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Tesla: Not so easily bricked

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Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#11
post #5
post #3

Doesn't explain away the previous post - if repair is so trivial, why were 40k repair bills being discussed?

Maybe the $ 40k repair bills never existed in the first place...

Probably. The assumption was that the battery pack was destroyed and needed to be fully replaced, a new pack costing an estimated $40k. The original article didn't say how much it actually cost the 5 owners to repair their cars.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#12
post #9

This comment doesn't clearly refute claims made by the original blog post. The statement "they probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing" sounds inconclusive. All I am saying is if people are going to refute the original blog post as "nonsense" and will "confront it with facts", then do so convincingly and without contradiction.

The original blog isn't exactly sussed out either. We have an anonymous source giving vague anecdotes about 5 cars whose owners haven't been contacted to verify details.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#13
post #12
post #9

This comment doesn't clearly refute claims made by the original blog post. The statement "they probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing" sounds inconclusive. All I am saying is if people are going to refute the original blog post as "nonsense" and will "confront it with facts", then do so convincingly and without contradiction.

The original blog isn't exactly sussed out either. We have an anonymous source giving vague anecdotes about 5 cars whose owners haven't been contacted to verify details.

I'm in full agreement that the Tesla owners should step forward and give their side of the story.

I can empathize with why they wouldn't though, as this seems like a (ahem) charged and highly public issue.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#14
Hang on, at what point did anyone claim they were 'easy' to brick? The argument is not about how easy they are to brick, it's about the fact that the entire car is rendered useless if bricked unless you're willing to pay $40k to get your vehicle back on the road again.

If the cars were easy to brick there would be a significantly larger number of documented cases than what currently exist.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#15
"Here's the primary fact that the blogger in question doesn't understand: the Tesla battery pack is not a battery."

Gee, where might he have gotten that idea? Tesla's website and documentation, perhaps? "Custom microprocessor-controlled lithium-ion battery with 6,831 individual cells."

Not 8K, huh; talk about getting your technical facts wrong.

"Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false. The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge."

Just asserted it was blatantly false and admitted it was true that full discharge damages the battery in the same paragraph, hoo boy.

"But there's an antidote for this type of misinformation: confronting it with facts."

Looks more like he meant to say that the antidote for these facts is misinformation, yow.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#16
post #2

Though I could easily believe that there was a coordinated attack against electric vehicles (I can think of a few groups), the response doesn't refute the previous article but tries to defend through vocabulary. If you leave the car unplugged for a long period of time the battery will be ruined. If the battery is one huge battery pack or 8000 smaller batteries doesn't matter. Also, having a car plugged in for months…

As someone who "bricked" his Jetta in college by forgetting to replace the oil, I can also point out that the replacement engine cost around $6k, a (hefty) fraction of the car's then value, but nowhere close to its total original retail price.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#17
post #14

Hang on, at what point did anyone claim they were 'easy' to brick? The argument is not about how easy they are to brick, it's about the fact that the entire car is rendered useless if bricked unless you're willing to pay $40k to get your vehicle back on the road again. If the cars were easy to brick there would be a significantly larger number of documented cases than what currently exist.

Exactly. The above article is answering a question that the first article didn't ask. The first article never said it was "easy", it said it was "possible". It was the possibility of bricking your car that is completely unexpected, as well as the $40k price tag if you do.

And the point of the article was that as you increase the number of users from 2500 to 25000, the number of bricked cars will increase substantially and will lead to bad headline risk for Tesla.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#18
If there are 8k individual cells in the battery pack, what happens when an individual cell reaches zero? Will that individual cell be permanently dead, or can it be revived?

You would think with 8k individual cells, if you left it unplugged for just a couple of weeks (instead of the 6 weeks needed to brick the entire battery pack), using a normal distribution you could expect that at least some of the cells would reach zero. Would that permanently reduce the capacity for the entire battery pack?

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#19
post #12
post #9

This comment doesn't clearly refute claims made by the original blog post. The statement "they probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing" sounds inconclusive. All I am saying is if people are going to refute the original blog post as "nonsense" and will "confront it with facts", then do so convincingly and without contradiction.

The original blog isn't exactly sussed out either. We have an anonymous source giving vague anecdotes about 5 cars whose owners haven't been contacted to verify details.

The link to this article is down unfortunately, so I can't comment on it. But Tesla's statement did nothing to refute the article, it just stated that you have to put oil in a regular car, and that you can optionally have the car contact Tesla if it gets low.

The oil analogy Tesla and others are using just doesn't work. A normal car doesn't total itself after sitting idle for a few weeks to few months depending on whose side you believe.

Imagine your new car of choice having a 5 gallon gas tank, and if it goes empty, your car burns to the ground. Oh, and the gas evaporates at rate of half a gallon a week.

I don't know about you, but that fear would keep me from enjoying the vehicle. I think the stress of always making sure it's charging would beat me down.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#20
post #15

"Here's the primary fact that the blogger in question doesn't understand: the Tesla battery pack is not a battery." Gee, where might he have gotten that idea? Tesla's website and documentation, perhaps? "Custom microprocessor-controlled lithium-ion battery with 6,831 individual cells." Not 8K, huh; talk about getting your technical facts wrong. "Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars d…

> Just asserted it was blatantly false and admitted it was true that full discharge damages the battery in the same paragraph, hoo boy.

No. He stated that, while discharging an individual cell below a certain voltage will damage it, the battery management circuitry on each cell will not permit the battery to discharge past that point. It simply disconnects the battery from the circuit, which means the only leakage is chemical (self-discharge), and thus very slow.

To clarify this point: "discharge fully" =/= zero percent. You will never want to go below a certain percentage of absolute charge.

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