Elon Musk defiant in face of federal investigation of Tesla [video] | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk defiant in face of federal investigation of Tesla [video]

cnbc.com

37 pointscodegeek43 comments

Elon repeatedly tries to misdirect from the issue at hand. Teslas do not catch fire more often than the average U.S. car. But that is not in question. The question is, "after a collision, what happens?" And so far, the answer is, "the Model S has a 25x increased chance of catching fire." That is the focus of the investigation. Fires post-collision are a bad thing, even if the never reach the occupant: they can ignite other cars gas tanks (or other objects), and impede rescue work.

It's not reasonable to say that the Model S has a 25x increased change of catching fire. The sample size is orders of magnitude too small (there were 3 instances so far?).

Put simply, there is no statistically significant difference whatsoever between the Model S and the broader population in terms of fires post-collision, and Musk is understandably frustrated about the bogus press claiming there is.

Engineering lets you model things without having to do experiments. It's possible to know that a car design is more likely to catch fire just by analyzing it. You don't have to wait for thousands of cars to catch fire.

And are you saying then that Tesla has not done the Engineering?

I'm sure they have. But as codex said, Musk is simply not answering the question.

Where did you get the quote which you use to answer your question? It was not written in the article linked here, and I can't seem to find any similar quotes when searching except for a comment in a slashdot thread.

I would like to see how they define collision and what exactly is 25x more likely but am finding myself unable to learn more about what exactly was considered with that calculation.

Using the binomial model, you can at least be pretty sure that the Model S has a higher chance of catching fire after a collision than your average car. We don't have enough data to determine the degree, though. So claiming 25x is premature.

Wow. They're making it sound like the investigation is a bad thing and that Musk is whining about it.

Yep. This is a prime example of the massive media bias working against Tesla. Keep in mind that Tesla doesn't advertise, whereas the incumbent auto manufacturers do. Therefore the media channels know where their loyalties must lie.

Or the media will pick up and hype pretty much any juicy-looking story.

If I look back through your comment history will I find you suggesting Musk and the media were involved in a conspiracy to sabotage Boeing (which doesn't generally advertise on radio/TV) during the 787 issue?

Or are you, like much of HN, having issues with this specific situation because it involves someone HN practically worships as a god?

Boeing doesn't advertise because it doesn't sell to consumers. It sells to airlines.

I don't "worship" Musk. But I am cognizant of the fact that he is one of a kind. Do you know of anyone else who simultaneously runs two equally ambitious tech companies, and, against all odds, does it successfully?

Dean Kamen: DEKA and FIRST Robotics [0]

Ignoring the non medical DEKA products (Segway) I think DEKA and FIRST (particularly FIRST) should have much more PR. Maybe you could argue ambition, but I still feel like mentioning these two organizations.

0: http://www.usfirst.org/

He even requested it; quote from Musk from Tesla blog:

>>Second, we have requested that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conduct a full investigation as soon as possible into the fire incidents.<<

with all due respect to Musk (kind of hero of mine for fighting the uphill battle to really advance our civilization), and with Tesla S being an object of my desire, this sounds like a defect that have to be fixed :

( http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/19/5121706/tesla-elon-musk-r... )

"it was damage to the cars' undercarriage and batteries, caused by striking metallic objects on the road while at high speeds, that caused both fires."

The software update to increase suspension clearance looks like just a [cheap] band-aid to me.

The third car fired as result of crash - that seems like a real and hard to avoid thing for lithium batteries and does seem like Tesla is ok here - the fire looked to be pretty limited.

What exactly do you think should happen when a jagged metal object collides with your car with enough energy to rip through critical components? Do you think susceptibility to telephone poles and meteorites is also a defect that auto makers need to fix?

Short of encasing the car's primary energy store with 6 inches of plated steel, what are you looking for, exactly? Is your car's gas tank similarly protected from being physically damaged? If not, does your car let you pull over and exit safely with voice and text guidance when a fire starts within?

>What exactly do you think should happen when a jagged metal object collides with your car with enough energy to rip through critical components? Do you think susceptibility to telephone poles and meteorites is also a defect that auto makers need to fix?

>Short of encasing the car's primary energy store with 6 inches of plated steel, what are you looking for, exactly?

that is a bunch of 6in fallacies. Car fuel tanks are made of something like 1-2mm steel. As far as i understand Tesla doesn't have a 1mm steel sheet below the battery. That is the defect made obvious by these 2 accidents.

Btw, modern cars are much better at hitting telephone poles and does tend to explode less when being hit by "meteorites" (say bullets) than they were say 40 years ago. So, yes bad crash results ("susceptibility to telephone poles") for example would be a defect.

