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Elon Musk offers to help get the grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliner back in the air
- zyang 14y agoHow Boeing responds to this will show us how the company management is willing to adapt.
- DigitalJack 14y agoMaybe. I suppose Boeing could force the subcontractor, Hamilton Sundstrand, that developed the Auxiliary Power Unit to work with Tesla/Musk in coming up with a solution. For Reference: http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/ntsb-prepares-disassemble-jal-787-apu-battery-0114 http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/ntsb-p...
- 1123581321 14y agoHS had nothing to do with the battery, and their power load calculations were correct. Personal sources (HS is huge in my city.)
- ryanhuff 14y agoI would be quite surprised if Boeing responds at all.
- notahacker 14y agoBearing in mind that it was Boeing innovating by introducing lithium ion batteries (by subjecting them to a couple of hundred thousand hours of testing at their own expense) that caused the problem, I'm not sure what further risking their reputation with "Boeing puts the zero in being" Musk would prove. Desperation?
- KeepTalking 14y agoI highly doubt if Boeing would be interested, considering Elon and his band of engineers at Space X are competitors to Boeing's rocket business. It is amazing to see how both Boeing and Elon are pushing the envelope on the development of battery technology.
- temp453463343 14y agoIf it's faster and cheaper to do it through Tesla then they'll do it. At the end of the day they're businesses and if this means making more money - they don't hold grudges.
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- BruceIV 14y agoWhat's in it for him?
- notahacker 14y agoPR. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest the process of regulatory approval for new types of aircraft batteries might take a little more time than anyone wants to leave the 787s on the ground for
- NoPiece 14y agoDo you really need regulatory approval to change a battery design or battery type in a commercial plane?
- josephlord 14y agoI think that the battery is used to restart the engines in some emergency situations. Do you really want critical components that have been tested for many hours/weeks/months in the aeroplanes systems to be replaced without an approval process? Now would you let Boeing make that choice? The customers American Airlines, Al Italia, Aeroflot, Air Timbuktu? Remember the rules have to apply to all planes, manufacturers and airlines including the ones about to go bankrupt. In my view the answer would be a definite YES although I would hope the approval could be expedited if there are clear issues with the existing solution and good reasons to believe the new solution will solve it without causing other issues.
- NoPiece 14y agoHeh, I meant it as an actual question, is there a regulatory process for changing batteries. I could see something like this either being covered or not.
- ubernostrum 14y agoThe FAA directive covers this: http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/0/8a1a8dc3135b60dd86257af60004cf4a/$FILE/2013-02-51_Emergency.pdf http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/... Look on page 2 for what's expected to be done and how it'll be approved.
- alex_c 14y agoA Twitter message is a publicity stunt, not a sincere offer for help. I'm sure Elon knows the right people to contact at Boeing directly if he really wants to work something out.
- United857 14y agoWhat's not to say that he did that also?
- jlgreco 14y agoI see it as being more on Boeing to initiate official correspondence if they want the help. Elon is just casually letting them know that they would be receptive to such a request.
- ryguytilidie 14y agoRight, and as the poster above is saying, if he actually wanted to help, he would contact Boeing. If he wanted publicity, he would make a tweet offering help.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoNot necessarily. Even if you're Elon Musk, unless you already know the direct number of just the right person to contact going about it publicly might be the fastest way of doing it, otherwise you end up having to go through layers of intermediaries.
- neurotech1 14y agoGoogle it :D Lori Gunter 787 Program Communications Manager 425-266-6256 loretta.m.gunter@boeing.com Larry Loftis 787 General Manager (I don't have his confirmed information)
- artursapek 14y ago425... I miss Redmond...
- danmaz74 14y agoPretty clever PR move by Elon Musk. Now, if Boeing accept the offer, they give the impression that Musk has better engineers. If they reject it, they look arrogant and ungrateful.
- ars 14y agoMost likely they'll just ignore it. Do you like random people offering help when you are doing something?
- toomuchtodo 14y agoEasy there. It'd be a shame if Elon got into the aircraft industry... Looks like someone is building Stark Industries more and more.
