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Tesla: Not so easily bricked

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Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#121

Post by vacri »

SNK wrote: 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…

This blogger is wrong. A 'battery' is a collection of cells. The Tesla site is correct in stating that. Like 'battery hens' (many hens) or an artillery battery (group of artillery), a 'battery' means collection of power cells. Yes, common usage has made it also mean a single power cell - but this doesn't mean that the technical term is not correct.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#122

Post by 9999 »

His letter to Musk makes him seem much more reasonable than Tesla honestly.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073312_is-tesla-brickin...

The part that really registered with me is the request for a simple phone call. Why didn't Tesla call the owners and warn them about the battery discharge issue? Why didn't they just upgrade the original cars to include that low battery notification service? What do you think the actual real cost of that upgrade is in hardware and work hours? $100? $500? How much would they have spent having some people call the owners of those 500 original roadsters? A few hundred dollars to personally notify their first customers? It was a 100K+ car was it not? This guy might be foolish for not closely scrutinizing the warranty/owner's manual, but Tesla's customer service and PR response are horrible.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#123

Post by vacri »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #47
smacktoward wrote: post #29

This is an exceptionally lame rebuttal. > There is a fundamental problem when any rechargeable battery is discharged and then left to sit for months. Any boat owner understands that that's why you plug in a trickle charger when the craft is put into storage. Yes, it's an excellent strategy to assume that your car buyers will also be boat owners, and therefore know all the things that boat owners know without you need…

When you buy a Tesla the following happens: * You are vebally told about this. * You are then shown a document to sign that you were told about this * Your car will beep loudly when its under 5% charge * If its a newer Tesla it will beep and also log an issue with the service center, who will then continue to call you to tell you to plug it in. No boat experience required.

The original article describes that Tesla goes to some lengths to downplay and avoid this information. A once-off in the dazzle of a showroom is a pretty poor thing to hang your hat on.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#124

Post by Nelson69 »

baddox wrote: post #110
Nelson69 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the things that "brick" an ICE can be repaired at relatively low costs. And almost all of those things brick the car by using it, Teslas will brick when you don't use them, you lock it safely in the temperature controlled garage and go away for too long and it dies. It strikes me as a design problem of sorts, you've got a relatively expensive and sophisticated sports car with piles of electronics. I would thi…

> How many drivers have run out of gas when they are experienced and know better? Not many, right? I've certainly never even come close to running out of gas, and I can only think of one time in my life where anyone I knew ran out of gas (and that was only yards away from the gas station).

Maybe it's a function of where you live. I think I have witnessed it more often than that, relatively rare but with a $40k penalty just having it happen once is pretty extreme. Maybe running out of gas was the wrong analogy.

I still think you could design some better fail safes in and then if it is as rare as they say, why not cover it in the warranty?

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#125

Post by feralchimp »

quanticle wrote: post #116
feralchimp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replacing the engine in the car was something like $7,000. Which, for many drivers, may as well be $40k. > the solution is a combination of educating/warning owners & notifying them by phone or email if the car starts to get too low I never advocated ignoring anything. My point is not that "Tesla is great" or "boo ICE yay electric," it's that all the hysteria around "OMG car bricking" doesn't actually promote whate…

>Which, for many drivers, may as well be $40k. Did you really go ahead and conflate $7,000 and and $40,000? $7000 buys me a decent used car. $40,000 buys me a brand new Toyota Prius (MSRP $24,700) with almost enough change left over to buy a brand new Hyundai Elantra (MSRP $15,345). $7,000 is not a small chunk of change, by any means. It's a lot less, however, than $40,000. Conflating the two does no one any good.

I'm saying I put the same level of effort, as a consumer, into avoiding a $7k repair as I would a $40k repair. That is: maximum effort.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#126

Post by motoford »

drone wrote: post #111
dodedo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run down the battery on my car, motorcycle, mower, or other vehicles I don't often use. It is not an expensive ($40,000) fix -- often it just takes a recharge because lead-acid batteries are not as easily damaged as lithium-ion. Replacement is relatively cheap too. When you talk about tire deformation, this is rare and would not happen before many years of disuse. And engine seizure? Again, unlikely to happen ev…

Firstly, given that gas contains up to 10% ethanol now, no, your engine will be seriously damaged if you leave your car with gasoline in it for ten years and then start it without flushing it first. That's because the ethanol attracts water, and water does not compress as easily as gasoline, and the attempt to spray a high volume of water into your cylinder and then compress it will likely destroy something along the…

Except we aren't talking about letting this car sit 10 years, try a few weeks or months, depending on the initial charge.

If Adama had to plan for an FTL jump ever 33 days instead of 33 minutes, the Galactica crew wouldn't have been nearly as frazzled.

It's not the fact that maintenance is required, it's the short timeframe in which a mistake can cause you to have a 3k pound immovable object and/or a 40k bill. (I have no idea what it weighs, just made that up)

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#127

Post by MartinCron »

X-Istence wrote: post #96
abruzzi wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you run your ICE without oil, yes, you will kill it. And maybe these should be thought of in the same way, but people worry about this because draining a battery to zero seems like running out of gas, and most of us have run out of gas at some point or another. Granted it's not the same because in the short term the battery management system should reserve the bottom 5% for the health of the battery. But the secon…

I've been driving for 6 years now and I have never ran out of gas. Is this really so uncommon that you can safely say that at some point or another most of us have run out of gas? I keep an eye on my odometer and on the gas gauge and know when it is time to get gas. My car doesn't have a low fuel light warning so paying attention is definitely required.

There's a huge difference between running out of gas (which is bad) and running the car without any oil in it (which is terrible).

When I was a child, my mother "bricked" our car by ignoring the oil light and taking us out for a nice drive in the country.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#128

Post by noss »

How heavy would a small ICE unit need to be to produce enough current to keep the batteries alive for longer periods of time? And how much fuel would such a thing use?

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#129

Post by ljf »

durandal1 wrote: post #87
ljf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? It stated that not charging the the car WILL NOT lead to $40,000 bricking.

Where did it say that? It acknowledges that deeply discharging may damage the cells, and it does not refute that it would cost $40,000 to fix. Even the owner's manual state this (except for the $40,000 cost of course).

quote from the article:

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.

Re: Tesla: Not so easily bricked

#130

Post by ars »

vacri wrote: post #121
SNK wrote: 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…

This blogger is wrong. A 'battery' is a collection of cells. The Tesla site is correct in stating that. Like 'battery hens' (many hens) or an artillery battery (group of artillery), a 'battery' means collection of power cells. Yes, common usage has made it also mean a single power cell - but this doesn't mean that the technical term is not correct.

The word battery doesn't mean that. It means to beat and batter. Which is what artillery does.

The electrical meaning came much later, possibly from the electron discharges which looked like artillery attacks.

I have no idea where battery cage came from. The original battery cages were warmed with electricity - maybe an actual battery?

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