That's a 3in fallacy. The battery in the Tesla S is significantly more resistant to damage than any passenger car fuel tank I've ever seen.

Do you honestly think that Tesla left that pack hanging underneath the car totally unprotected? Beyond that, you completely and utterly missed BHSPitMonkey's point.

You're right, Tesla doesn't have a 1mm steel sheet beneath the battery - it has a 5mm thick sheet [1]: "Musk explained that damage to the armor plating on the bottom of the vehicle was inflicted by contact with debris of a specific shape that resulted in a lever action, puncturing the bottom of the Model S. He noted that 25 tons of force would be required to make the three-inch-deep puncture in the quarter-inch-thick armor plating."

[1]http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319728

Does it need 25 tons of force or 3 inch hole to get the battery to catch fire?

If the battery container is blend out of shape a bit, would it potentially cause small short in part of the battery somehow? Would that start a fire for the rest of the battery.

If this is the case, wouldn't the probability of car catch fire might be higher?

An easy test might be take a few batteries and start shoot them with nail gun and see it get shorted/heatup/catch fire?

If it does catch fire, put a 5 mm sheet there and see how many nails and how big nails can get it to heat up / catch fire?

If any of the above tests can get the battery catch fire, I would be very concern if I am an Tesla owner.

at this thickness it would be something like aluminum, not steel. Good as a frame material, while softness make it not that good for point penetration resistance (it would be somewhere like 1mm steel equivalent, so seems i was wrong above). 5mm Al cover for 10ftx6ft battery would weight 80kg - doesn't look like there is much room for increasing.

So it doesn't sound like they did a screwy job - that's good to hear (as i said i'm a fanboy of Tesla and think nothing can stop them but their own hubris - when/if it appears), yet it also may mean that there is no easy, "low hanging fruit", way out.

> Car fuel tanks are made of something like 1-2mm steel.

Many, many car fuel tanks are made of plastic.

It's the position of the tank in the car rather than the material involved that's important.

This is a hard problem for Tesla to solve because their batteries are bigger by volume, really heavy, don't get lighter as they discharge, and don't shape as easily as a liquid, so the bottom of the car is the only really good place for one.

That's why Tesla used the "heavy armor" approach and actually -do- have several mm of metal located beneath the battery, but no armor is perfect.

> What exactly do you think should happen when a jagged metal object collides with your car with enough energy to rip through critical components?

An unfair characterization of the problem.

Gas tanks are in the rear of a car for a reason. Notice that we didn't see similar issue in the Roadster, which houses the battery behind the passengers.

Tesla used "quarter inch armor plate" (their words) to protect the battery. Some engineer picked that thickness and determined it was sufficient. These crashes show it may not be, in which case it needs to be improved.

This is not something terrible about Tesla, this is the slow process of iteration that creates good safe products.

I don't know how they did it but somehow Porche found a way to get their small plug in a news segment about another car brand.

Doesn't automobile crash data exist somewhere in the public record? Couldn't someone ostensibly run statistical significance tests to measure the success/failure rates? I haven't seen any real analysis on the subject based on available data, but I imagine that with 19K+ cars having driven tens or hundreds of millions of miles, that we do have a good amount of data to make it worth it to investigate. Right?

Automobile crash data is irrelevant. What we are talking about is whether the location of the battery pack on Tesla's cars are uniquely dangerous. Which requires an investigation. And which has absolutely nothing to do with the apparent safety of other cars.

We are talking about people's lives here.

The only place you can realistically put battery packs on an electric car is beneath the floor. They're too heavy, so they need to be kept low or the car will have terrible (and unsafe) handling characteristics.

And crash data is most definitely relevant - how gas cars react to striking similar objects at high speed is a valid comparison.

Not true, the Mini-E has them in the back seat, and it handles pretty well. Batteries are heavy, and lower is better like you say as a rule, but it's not the only realistic solution by far.

Also the Tesla battery pack isn't as well compartmentalized as it could be. There are things to be done to the battery pack to cause fire to be less damaging, so between the onboard warning systems, and firewalls, it's not a big deal when the battery does catch fire.

How is crash data not relevant? Why would the regulators not be able to identify and go for the lowest-hanging fruit, regardless of manufacturing origin? Obviously there are fewer data points for the Teslas, but they've outshone other manufacturers in all other safety tests (if I'm not mistaken). We're talking about people's lives here.

Seems like a good deal of sensationalism here. We are talking about people's lives, but the crash data so far doesn't support the hand-wringing we're seeing from the NHTSA and journalists. If anything, the crash data so far suggests the opposite. And comparison to safety of other cars is absolutely relevant to whether the safety of Tesla automobiles is an issue or within statistical industry norms.

