11 ms·

It's really no different than early fuel-injected cars being damaged by running out of gas. The solution? Don't run out of fucking gas. That didn't stop fuel

It's really no different than early fuel-injected cars being damaged by running out of gas. The solution? Don't run out of fucking gas. That didn't stop fuel injection from becoming the dominant technology, and neither will this halt the rise of EVs.

larrydag 15y ago
I would think its a little different since the infrastructure was already in place for gasoline. There isn't the same infrastructure nation-wide for electric vehicles.
- ssharp 15y ago
  I'd say it was significantly worse under gasoline. Then, if you ran out of gas, the car was bricked. Tesla is saying that even if you drain your battery driving, it would still take 30 days of failing to charge it to brick it. While the infrastructure for just "filling up real quick" may not exist for electric cars, the infrastructure certainly exists at a person's home, otherwise, they wouldn't buy an electric car. I think there would be a much more compelling case for this if electric cars were being mass-adopted, and the education for maintaining them was poor. Neither is the case here. Electric cars are still largely in the early adopters phase, and Tesla is telling people to not leave their car unplugged for months on end. Much ado about nothing.
  - nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
    Running out of gas doesn't "brick" a car. You can either push or tow it to a gas station, or you can deliver more fuel to it, and it will continue working without missing a beat. Letting a Li-ion battery discharge completely damages the battery, which means you have to replace the entire battery, not just fill it back up. This is physics; Tesla can't change the laws of chemical reactions.
    - tfb 15y ago
      What about not keeping enough fresh oil? I believe keeping a minimum charge on an EV is analogous to the common knowledge of maintaining a gas-powered vehicle's oil. The problem is that people don't have experience with EVs. I'm sure in the early days of gas-powered vehicles, plenty of engines seized up because people were unaware they had to change the oil and keep it at a certain level. And it certainly still happens on occasion. See my other post in this submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3630466 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3630466
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - btbuilder 15y ago
        Timing is everything. Assumine new vehicles, doing nothing to a Tesla for ~30 days means $40k. Changing your oil 6 month later than the service schedule in most cases means inmeasurable (by owner) reduction in overall engine lifetime.
    - ssharp 15y ago
      I was alluding to an on an earlier post on this thread about when fuel injection first came around - running out of gas could do damage to the car.
ceejayoz 15y ago
> It's really no different than early fuel-injected cars being damaged by running out of gas. Barring a fuel leak, your car won't run out of gas sitting in your garage while you're on a long business trip.
- bittermang 15y ago
  Non sequitur. While the circumstances surrounding the different engines and technology are wildly different, it doesn't change the root issue: if you neglect your car, it will break, and it will be a very expensive fix.
  - sbov 15y ago
    Sorry, but circumstances matter a lot in life, and you can't just brush them off because you don't like them. Try telling your insurance company that the circumstances don't matter. Or the hospital. Or the police. Or your boss. Or your customers.
    - wtallis 15y ago
      He's not saying that the circumstances are completely irrelevant, he's saying that the specific circumstances don't matter (as long as they add up to neglect), because it takes different circumstances to cause different problems. That's not at all like trying to ignore who's at fault in a traffic collision.
      - bittermang 15y ago
        Precisely. There's a lot of variables at play here. The fact that the battery is so expensive vs. what a consumer has become accustomed to paying for vehicle maintenance on a traditional gasoline car. The tech is new. The way the vehicles operate is fundamentally different, and require different attention to different things. But it's all noise convoluting the argument. The root: if you neglect your vehicle -- any vehicle -- you are in store for an expensive repair bill. It could be a $2,000 transmission. It could be a $10,000 engine replacement. Or it could be a $40,000 electric car battery. Because of all the aforementioned variables, the largest of which being the cost associated, there has been a massive amount of FUD surrounding bricking your Tesla. This response from the company is attempting to bring things back down to earth. If you plug in your car, you won't brick your car. Which should really be common sense for anything at this point. Regardless of cost, if you take care of your possessions, they will last longer.
Kynlyn 15y ago
Yes, it is entirely different. Running an early fuel-injected vehicle out of gas didn't result in a repair bill that is approximately half the purchase cost of the car. Secondly, you could leave your fuel injected car idle for months on and end without having to worry about the car slowly slurping the fuel down and then leaving you an empty. So it is much easier to run a EV out of battery power and far more expensive to fix it when it does happen. No amount of PR spinning, FUD or wishful thinking changes that.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  If you leave an IC car for a long period of time with 1/2 a tank of gas you can destroy the engine. Gas like everything else breaks down and if you left leave your car sitting for a long time you may need to completely drain the gas tank. PS: Gas can noticeably degrade in as little as one month depending on ambient conditions. But, condensation is the largest risk for mid term storage. After 1 year you will probably have trouble starting the engine even after replacing the battery. And 3-7 years your probably looking at major repair work.
  - Kynlyn 15y ago
    All very true; but I don't think very many IC engines have died just because the owner took a longer than expected trip and came back to the airport to find their vehicle's engine is destroyed. Furthermore, the costs of any such IC repair wouldn't be nearly as high as what it is in the Tesla. The point is simply that Tesla should give more warning and attention to the very high cost of repair when you forget to plug the vehicle in or leave it unattended for long periods of time.
  - droithomme 15y ago
    I've done this plenty of times. It's a common risk in cold climates when tractors, cars and lawnmowers are parked outside and one forgets to drain the tank. It gums up the carburetor. So you rebuild the carburetor, which takes 1 hr and $5 to do at home, or $100 at the dealer. Not $40,000. It also doesn't "destroy the engine". There is a high probability either don't know what you are talking about and made that claim up, or you are intentionally being misleading in order to promote a viewpoint using false claims.
