Hacker News Reader

Comment by retired | Hacker News Reader

In The Netherlands, all ID3 and ID4 cars go through pre-inspection before they go for the annual technical inspection. Hence the low failure rates.

Going to the yearly inspection on worn tires and brakes is just owners failure.

View on HN

Yes, but if a car is using regenerative braking 99% of the time, the car should track this and use brakes occasionally to "polish and maintain" them. It's not hard, and if the pads are running out, it should warn the user. Tesla does neither AFAIK.

You should check your tires, yes. At least while changing from winter to summer and vice versa, however if the cars torque profile is too aggressive and it's eating tires, you should note it at the user's manual that thread wear should be checked more frequently with respect to other cars.

> how is that to do with Tesla manufacturing standard?

My friend's Toyota Auris needs new discs every 100,000KM, new pads every 60,000KM. I change discs around 60,000KM (heavier car, mostly rush-hour traffic, hilly city, automatic transmission), and never failed an inspection w.r.t. braking power.

> how is that to do with Tesla manufacturing standard?

Unless further data/evidence is provided, it is reasonable to assume all car owners treat their cars equally shitty, and as such can be ignored in this equation since it applies equally to all manufacturers.

Exactly. I don't understand the focus on VW here. That wasn't the point of my original post at all.

Tesla didn't even recognize the inspection failures in Denmark as real at first, so it's probably fair to assume that they're only now trying to sort out the problems on new cars, and that we'll see many more failing Tesla inspections the coming years, even on cars sold up to this day.

Worn brake disks are a manufacturing problem. Nominally my VW needs new brake disks every 100Mm. Practically it needs new ones every 40Mm, because VW makes them from shitty steel that rusts and wears like hell, especially when there is salt on the roads in winter.

Some manufacturers use better steel and therefore have a longer disk lifetime.

It is not wear that causes break systems to fail but lack of use resulting in a fairly recently discovered threat to blank metal: Rust.

I do drive to work almost every day, and I don't drive an electric car. So there is sufficient use.

And quite a few decades ago, people noticed that when you mix chromium, nickel, vanadium or things like that into your steel, it doesn't rust. Car manufacturers are just very slow in noticing.

That's interesting with the pre-inspection. I haven't heard about a systematic pre-inspection here. I also don't think it really matters, the most important metric I'm quoting is 7% failure rate across _all_ electric cars, and no way that's caused by every non-Tesla owner going to a pre-inspection.

(inspection costs around 80 euros in Denmark, so there's no financial reason to go to a pre-inspection anyways, just do the inspection and have it redone if the car fails).

Tesla wouldn't even recognize the problem at first, and refused repair of customer cars. Of course there's issues with every brand of car. It's just that the numbers show that Teslas are much, much worse with regards to safety critical components.

You bring your car in for yearly maintenance. They do a 50 point inspection, fix what is worn and replace fluids where necessary. After that they bring it to a shop next door where they do the (government required) yearly technical inspection. Nearly all brands do this as it's easy money and because you can persuade the customer to buy a new model of car while they are already in the shop.

Tesla does not have this. People just bring it straight to the yearly technical inspection.

Teslas doesn't fail because of fluids or worn brakes. They failed due to causes that Tesla didn't even recognize, as I already told you, because they thought wobbly wheels were ok, and other structural issues.

Stop making up excuses for Tesla, it's tiresome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com