>Automobile crash data is irrelevant

>We are talking about people's lives here.

These two statements do not belong together.

Safety data is relevant. There are dozens of new car models on the road right now that are more dangerous to drive than a Tesla. It is demonstrably true that if you crash one of those cars you are more likely to be killed than if you were driving a Tesla.

This is a somewhat silly attack on a new technology. Tesla is, and has, responded appropriately to every one of the safety issues they've encountered. I'm not necessarily a "let the market decide" kinda guy on this issue, given the way corporations have behaved in the past and given the nature of the corporate veil protecting the manufacturers from liability (often even in cases of gross negligence), but when it's clear the company is doing right on a scale much larger than most other auto companies (I can't actually think of any companies that have been more careful about the safety of their cars; maybe Volvo and Volkswagen).

"We are talking about people's lives here."

This is one of those "Think of the children!" kind of statements. When it comes to cars, we're always talking about peoples lives. Driving cars is the most dangerous thing most people do every day, by far. If you want to think of saving peoples lives, start campaigning for more mass transit and fewer cars. Campaign for self-driving cars. Campaign for dedicated cycling lanes so that more people will stop driving and start biking (without the risk of cars bringing their deadly influence into the picture).

That's not to say Tesla shouldn't always improve the safety of their cars, but past behavior indicates they have that built into their values as a company.

I'm just saying that if there's going to be investigations, why not start with the Dodge 1500 pickup truck (one of the longest running, most dangerous, vehicles on the road)? Or the Cheverolet Colorado pickup? Or the Mazda CX-9 or Jeep Wrangler? These are all dangerous vehicles to drive; they crash poorly and are involved in more vehicle accidents where someone is killed or injured than average (and a helluva a lot more than Tesla).

Statistics give us the ability to make rational choices in the face of something horrible like car accidents and death. Sure, Tesla should mitigate or solve the fire problem...but, when there are millions of more dangerous cars on the road, why pick on Tesla?

  > why not start with the Dodge 1500 pickup truck

Why not start with premium cars released at the same time as Tesla?

The trick is finding an unbiased person to look at the statistics.

They will not rest until Musk is destroyed. Oil=>$=>Media. Oil=>$=>Government. Oil hates Electric. So guess where Government and Media come down? Think that's crap? They have already outlawed the sale of Teslas in some states. They're just getting started folks. And then they're going to force Hydrogen cars down our throats. Talk about your fires! Anyone remember the Hindenburg?

It would be interesting to compare this in a fair apples to apples way. You'd want to take competing cars to the Tesla of the same age. So how many car fires have their been amongst all the BMW 5/7 series, Mercedes E and S series that are 3 years or newer etc. Then you'd get a similar looking sample size for all the critical elements I would think.

There is simply not enough time for either NTHSA or Elon Musk's comments to be true bc there is not enough data to be able to compare him to say GM/Ford/etc in regards to whether or not Tesla's are the safest cars on the road or wether the battery pack makes it more/less safe than the gas powered vehicles that catch fire.

Quit comparing them to gasoline powered cars. We have a car more than qualified to compare it to, the Nissan Leaf. So the real question is, in comparable accidents is the Leaf as prone to a fire that destroys the vehicle? Was a compromise made in the S with the pack design so as to facilitate pack swaps that perhaps made it vulnerable when it would not have otherwise been? Also, is the battery design more susceptible to fires than that employed by other cars, namely the Leaf?

I am a fan of alternative methods to power car and motorcycles. Yet the questions for each is the same, what are the safety issues with each and what compromises end up affecting safety?

> Quit comparing them to gasoline powered cars.

Why? That's what these are being compared to in pretty much every other situation. It's a car. It's powered by something different, but it's still a car. Is it more or less safe than other cars?

Are you really saying that if this is less safe than a Nissan Leaf (one specific car that's not in the same car class) it should be forced to change its design to raise the batteries higher -- raising the center of gravity and affecting handling -- even if it is as safe as or more safe than similar gasoline-powered cars in its class?

If that's the situation, should we force one specific gasoline-powered luxury sedan to change its design if its less safe than a specific gas car in another class?

Do you know what car is least likely to catch fire? A horse.

Honestly, as long as consumers are given accurate statistics regarding how safe these vehicles are, I think they should be able to buy (and insure) them even if they are a little less safe.

> Do you know what car is least likely to catch fire? A horse.

Actually, their fuel source conveys a significant fire risk:

http://bchanicker.org/2013/09/27/risk-of-spontaneous-combust...

I am not doing that. Elon Musk was.

Keep dropping, TSLA! Another $50 or so and I'll start buying back in...

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