tocomment 15y ago
How did they resolve this with modern fuel injected cars? I routinely drive mine until it runs out of gas (don't ask) and I haven't had any adverse problems.
- fletchowns 15y ago
  I've heard that can be really hard on your fuel pump.
  - outworlder 15y ago
    I commented above about this, it actually happened to my car. The pump overheated. There were some natural gas kits sold that would not disable the fuel pump when you switched to gas. Some owners, when running out of gasoline, would switch to the gas. The fuel pump would keep running dry and melt. Something like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WafeVL7IZss/S5VP0fVNvuI/AAAAAAAAJP8/ETrUPGSFT6U/s400/bomba-gasolina-derretida.JPG http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WafeVL7IZss/S5VP0fVNvuI/AAAAAAAAJP...
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  I believe the problem (or at least one of them) with early fuel injection was that the injectors would overheat if they didn't have have the fuel passing through them to cool the solenoid. Newer cars won't even attempt to fire the injector if a high enough fuel pressure isn't sensed.
burgreblast 15y ago
Sounds like you knew all along that the Tesla battery could be bricked by running out of charge? That would make you one of a very small minority. The original story got play because it was a surprising, unknown, and frankly, sucks. If all of my fuel-injected laptops had never been damaged when they ran out of fuel, I would be pretty shocked and disappointed when it was a problem with the Kugelfischer. Much like the Tesla owners this affected. Tesla isn't a "cause" it's just a product. So whatever happens to Tesla one way or the other has a smaller influence on "the rise of EVs" than you can imagine. Mahalo.
- unavoidable 15y ago
  Except that this problem is inherent in battery technology and the same thing happens to all EVs.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  >Sounds like you knew all along that the Tesla battery could be bricked by running out of charge? That would make you one of a very small minority. Comprising all Tesla owners. It's in the Owner's Manual, and I would be very surprised if new owners aren't informed of it when they purchase the car.
  - droithomme 15y ago
    It's good to know that you agree with the blogger who wrote the article, and agree that Tesla is lying when they say his claims are unfounded rumors.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  I'm actually pretty surprised at how few people knew this about lithium batteries. I guess that goes to show how much protection is actually built into the devices, and how rarely it actually happens. This problem isn't fixable, but it happens very rarely and is easily avoided. And even so, Tesla (and others like Nissan) has made available a warning system just in case, and all the blogger managed to do was to point out the privacy concerns with this solution.
tlb 15y ago
It's a little different. Replacing the fuel pump and injectors cost maybe 5% of the cost of the vehicle. Replacing roadster batteries costs 40%.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  Repair cost doesn't matter. It's up to the owner not to be an idiot, and to take care of the vehicle. The vast majority of owners of early fuel-injected cars knew not to let them run out of gas, and didn't. Similarly, when Tesla tells you not to let the battery go completely flat, you take care of your property and follow their instructions. If I leave my house long enough, the roof will decay and I'll get massive water damage. Halfway-intelligent homeowners know they need to get their roof done once in a while. Bike owners know that if they leave their bike in the rain, it will rust. Many of the trappings of modern day life require active measures to ensure they work properly, and this is no different.
  - zaidf 15y ago
    It's up to the owner not to be an idiot Actually no, the common wisdom is that you should expect your users to be idiots when developing a product.
    - droithomme 15y ago
      I wonder, is running the batteries down when driving an electric car with a very limited range and general unavailability of high current outlets more, or less likely than running out of gas in a car with a very large range and widespread availability of refilling stations?
  - vannevar 15y ago
    Many of the trappings of modern day life require active measures to ensure they work properly, and this is no different. It's different because people are familiar with all the things you mention: roofs and rain, bikes and rust. People aren't familiar with electric automobiles. Once someone buys them, sure, they'll become familiar and the vast majority won't brick them. Tesla's problem isn't the owners, it's the people thinking about becoming owners. And those people (if they've heard the story) are now fearful of bricking their cars, where they're not at all afraid of bricking the Mercedes they were considering as an alternative to the Tesla. Now they're thinking, maybe I'll wait another few years on this electric car thing. That's Tesla's problem right now. Not bricked cars, but the fear of bricked cars. And that's why they should cover this under warranty.
derroboter 15y ago
Any details on fuel-injected being bricked if ran out of gas? Never knew about it...
droithomme 15y ago
So you agree, as we all do, that if you do what the "blogger starting an unfounded rumor" describes, then you will brick the car, as he claims will be the result. So you agree the blogger is telling the truth and the PR release from tesla is a lie, correct?
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  This is the second time[1] you have said precisely the same thing in response to a comment of mine in this thread. I don't care about whatever agenda you're trying to push; stop being so belligerent in your attempts to get me to say something completely orthogonal to my point. [1] The other: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3631295 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3631295
  - droithomme 15y ago
    So you agree the blogger is telling the truth and the PR release from tesla is a lie, correct?
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      Times like this I wish I could downvote people who reply to me.
outworlder 15y ago
Interesting fact: I managed to break the fuel pump on my Ford Ka by running the car for too long with low fuel. Apparently, some fuel pumps are cooled by the fuel itself. If the level gets too low, it can't dissipate the heat fast enough and the pump fails. It didn't "brick" right away, but it got increasingly harder to start, because the pump could no longer pressurise que fuel line fast enough.

