6 ms·

He kind of had to be if electric vehicles were going to have a chance. Look at the "batteries are fire hazards" shitstorm - because his company is new and inter

by saulrh 10y ago

He kind of had to be if electric vehicles were going to have a chance. Look at the "batteries are fire hazards" shitstorm - because his company is new and interesting, the press is going to be much harder on it than they would be on any other manufacturer. Given how much I hear about Tesla, I suspect that his information control roughly balances out the muckraking into something like the truth.

gordon_freeman 10y ago
NHTSA did review all the fire incidents involving Tesla cars and found that the outside shell in the bottom was too thin and the debris broke it and damaged the batteries to cause fire. As far as I know that's a legitimate issue media has brought up and Tesla then took steps to make the shell stronger so that debris couldn't damage the batteries.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  Sure, if by "too thin" you mean it fails under impacts from objects like concrete blocks and receiver hitches that would puncture the passenger compartment, gas tank, or probably even the oil pan of a gasoline engine. The media loves to portray new things as dangerous. Perhaps it actually was too thin because these completely reasonable failures were able to happen, causing bad press that they ought to have guarded against with total overkill undercarriage shielding.
  - userbinator 10y ago
    Physically damaging batteries can directly cause a fire, whereas a punctured gas tank won't unless the leaking fuel finds a source of ignition. This is a failure mode unique to electric cars with batteries located there.
    - mdorazio 10y ago
      Wait, what? There were over 160,000 vehicle fires on highways in 2013 [1]. ICE vehicles catch on fire all the time, often even without a punctured gas tank, and definitely can catch on fire with a punctured gas tank. If you damage a vehicle's fuel source, whether it's lithium-ion or gasoline, you're going to have a bad time. [1] http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-reports/fire-statistics/vehicle-fires/highway-vehicle-fires http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-re...
      - userbinator 10y ago
        How many of those were caused by running over things on the road?
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        Vehicle fires are mostly from overheating or electrical fires. The gas tank being resistant to puncture, heat, and other things is something that is actually tested, electric vehicles on the other hand are much newer and these standards aren't there yet. Batteries can explode when internally shorted, I had quite a few of 18650's explode on me over the years (usually through a fault of my own) the explosion isn't like a party popper it can be quite big and violent, and while explosions are some what not uncommon the battery flaming out completely when internally or externally shorted is. The Tesla has a few 1000's of 18650's cells even if a small number of those short during an accident it can cause allot of damage. Another important difference between batteries and gas is that emergency workers (and anyone who's involved in the accident) can identify when the gas is leaking out, it's also much easier to stop the gas from catching on fire as wetting the vehicle or using other fire retardants will usually prevent the gas from catching fire. On the other hand you can have an internally shorted battery pack which can catch fire or explode at any moment and you would have no clue that it can happen. Now don't take me wrong this isn't some anti-Tesla or anti-EV scare BS, this isn't some conspiracy either but saying that there are no valid concerns about the safety of the battery pack is ludicrous. We know how petrol cars work, we've been using them for 100+ years, we know when to look for a gas leak, we know how to deal with an oil/engine fire, EV's are a whole new ball game, eventually there will be a case where a Tesla or any other EV gets into a car accident and there will be a hot terminal somewhere in that car due to a short and someone will going to get zapped, at some point one of those batteries will explode and cause casualties, and many other things will happen that will be unique to EV's.
  - chc 10y ago
    Given that the consequences were really bad (your car caught on fire) and the problem was easily fixed, it sounds like a reasonable complaint, even if the circumstances where it happened were pretty extreme.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      A lot of rare problems can be 'easily' fixed with thick expensive metal plating. That's not enough to make a complaint reasonable.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    FWIW, damaging your car's oil pan is super easy, it's really soft steel. My neighbour wrecked his Audi A3 going about 4 mph down a severely potholed road.
- kbenson 10y ago
  That's not what was reported at the time[1]. The NHTSA found no defect trend[2]. Tesla decided to make changes to prevent the problem anyway, including reinforcing that battery compartment and raising ride height when at speed, which should reduce the chance of anything like that happening again, but there's no evidence that their engineering was at fault (they indicated their cars had driven 90 million miles at the time, and only two fires were reported). 1: http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/28/nhtsa-closes-investigation-into-fire-accidents-of-tesla-model-s-report.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/28/nhtsa-closes-investigation-in... 2: http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchResults?searchType=ID&targetCategory=I&searchCriteria.nhtsa_ids=PE13037 http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchResults?searchType...
Avshalom 10y ago
Electric vehicles had been put on the path of inevitability by the Toyota Prius over a decade before Tesla got anything on the road (well I say this fairly often but: in reality they've always been on the path of inevitability, automakers have been trying the electric car every decade or so since the birth of the car)
- yardie 10y ago
  And yet Toyota sees the future not in electric cars but in hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota does not see the future in electric vehicles. Their hybrids are a good stopgap but they aren't into EVs at the moment. If you look at their history they went from full electric (ie. Rav4 EV) to hybrids to fuel cells.
  - ssmoot 10y ago
    That really depends on the fuel cell doesn't it?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > Toyota sees the future not in electric cars but in hydrogen fuel cells. Aren't the fuel cells just an alternative to batteries for storing electricity in an electric car?
    - Cshelton 10y ago
      Hydrogen fuel cells are used as a way to generate clean electricity, which then is used to recharge the battery whenever it is needed. Basically eliminating "range fears" to some extent. However I think this period of using fuel cells will be short lived. <10 years. But they will be everywhere in the mean time. 10 years from now I see batteries with capitcities of 4x greater than we have today with at least 2x recharging time. So an EV could go 1,200 miles on a single charge, and recharge fully in roughly an hour or two. That would instantly make all fuel cells pointless
Spooky23 10y ago
I don't understand why you would want to be an apologist for Tesla. It's unconscionable to require a NDA as a condition to performing warranty work. Between crap like this and their aggressive, litigious pushback about accident fault analysis, I'd say it's foolish to buy these cars. I've owned Dodge, Pontiac, Cadillac, BMW, and Honda cars. Each of those companies and their dealers have plenty of noxious behaviors, but nothing as extreme as this.
- chc 10y ago
  Based on the original article on Daily Kanban, it sounds like it's not warranty work. The NDA appears to be attached to a discount on out-of-warranty work.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    No, it sounds like a means to suppress reporting to Federal regulators to avoid a recall order.
    - gpm 10y ago
      No, it sounds like a means to prevent them from becoming obligated to perform out of warranty repairs for free. Suppressing reports to federal regulators was almost certainly not the intent, since the vast majority of cars will be under warranty (meaning they can't use NDAs). This article seems incredibly biased, selling NDAs on people who are out of warranty as NDAs on people who have some specific problem. Adding in a shield to make their already really low occurrences of fires even lower, while implying (falsely as far as I know) that this was required. Etc.
- davidwhodge 10y ago
  Single data point here, but I'be heard of BMW doing work or even taking back cars under NDA.
- 10y ago

