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Comment by subroutine | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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