larrydag 15y ago

I would think its a little different since the infrastructure was already in place for gasoline. There isn't the same infrastructure nation-wide for electric vehicles.

ssharp 15y ago
I'd say it was significantly worse under gasoline. Then, if you ran out of gas, the car was bricked. Tesla is saying that even if you drain your battery driving, it would still take 30 days of failing to charge it to brick it. While the infrastructure for just "filling up real quick" may not exist for electric cars, the infrastructure certainly exists at a person's home, otherwise, they wouldn't buy an electric car. I think there would be a much more compelling case for this if electric cars were being mass-adopted, and the education for maintaining them was poor. Neither is the case here. Electric cars are still largely in the early adopters phase, and Tesla is telling people to not leave their car unplugged for months on end. Much ado about nothing.
- nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
  Running out of gas doesn't "brick" a car. You can either push or tow it to a gas station, or you can deliver more fuel to it, and it will continue working without missing a beat. Letting a Li-ion battery discharge completely damages the battery, which means you have to replace the entire battery, not just fill it back up. This is physics; Tesla can't change the laws of chemical reactions.
  - tfb 15y ago
    What about not keeping enough fresh oil? I believe keeping a minimum charge on an EV is analogous to the common knowledge of maintaining a gas-powered vehicle's oil. The problem is that people don't have experience with EVs. I'm sure in the early days of gas-powered vehicles, plenty of engines seized up because people were unaware they had to change the oil and keep it at a certain level. And it certainly still happens on occasion. See my other post in this submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3630466 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3630466
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - btbuilder 15y ago
      Timing is everything. Assumine new vehicles, doing nothing to a Tesla for ~30 days means $40k. Changing your oil 6 month later than the service schedule in most cases means inmeasurable (by owner) reduction in overall engine lifetime.
  - ssharp 15y ago
    I was alluding to an on an earlier post on this thread about when fuel injection first came around - running out of gas could do damage to the car.

ceejayoz 15y ago

> It's really no different than early fuel-injected cars being damaged by running out of gas. Barring a fuel leak, your car won't run out of gas sitting in your garage while you're on a long business trip.