by saulrh 10y ago

gordon_freeman 10y ago

NHTSA did review all the fire incidents involving Tesla cars and found that the outside shell in the bottom was too thin and the debris broke it and damaged the batteries to cause fire. As far as I know that's a legitimate issue media has brought up and Tesla then took steps to make the shell stronger so that debris couldn't damage the batteries.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Sure, if by "too thin" you mean it fails under impacts from objects like concrete blocks and receiver hitches that would puncture the passenger compartment, gas tank, or probably even the oil pan of a gasoline engine. The media loves to portray new things as dangerous. Perhaps it actually was too thin because these completely reasonable failures were able to happen, causing bad press that they ought to have guarded against with total overkill undercarriage shielding.
- userbinator 10y ago
  Physically damaging batteries can directly cause a fire, whereas a punctured gas tank won't unless the leaking fuel finds a source of ignition. This is a failure mode unique to electric cars with batteries located there.
  - mdorazio 10y ago
    Wait, what? There were over 160,000 vehicle fires on highways in 2013 [1]. ICE vehicles catch on fire all the time, often even without a punctured gas tank, and definitely can catch on fire with a punctured gas tank. If you damage a vehicle's fuel source, whether it's lithium-ion or gasoline, you're going to have a bad time. [1] http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-reports/fire-statistics/vehicle-fires/highway-vehicle-fires http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-re...
    - userbinator 10y ago
      How many of those were caused by running over things on the road?
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Vehicle fires are mostly from overheating or electrical fires. The gas tank being resistant to puncture, heat, and other things is something that is actually tested, electric vehicles on the other hand are much newer and these standards aren't there yet. Batteries can explode when internally shorted, I had quite a few of 18650's explode on me over the years (usually through a fault of my own) the explosion isn't like a party popper it can be quite big and violent, and while explosions are some what not uncommon the battery flaming out completely when internally or externally shorted is. The Tesla has a few 1000's of 18650's cells even if a small number of those short during an accident it can cause allot of damage. Another important difference between batteries and gas is that emergency workers (and anyone who's involved in the accident) can identify when the gas is leaking out, it's also much easier to stop the gas from catching on fire as wetting the vehicle or using other fire retardants will usually prevent the gas from catching fire. On the other hand you can have an internally shorted battery pack which can catch fire or explode at any moment and you would have no clue that it can happen. Now don't take me wrong this isn't some anti-Tesla or anti-EV scare BS, this isn't some conspiracy either but saying that there are no valid concerns about the safety of the battery pack is ludicrous. We know how petrol cars work, we've been using them for 100+ years, we know when to look for a gas leak, we know how to deal with an oil/engine fire, EV's are a whole new ball game, eventually there will be a case where a Tesla or any other EV gets into a car accident and there will be a hot terminal somewhere in that car due to a short and someone will going to get zapped, at some point one of those batteries will explode and cause casualties, and many other things will happen that will be unique to EV's.
- chc 10y ago
  Given that the consequences were really bad (your car caught on fire) and the problem was easily fixed, it sounds like a reasonable complaint, even if the circumstances where it happened were pretty extreme.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    A lot of rare problems can be 'easily' fixed with thick expensive metal plating. That's not enough to make a complaint reasonable.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  FWIW, damaging your car's oil pan is super easy, it's really soft steel. My neighbour wrecked his Audi A3 going about 4 mph down a severely potholed road.
kbenson 10y ago
That's not what was reported at the time[1]. The NHTSA found no defect trend[2]. Tesla decided to make changes to prevent the problem anyway, including reinforcing that battery compartment and raising ride height when at speed, which should reduce the chance of anything like that happening again, but there's no evidence that their engineering was at fault (they indicated their cars had driven 90 million miles at the time, and only two fires were reported). 1: http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/28/nhtsa-closes-investigation-into-fire-accidents-of-tesla-model-s-report.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/28/nhtsa-closes-investigation-in... 2: http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchResults?searchType=ID&targetCategory=I&searchCriteria.nhtsa_ids=PE13037 http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchResults?searchType...

