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Comment by sherr | Hacker News Reader

I live in Edinburgh and one of the first things I noticed when I first came here was how many Tesla's there are. I put some of it down to a dealership in a central swanky street with rich footfall (gone now). Things snowball. We get a lot of "weather" in Scotland. Not quite as much rain as Glasgow and the West, but plenty. And there has been some torrential (really, monsoon-style) rain on occasion recently (past two or three years really). I've rarely seen so much water come down so quickly.

However, I would still assume a Tesla was waterproof! Something seems odd about this.

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I swear I remember Tesla bragging about how they can turn into boats during deep water emergencies. The wheels being used as propellers, and the chassis being light enough to float. Feels like a fabrication of my mind now that I'm thinking about it...

Oh it's a fabrication of a mind, just not yours.

you might be thinking of Elon’s claim that the CyberTruck would be semi-amphibious

Multiple videos of that sort of thing happening came out. Tesla driving threw high water. Musk commented something that for a short period they could float but in general they said this wasn't a supported features and don't do it.

Then for the Cybertruck Musk said it should actually be able to float. But it was said as 'we are shorting for this' not 'this is a feature count on this'. As it stands this would void warranty.

Tesla certainty not ever suggested that they could turn into boats in emergency situations.

> Musk commented something that for a short period they could float but in general they said this wasn't a supported features and don't do it.

Musk also said "the driver is only in the seat for legal reasons - the car is driving itself".

We need an almanac for "Which Musk statements are to be taken at face value, and which aren't"...

https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11975452/tesla-model-s-fl...

Almost certainly there are multiple problems here.

I can imagine a scenario where debris or running over a curb damaged the undercarriage in a way that would allow water to enter the battery compartment if the lower part of the car was submerged (say, going over a somewhat deep puddle in the road).

There are enough Teslas out there that if 'rain' damaged the battery, we'd see tens of thousands of these issues constantly happening. I'm not saying Tesla isn't at fault, or there isn't a design issue, but it's probably some edge case.

BIK rate on EVs is 2% in the UK & there are probably a lot of finance/IT types in Edinburgh who were happy to funnel their income into what was effectively a half price car if you were a higher rate paying consultant. For a while Tesla was the only real EV option available in any kind of numbers.

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