bittermang 15y ago
Non sequitur. While the circumstances surrounding the different engines and technology are wildly different, it doesn't change the root issue: if you neglect your car, it will break, and it will be a very expensive fix.
- sbov 15y ago
  Sorry, but circumstances matter a lot in life, and you can't just brush them off because you don't like them. Try telling your insurance company that the circumstances don't matter. Or the hospital. Or the police. Or your boss. Or your customers.
  - wtallis 15y ago
    He's not saying that the circumstances are completely irrelevant, he's saying that the specific circumstances don't matter (as long as they add up to neglect), because it takes different circumstances to cause different problems. That's not at all like trying to ignore who's at fault in a traffic collision.
    - bittermang 15y ago
      Precisely. There's a lot of variables at play here. The fact that the battery is so expensive vs. what a consumer has become accustomed to paying for vehicle maintenance on a traditional gasoline car. The tech is new. The way the vehicles operate is fundamentally different, and require different attention to different things. But it's all noise convoluting the argument. The root: if you neglect your vehicle -- any vehicle -- you are in store for an expensive repair bill. It could be a $2,000 transmission. It could be a $10,000 engine replacement. Or it could be a $40,000 electric car battery. Because of all the aforementioned variables, the largest of which being the cost associated, there has been a massive amount of FUD surrounding bricking your Tesla. This response from the company is attempting to bring things back down to earth. If you plug in your car, you won't brick your car. Which should really be common sense for anything at this point. Regardless of cost, if you take care of your possessions, they will last longer.

Kynlyn 15y ago

Yes, it is entirely different. Running an early fuel-injected vehicle out of gas didn't result in a repair bill that is approximately half the purchase cost of the car. Secondly, you could leave your fuel injected car idle for months on and end without having to worry about the car slowly slurping the fuel down and then leaving you an empty. So it is much easier to run a EV out of battery power and far more expensive to fix it when it does happen. No amount of PR spinning, FUD or wishful thinking changes that.

onemoreact 15y ago
If you leave an IC car for a long period of time with 1/2 a tank of gas you can destroy the engine. Gas like everything else breaks down and if you left leave your car sitting for a long time you may need to completely drain the gas tank. PS: Gas can noticeably degrade in as little as one month depending on ambient conditions. But, condensation is the largest risk for mid term storage. After 1 year you will probably have trouble starting the engine even after replacing the battery. And 3-7 years your probably looking at major repair work.
- Kynlyn 15y ago
  All very true; but I don't think very many IC engines have died just because the owner took a longer than expected trip and came back to the airport to find their vehicle's engine is destroyed. Furthermore, the costs of any such IC repair wouldn't be nearly as high as what it is in the Tesla. The point is simply that Tesla should give more warning and attention to the very high cost of repair when you forget to plug the vehicle in or leave it unattended for long periods of time.
- droithomme 15y ago
  I've done this plenty of times. It's a common risk in cold climates when tractors, cars and lawnmowers are parked outside and one forgets to drain the tank. It gums up the carburetor. So you rebuild the carburetor, which takes 1 hr and $5 to do at home, or $100 at the dealer. Not $40,000. It also doesn't "destroy the engine". There is a high probability either don't know what you are talking about and made that claim up, or you are intentionally being misleading in order to promote a viewpoint using false claims.

tocomment 15y ago

How did they resolve this with modern fuel injected cars? I routinely drive mine until it runs out of gas (don't ask) and I haven't had any adverse problems.

fletchowns 15y ago
I've heard that can be really hard on your fuel pump.
- outworlder 15y ago
  I commented above about this, it actually happened to my car. The pump overheated. There were some natural gas kits sold that would not disable the fuel pump when you switched to gas. Some owners, when running out of gasoline, would switch to the gas. The fuel pump would keep running dry and melt. Something like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WafeVL7IZss/S5VP0fVNvuI/AAAAAAAAJP8/ETrUPGSFT6U/s400/bomba-gasolina-derretida.JPG http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WafeVL7IZss/S5VP0fVNvuI/AAAAAAAAJP...
HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
I believe the problem (or at least one of them) with early fuel injection was that the injectors would overheat if they didn't have have the fuel passing through them to cool the solenoid. Newer cars won't even attempt to fire the injector if a high enough fuel pressure isn't sensed.