- danmaz74 14y agoThat's the most likely course for Boeing. For Musk, it's very good free publicity anyway.
- georgemcbay 14y ago"Do you like random people offering help when you are doing something?" If they are domain experts and they are actually likely to be helpful, then absolutely I do. If they are just being polite and can't really help, then not so much but I'll usually still appreciate the offer unless they are being persistently annoying about it. When I was younger and more insecure about my own abilities, I did not accept help so graciously, but luckily I grew out of that phase.
- Florin_Andrei 14y agoGenerally no, but Elon Musk does not fall into the category "random people".
- neurotech1 14y agoThat's the problem. Its now public that Elon made the offer. If it was done quietly, that would be a different story. Maybe he did make the offer quietly, but it was refused. Boeing fly F-16s and Lockheed sometimes fly F/A-18s. I've heard stories about the engineers/test pilots exchanging safety of flight related information to a competitor. This is done with full permission of both companies.
- venomsnake 14y agoWith sufficient thrust Boings fly just fine ... (RFC 1925)
- ubernostrum 14y agoI commented about this in one of the other threads, but didn't really get to the important point, so I'll throw it out here. Basically every new airliner design suffers delays and problems entering commercial service. That's not new, but the level of media saturation (aided by this "internet" thing) probably is. The other thing that's new... is that the planes aren't crashing and killing people. New airliners of yore had a tendency to do that (as with the DC-10's cargo door, for example). The last two to enter service -- the A380 and the 787 -- have both had problems that resulted in voluntary or involuntary grounding, but the planes have stayed in the air, landed safely when in-flight problems occurred, and everybody's survived those problems. Which, given how vastly more complex modern airliners are, is really a hell of an accomplishment.
- jessaustin 14y agoIt's a real testament to the safety practices of modern aircraft design, manufacture, maintenance, and management. I'm not convinced that someone from the space industry, which by the statistics has worse results, would have anything to teach them. It would be great if some of the aircraft industry's techniques could influence IT (although admittedly many of the things we do are less life-threatening than flying at 35,000 ft). It would be even better if they could influence medicine. Far too many people die because there is no systematic measurement and analysis of medical practice.
- venomsnake 14y agoThis was a friendly jab. I have a few friends that work as a technicians and engineers, so i know what the challenges in the industry are. But battery overheating problem seems like someone underestimated the problem gravely - it is not something new or surprising.
- lmm 14y ago
- OGinparadise 14y agoNot sure I like this move, seems very opportunistic. If Elon has any concrete tips he knows how to give them for free, or even sell to Boeing. Taking to twitter seems cheesy. Imagine Google doing it to Amazon when AWS goes down. Things happen even to the brightest so Elon and others should keep that in mind.
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- chris_mahan 14y agoMusk isn't some random dude. Between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, he probably knows a thing or two about putting large things in the air and electric batteries. He's also said he would ultimately like to make electric airplanes, so this is probably not the first day he's thought about it.
- OGinparadise 14y ago" Musk isn't some random dude. Between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, he probably knows a thing or two about putting large things in the air and electric batteries." No doubt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing engineers know a thing or two or three or four about putting large things in the air and electric batteries, but this is a specific and unfortunate problem. Inviting a few twitting strangers (competitors too) out of the blue, unless they have a specific tip, maybe isn't the way to go. If Elon knew the problem, he'd get 100 times better press by telling them.
- joezydeco 14y agoThe battery in question wasn't built by Boeing but was outsourced to GS Yuasa Corp in Japan. Yuasa stated today it would "take months" to fully investigate the battery fire.
- joezydeco 14y agoSmall correction: Boeing outsourced the power design to Thales, and they chose Yuasa as the battery provider. So there are 3 companies involved in the investigation so far. http://www.gsyuasa-lp.com/content/thales-selects-gs-yuasa-lithium-ion-battery-system-boeing%E2%80%99s-787-dreamliner http://www.gsyuasa-lp.com/content/thales-selects-gs-yuasa-li...
