher ground. Worth trading a old truck for, and it was fine in the end.

> If the truck had a stalled we probably would've been pushed off the road and ended up heading down the river

Sounds like a lot more than an old truck was at risk there.

Sure. I'm not advising anyone do this of course. I feel like heavy rains are a solvable problem for EVs, its probably an easier problem for them to solve compared to ICE. I shared the story to show how sometimes vehicles need to exceed their design parameters, could've easily been people in danger there instead of animals.

People were in danger there. People drown regularly driving into shallower water than "up to the headlights". That you made it out didn't mean it was safe; I'd be pretty mad if my neighbor risked my kid's life in this way to save some animals.

That was very compassionate of you and that guy. Respect.

No judgment on your decision there at all, props rather. I'm just saying you shouldn't have expected the truck to survive (unless other modifications were done, eg snorkel). Same with an EV, I would fully expect damage if I'm driving in water up to the headlights. Sometimes that's a sacrifice worth making though.

and if it doesn't, that's well past the point where a current could rip the vehicle right off the road.

Don't know why you're downvoted.

https://www.weather.gov/tsa/hydro_tadd

> Six inches of water will reach the bottom of most passenger cars causing loss of control and possible stalling. A foot of water will float many vehicles. Two feet of rushing water can carry away most vehicles including sport utility vehicles (SUV’s) and pick-ups.

You also don't know if there's washed-away bits of road that suddenly get deeper until you drive into them.

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