Avshalom 10y ago

Electric vehicles had been put on the path of inevitability by the Toyota Prius over a decade before Tesla got anything on the road (well I say this fairly often but: in reality they've always been on the path of inevitability, automakers have been trying the electric car every decade or so since the birth of the car)

yardie 10y ago
And yet Toyota sees the future not in electric cars but in hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota does not see the future in electric vehicles. Their hybrids are a good stopgap but they aren't into EVs at the moment. If you look at their history they went from full electric (ie. Rav4 EV) to hybrids to fuel cells.
- ssmoot 10y ago
  That really depends on the fuel cell doesn't it?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- hackuser 10y ago
  > Toyota sees the future not in electric cars but in hydrogen fuel cells. Aren't the fuel cells just an alternative to batteries for storing electricity in an electric car?
  - Cshelton 10y ago
    Hydrogen fuel cells are used as a way to generate clean electricity, which then is used to recharge the battery whenever it is needed. Basically eliminating "range fears" to some extent. However I think this period of using fuel cells will be short lived. <10 years. But they will be everywhere in the mean time. 10 years from now I see batteries with capitcities of 4x greater than we have today with at least 2x recharging time. So an EV could go 1,200 miles on a single charge, and recharge fully in roughly an hour or two. That would instantly make all fuel cells pointless

Spooky23 10y ago

I don't understand why you would want to be an apologist for Tesla. It's unconscionable to require a NDA as a condition to performing warranty work. Between crap like this and their aggressive, litigious pushback about accident fault analysis, I'd say it's foolish to buy these cars. I've owned Dodge, Pontiac, Cadillac, BMW, and Honda cars. Each of those companies and their dealers have plenty of noxious behaviors, but nothing as extreme as this.

chc 10y ago
Based on the original article on Daily Kanban, it sounds like it's not warranty work. The NDA appears to be attached to a discount on out-of-warranty work.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 10y ago
  No, it sounds like a means to suppress reporting to Federal regulators to avoid a recall order.
  - gpm 10y ago
    No, it sounds like a means to prevent them from becoming obligated to perform out of warranty repairs for free. Suppressing reports to federal regulators was almost certainly not the intent, since the vast majority of cars will be under warranty (meaning they can't use NDAs). This article seems incredibly biased, selling NDAs on people who are out of warranty as NDAs on people who have some specific problem. Adding in a shield to make their already really low occurrences of fires even lower, while implying (falsely as far as I know) that this was required. Etc.
davidwhodge 10y ago
Single data point here, but I'be heard of BMW doing work or even taking back cars under NDA.
10y ago