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Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

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171–180 of 408 posts

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#171
post #8

Why would Elon choose to post on Medium and not on the blog of Tesla? It would definitively bring more credence to post it on their official website. Until reading near the end I wasn't sure it was a Tesla employee/official or a third party story (and I use the term story here and not article on purpose because usually on Medium it is more stories than facts ).

Kimbal Musk is CEO of Medium and his brother. I guess that is enough to explain why :)

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#172
post #90

Nice move on their part. I think while the Tesla may be less fire-prone than other cars, Musk exaggerates it: "The odds of fire in a Model S, at roughly 1 in 8,000 vehicles, are five times lower than those of an average gasoline car..." What matters is the miles driven by cars, not the number of cars on the roads. It seems likely that other cars are driven longer distances, and Tesla cars are probably used by many ow…

Gotta say, I don't know a single Model S owner who uses it as a second car. In a recent thread on the forums asking whether there had been any reported thefts, one person shared the story of how their wife will occasionally come to where his MS is parked and swap it out with her car so she can drive it on her errands. A couple of other owners mentioned this happening to them, and I can attest it has happened both ways with our car.

When you are fortunate enough to own and drive one of these, most people cannot be content ever going back to an ICE.

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#173
post #103
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even an "oops, I pushed that update to production instead of test"

Given the extremely dangerous potentials of such a mix-up, I would very much doubt an "Oops" moment would occur. Quite honestly, the way they run the company, I wouldn't be surprised if the process of pushing an OTA update to the automobiles is akin to launching a nuclear missile.

Fifteen years ago, NASA lost a Mars orbiter because one of their contractors used Imperial measurements when NASA used metric.

Swissair 111 crashed because the operator installed a new entertainment system which overheated.

A lot of serious systems made by serious people still end up with stupid problems.

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#174
post #8

Why would Elon choose to post on Medium and not on the blog of Tesla? It would definitively bring more credence to post it on their official website. Until reading near the end I wasn't sure it was a Tesla employee/official or a third party story (and I use the term story here and not article on purpose because usually on Medium it is more stories than facts ).

Kimbal Musk is CEO of Medium and his brother. I guess that is enough to explain why :)

I don't think you are correct. The only connection I can find between Kimbal and Medium is Me.dium.com, referenced on this page:

http://www.techstars.com/program/mentors/kmusk/

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#175
post #8

Why would Elon choose to post on Medium and not on the blog of Tesla? It would definitively bring more credence to post it on their official website. Until reading near the end I wasn't sure it was a Tesla employee/official or a third party story (and I use the term story here and not article on purpose because usually on Medium it is more stories than facts ).

Kimbal Musk is CEO of Medium and his brother. I guess that is enough to explain why :)

You're thinking of Me.dium, which turned into OneRiot and was then acquired by WalmartLabs. No relationship with Ev Williams's Medium. Also, Kimbal is on Tesla's board, so it's not just a family relationship.

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#176
post #152

"We believe these changes will also help prevent a fire resulting from an extremely high speed impact that tears the wheels off the car, like the other Model S impact fire, which occurred last year in Mexico. This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall…

Sounds plausible I Guess but I wonder how Tesla in this crash description circumvented Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and the bodily damage the driver should have incurred on negative G's.

This sounds as though the car took a while to stop, given the list of things it hit. The G forces won't have been that high.

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is more expensive than it is valuable" does not makes sense, since the value of something is what people are willing to pay for it. If it is expensive then it has a high value.

Not so. Expensive - how much it costs to make it. Valuable - how much someone else would pay for it. So, if I was to spent loads on parts to make a relatively useless widget that fills a particular niche in my daily life, it would be expensive, but I wouldn't view it as valuable. It's only as valuable as it is expensive if there are lots of people who want it, which is not the case for custom work.

To expand further with example; a titanium under plate may cost $2000 to install(amort design, testing, manufacturing, etc.). But unless you happen to own a Telsa with a missing under plate it's value is less than $100 as scrap recycling.

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there are strict security measures and a rigorous testing regime in place, but still the idea of some anonymous engineer being able to push an over-the-air update to my fast moving, two-ton lump of metal makes me a little nervous. (Tin foil hat mode) Imagine the implications of some malicious third party gaining access to that process.

I've worked in industrial process systems where firmware is pushed out to millions of devices. The process is pretty rigorous - first the engineering team develops a candidate build, they run it through full regression and acceptance. Once it passes all the various code quality tests (coverage, static analysis, etc...), it's signed. Only code which is signed can be run on the production bootloader. The process requir…

I've done the same at smartphone OEMs, and I can tell you, even after all the precautions and testing similar to what you said, there's always a few units that get stuck in a bootloop or fail to update out of millions. That a happening for a car instead of a phone is much more dangerous.

Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S

#179
post #17

"With a track record of zero deaths or serious, permanent injuries since our vehicles went into production six years ago, there is no safer car on the road than a Tesla." I recall one Tesla caused death[1], and I'm sure there have been more. Not that I really think Tesla is any more dangerous than any other car in this regard though. [1] http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2014/02/07/tesla-driver-blames...

It is a sad truth that there has been at least one traffic accident involving a Tesla Model S that caused two deaths, and I suspect probably several others. The obvious difference is that the deaths weren't people in the Tesla but rather the people in the other vehicles.

The Model S is a frightening concept in a major collision. It has crumple zones and all those wonderful safety features like air bags and such that make it considerably safer on the inside, but on the outside, it is significantly heavier than many other cars on the road, it has a very low center of gravity and a very evenly distributed mass which means no matter what angle of impact, the other car is likely to end up a crumpled heap. :/

If you look at some of the photos on the forums or the web, you can't help but wince and hope that the people in the other car survived, let alone walked away.

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