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> it's like claiming to know what happened with a race horse that died clear across the country because you know race horses. Wouldn't you first have to see the veterinarian's records on that horse as well as such things as dietary and other data before really being able to say anything at all.

If the differential has 5 items, and the most likely is most likely by 99% just on demographics, then it's going to take a lot of lab data to refute that.

Similarly, heat dissipation is a first-order problem in battery design. Especially in these high-capacity designs using high-density chemistries. What else is on the differential?

What else? Shorting. Chemical impurities (less likely). Failed peripherals like fans (hopefully less likely to have this result, due to thermal cut-offs). Improper assembly. Those are my next candidates anyway, after a thermal design defect as you said (which is fairly broad).

Of course all of those potential problems would be compounded by having large cells with poor isolation.

Your points are common sense. You can therefore assume that other men, including the men you are criticizing, know them. Given this, and given that they are speaking publicly, I would wager that they have more access to data than you presume.

Except common sense is not very common.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -Albert Einstein

Or they are inserting themselves into the news cycle on this story for purposes other than strictly engineering.

I don't know if that's what is happening here, but it is certainly not an uncommon PR strategy.

You think Musk is grandstanding in hopes that consumers will demand SpaceX rockets for commercial airline travel instead of Boeing 787's? Well, duh, I'd take a ride in a rocket over another boring commercial flight any day.

I for one think it likely that Musk talks with a good grasp of the facts.

But I will say on the PR angle, he does compete directly with the entrenched manufacturers in the space arena and all discredit and doubt cast would serve him well.

Youre focusing on what Elon Musk has to gain, which is very, very little. This is actual all about what he stands to lose. Tesla's business is predicated on the public accepting that cars packed with Li batteries are safe. If the public loses faith is Li batter mass power storage, Tesla is toast.

That doesn't mean Elon is either right or wrong, but it's sufficient to explain why he feels a pressing need to be involved in the debate.

Oh so obvious in hindsight! +1

This is exactly why he is out in front of this issue.

I worked in a hardware store after the first space shuttle accident in 1986. More than one customer thought the store should not be selling O rings since they caused the shuttle to blow up.

Did these seem to think that the o-rings were made of an explosive material, or did they seem to be worried that by selling o-rings the store was somehow enabling shoddy safety engineering?

Sometimes, I just have to try and convince myself that I'm missing the sarcasm and the general public is smarter than it appears.

Let's just say I don't think Musk emailed Flightglobal because he couldn't figure out how to get in touch with anyone at Boeing. It was not a mistake that his statement went to the press.

I do think Musk is a brilliant innovator, but that does not preclude him from also having an aggressive PR strategy.

FWIW, Boeing is a direct competitor to SpaceX for private launch contracts.

>I'd be very interested in what they are saying if --and only if-- they had access to Boeing and FAA design and test data.

This kind of walled garden horseshit is what ensures no transparency in government contracts.

Just wowndering. Are you the kind of person who would consider convicting someone without looking at the evidence?

Publicly voicing concerns is comparable to convicting?

>I'd be very interested in what they are saying if --and only if-- they had access to Boeing and FAA design and test data.

Bollocks. Your analogies are crap too. Getting an FAA type certificate is a complicated, drawn out process, note, that doesn't make it a good process.

I'm betting Musk has as much data about those batteries as Boeing, the FAA, or anyone else alive.

> I'm betting Musk has as much data about those batteries as Boeing, the FAA, or anyone else alive.

You're betting that, are you? Based on a couple of paragraphs in a news article, you're betting that Mr. Musk has as much data as anyone alive - including the Japanese designers and manufacturers of the battery?

If there were a viable way of determining the facts of the matter, I would be happy to bet pretty much any sum you cared to name against you.

And the FAA seems pretty conservative?

"Finally, the FAA changes so slowly that if this were even all possible, the adoption and certification would all take at least 50 years." --Eric Schmidt, http://longbets.org/4/

Well, either we believe that government is the solution to all our problems or we don't. Right?

(In jest)

I'm not sure that erring on the side of caution is a bad thing when it comes to commercial jets, especially when "erring on the side of caution" means requiring an airline carrying large numbers of paying passengers needing to pay two qualified pilots to sit in a cockpit just in case things go wrong. I suspect most people underestimate just how many different separate electronic systems, usually developed and manufactured by independent specialists, are involved in controlling an aircraft (not to mention the new ones that would need to be developed for when things go wrong: there's a big difference between an autopilot landing an an instrument landing system and a pilot gliding his plane to a perfect stop on the Hudson River.)

Also worth pointing out that the CEO of Google (yes...I know his company tests driverless cars) isn't really more of an expert on the FAA certification process than the average person here. I think he's on the right side of the bet, but I'd also note that the avionics which assist the pilot in controlling the plane and monitoring what's going on have changed more in the last 50 years than any other aspect of commercial aircraft.

Commercial considerations are a bigger factor than certification in new aircraft programme inertia: airlines' economies of scale hugely favour existing models, and expensive radical innovation in aircraft programmes can often be improved upon at lower research cost by rivals.

context: Eric Schmidt is not the CEO, but is a commercial pilot (source: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2...)

You seem to think that the burden of proof is on the critics. When an airplane has multiple failures, I'd say the burden of proof is on Boeing. Especially when the critics know a lot about the technology in question.