Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by toomuchtodo » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

dangayle wrote: post #244

toomuchtodo wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Infiniti payment is something like ~$550/month. To go to a Model S would only cost me ~$800 more per month, which is 5 hours of my time from a billable perspective. Yes, the payment is higher, but I'd have no fuel expenses (currently ~$350/month), so technically its only $450 more a month (3 hours of my time).

If you went with the 60 kWh Model S, your payment would only go up $130, INCLUDING gas. If you're spending $350 a month in gas, you'd actually save money over your Infinity. http://www.teslamotors.com/true-cost-of-ownership

Think you just sold me on one. Well done :)

I'm not worried about going with the smaller pack; it only takes 90 seconds to swap it with a new, higher capacity pack down the road.

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

#262

Post by prezjordan » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:07 PM UTC

doe88 wrote: 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 ).

Looks like a mod changed the link, which is kind of a bummer.

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

#263

Post by zxexz » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:07 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #241

lotsofmangos wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Are you completely and utterly mental? You were stating what you normally do when you read something saying that it is by Elon Musk on Medium. To claim that you have a normal behaviour for a given situation would usually presuppose that it is a situation you have previously encountered, more than once.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well this has been the most hilarious sub-thread I've read on HN recently. Thanks nailer and lotsofmangoes.

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

#264

Post by sliverstorm » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

drglitch wrote: post #260

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminded me of a joke I heard a while ago: "Just released car has amazing safety features that prevent any damage to the vehicle. Amazing advance of technology was made available by near instantaneous braking. Even going 100 mph a car can come to a complete stop instantaneously. After that wipers are deployed automatically to wipe off remains of a driver from windshield." Any significant change of momentum will harm…

Newer cars are more rigid in just the right places (e.g. driver cage) - they do have larger/softer crumple zones that permit the damage to be absorbed along a longer time period. By prolonging the total crumple/crash time, the peak energy is decreased, thereby avoiding injuries from force overload during deceleration.

Knowing that, one should also be able to conclude this Focus crash test is meaningless. How it performs vs. an immovable wall at 120mph really doesn't tell you much about how it will perform at 65mph vs. a fence, or a tree, or a guard rail. If it didn't crumple at 120mph, then you'd have cause to worry though.

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

#265

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:24 PM UTC

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #191

chrisgd wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Take the nubmer of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probabilty rate of failure, B, multiply by the average ouf-of-court settlement, C. A x B x C = X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

Cost-benefit analysis, psychopath style.

Corporate American style. You want to guess the number of times an airplane design defect that threatens the life of passengers is allowed to be corrected "over time" -- basically because fixing them ASAP would be too expensive?

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

#266

Post by darkmighty » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:27 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #250

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost-benefit analysis, psychopath style.

In all honesty, how would you recommend doing cost benefit analysis for a car manufacturer? There will always be safety risks to the drivers, after all.

Yes, perhaps the law should be more strict , but in any case there is a value -- there is a number which sometime you'll have to assign even implicitly to a customer's life.

But consider the possibility that the law had a loophole (or the law is simply inadequate in light of common expectations from the population) which brought the maximum litigation from crashes to a very low number. Although this simplistic view would suggest a very low cost, that would be unrealistic -- the actual cost should include heavy brand damage from consumer distrust in the products and even brand damage from raw ideological/moral basis. This is way promoting values inside companies makes sense -- you can't neglect humans have personal values and sometimes make non-economic choices to stay aligned with those -- so you have to adjust your "psychopath" economics towards consumer irrationality. In the end I suspect the optimal choice is much closer to Tesla's reaction than GM's.

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

#267

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:27 PM UTC

chrismealy wrote: post #109

zacharycohn wrote: post #5

"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…

Maybe Tesla cars are too safe.

I was just thinking that the evolutionary pressures against ultra-rich...persons who go plowing into traffic at high speeds in high performance cars might be unduly reduced.

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

#268

Post by stephencanon » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:29 PM UTC

DEinspanjer wrote: post #153

JohnBooty wrote: post #58

In a sense, Teslas are the least safe cars on the road, because I'd kill every single one of you in order to own one.

If you promise not to kill me, I promise to give you a single 15 minute or 5 mile test drive somewhere in the southern NH area, or possibly in some other area that I happen to road trip through.

As a fellow NH-ite, who would almost certainly have bought one already if he still lived in California: how does the battery do on -15˚ mornings?

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

#269

Post by brianbreslin » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:33 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #212

chongli wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ridiculous how much emphasis the media placed on the fire while ignoring the extreme speed and consequently minor injuries involved in the crash.

The standard that the media holds Tesla to will still be a picnic compared to how the media will treat the first self-driving cars. Far safer than human-driven will not be nearly enough; the first high-profile accident will be wall-to-wall "Are Self-Driving Cars Really Ready For Prime Time?"

I would bet the first self-driving car accident involves a human driven car as well. Even if it is human error, the media will say the self driving car should have avoided them or something like that.

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

#270

Post by mkhalil » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 6:37 PM UTC

Tesla will need to continue to fight this PR with the truth and improvements like this; for the big 3, the oil companies, and dealership organizations will continue to try to put them down.

They need us to help spread the truth, as much as we need significant improvements in the automotive/transportation industry.