burgreblast 15y ago

Sounds like you knew all along that the Tesla battery could be bricked by running out of charge? That would make you one of a very small minority. The original story got play because it was a surprising, unknown, and frankly, sucks. If all of my fuel-injected laptops had never been damaged when they ran out of fuel, I would be pretty shocked and disappointed when it was a problem with the Kugelfischer. Much like the Tesla owners this affected. Tesla isn't a "cause" it's just a product. So whatever happens to Tesla one way or the other has a smaller influence on "the rise of EVs" than you can imagine. Mahalo.

unavoidable 15y ago
Except that this problem is inherent in battery technology and the same thing happens to all EVs.
redthrowaway 15y ago
>Sounds like you knew all along that the Tesla battery could be bricked by running out of charge? That would make you one of a very small minority. Comprising all Tesla owners. It's in the Owner's Manual, and I would be very surprised if new owners aren't informed of it when they purchase the car.
- droithomme 15y ago
  It's good to know that you agree with the blogger who wrote the article, and agree that Tesla is lying when they say his claims are unfounded rumors.
gnaffle 15y ago
I'm actually pretty surprised at how few people knew this about lithium batteries. I guess that goes to show how much protection is actually built into the devices, and how rarely it actually happens. This problem isn't fixable, but it happens very rarely and is easily avoided. And even so, Tesla (and others like Nissan) has made available a warning system just in case, and all the blogger managed to do was to point out the privacy concerns with this solution.

tlb 15y ago

It's a little different. Replacing the fuel pump and injectors cost maybe 5% of the cost of the vehicle. Replacing roadster batteries costs 40%.

redthrowaway 15y ago
Repair cost doesn't matter. It's up to the owner not to be an idiot, and to take care of the vehicle. The vast majority of owners of early fuel-injected cars knew not to let them run out of gas, and didn't. Similarly, when Tesla tells you not to let the battery go completely flat, you take care of your property and follow their instructions. If I leave my house long enough, the roof will decay and I'll get massive water damage. Halfway-intelligent homeowners know they need to get their roof done once in a while. Bike owners know that if they leave their bike in the rain, it will rust. Many of the trappings of modern day life require active measures to ensure they work properly, and this is no different.
- zaidf 15y ago
  It's up to the owner not to be an idiot Actually no, the common wisdom is that you should expect your users to be idiots when developing a product.
  - droithomme 15y ago
    I wonder, is running the batteries down when driving an electric car with a very limited range and general unavailability of high current outlets more, or less likely than running out of gas in a car with a very large range and widespread availability of refilling stations?
- vannevar 15y ago
  Many of the trappings of modern day life require active measures to ensure they work properly, and this is no different. It's different because people are familiar with all the things you mention: roofs and rain, bikes and rust. People aren't familiar with electric automobiles. Once someone buys them, sure, they'll become familiar and the vast majority won't brick them. Tesla's problem isn't the owners, it's the people thinking about becoming owners. And those people (if they've heard the story) are now fearful of bricking their cars, where they're not at all afraid of bricking the Mercedes they were considering as an alternative to the Tesla. Now they're thinking, maybe I'll wait another few years on this electric car thing. That's Tesla's problem right now. Not bricked cars, but the fear of bricked cars. And that's why they should cover this under warranty.

derroboter 15y ago

Any details on fuel-injected being bricked if ran out of gas? Never knew about it...

droithomme 15y ago

So you agree, as we all do, that if you do what the "blogger starting an unfounded rumor" describes, then you will brick the car, as he claims will be the result. So you agree the blogger is telling the truth and the PR release from tesla is a lie, correct?

redthrowaway 15y ago
This is the second time[1] you have said precisely the same thing in response to a comment of mine in this thread. I don't care about whatever agenda you're trying to push; stop being so belligerent in your attempts to get me to say something completely orthogonal to my point. [1] The other: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3631295 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3631295
- droithomme 15y ago
  So you agree the blogger is telling the truth and the PR release from tesla is a lie, correct?
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    Times like this I wish I could downvote people who reply to me.

outworlder 15y ago

Interesting fact: I managed to break the fuel pump on my Ford Ka by running the car for too long with low fuel. Apparently, some fuel pumps are cooled by the fuel itself. If the level gets too low, it can't dissipate the heat fast enough and the pump fails. It didn't "brick" right away, but it got increasingly harder to start, because the pump could no longer pressurise que fuel line fast enough.