- dudurocha 14y agoThat reminded me the explanation of why Space X could reduce the costs of making a rocket by fractions. Elon said that the problem with NASA was that they had sub-contractors, that had sub-contractors ad. infinitum. So each one of these sub-contractors had to make a profit. SpaceX try to make everything in the building process.
- Steko 14y agoBoeing has issued a response: “Space transport guys are not going to just walk in and figure this out."
- nicholas73 14y agoThis is about more than who has better engineers or a publicity stunt. This is damage control. Right now lithium is under heavy fire (no pun intended) both because its expensive and explosive (besides this, many Fisker Karma cars burned). Since Tesla is still losing money and has to raise money by selling stock, Musk has to keep up appearances by showing Tesla has the know-how to make lithium safe. Or else, Tesla will run out of money soon, and game over.
- natrius 14y agoMusk said in October that Tesla would be cash flow positive in a month's time. If he was correct, it's no longer accurate to say that Tesla is losing money. http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/update-elon-musk http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/update-elon-musk
- nicholas73 14y agoAccording to this author, Tesla is cash flow positive because it is counting money from advance reservations. http://seekingalpha.com/article/1072761-the-true-genius-of-tesla http://seekingalpha.com/article/1072761-the-true-genius-of-t... "We will NOT hold your Reservation Payment separately or in an escrow or trust fund or pay any interest on Reservation Payments, except to the extent required by law."
- pkulak 14y agoSo. People are giving Tesla cash and they are counting that as cash flow. When they build a new plant they don't take that money off the books because it hasn't made any saleable cars yet.
- riffraff 14y agoisn't the point of "amortizing" (sorry not sure about the english word) exactly that of putting the money used to build a plant off the books for years? I think GP's point is that if in the next period they don't get more reservations than they would be in the red, so the current black is to be considered with a pinch of salt.
- jws 14y agoI suspect the most useful help would be helping the FAA come to grips with lithium ion safety issues. Confronted with concerns about a novel technology the FAA is going to have a hard time deciding how to sign off on safety. I'm sure Musk's people have all sorts of checklists and criteria to be satisfied for large lithium ion batteries in vehicular use. The FAA can then apply those to Boeing's work.
- Snoptic 14y agoBoeing has some long safety checklists too. How many cars is an airplane worth? How many car companies is an airplane company worth?
- riffraff 14y ago> How many car companies is an airplane company worth? about one, apparently :) http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=capitalization+of+boeing%2C+gm%2C+ford%2C+toyota http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=capitalization+of+boein...
- jws 14y agoI'm sure Boeing does, but the FAA has doubts about those. They need more input. I'm sure Tesla has more batteries in the field for longer periods and probably harsher vibration environments. This is engineering and safety, not finance. Dollars and the length of your list are not helpful metrics.
- hnriot 14y agoSince Boeing is a huge asset to the US, in image projection and jobs and prestige. This should be something that the US take seriously and throw whatever it takes at it to solve the problem. The airliner being a success is strategic to the US
- codex 14y agoIt's amazing how geeks continually fall for Musk's simple propaganda. If you want to believe, you believe.
- jnw2 14y agohttp://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/dreamliner-batteries-and-tesla-batteries http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/dreamliner-batteries... implies that Tesla battery packs do a better job of containing thermal runaway than many other battery pack designs; it may be that simply replacing the Dreamliner's current batteries with a design very similar to what Tesla uses in their cars would address the Dreamliner problems. Elon has been trading jabs in the press with United Launch Alliance (Boeing + Lockheed Martin) over US military satellite launch, with Elon claiming he can provide better pricing because SpaceX has more advanced technology; perhaps there are multiple places Elon has more advanced technology than Boeing. The other possibility is that Boeing may revert to using a non-lithium ion battery technology. I haven't found any description of how much work they'd need to do to make that happen.
- ck2 14y agoThe batteries used in the Tesla and the 787 are completely different. And the ones on the 787 are made in Japan so I am sure the quality is extremely high, there is just an engineering problem they didn't anticipate or maybe they outsourced a component that failed.