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

#291

Post by jamesaguilar » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:30 PM UTC

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #282

mortenjorck wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Tesla was handled with kid gloves compared to Toyota. Remember the unintended acceleration crock?

Um, it wasn't crock. They recently settled a huge lawsuit and criminal investigation with the US government to the tune of $1.2B. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/19/toyota-s...

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

#292

Post by lotsofmangos » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:32 PM UTC

swimfar wrote: post #197

johnward wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not like they can just redesign the entire platform at this point. Slapping some titanium on is probably the best move they can make right now. It should satisfy any government and customer concerns for a problem that was pretty rare to begin with. As for the other materials we've been using them sparingly in vehicles. The new Ford F150 is using much more aluminum, enough to bring the weight down by about…

I think the concerns of the aluminum body panels on the new F-150 is specific to this segment (trucks). Utility vehicles are expected to take more abuse. Getting hit with tools/logs/ladders/etc. isn't uncommon and people are afraid their truck will look like a golf ball after a year. The main drawback of aluminum body panels is that it's difficult (i.e. expensive) to make them. I would imaging fatigue (from vibration…

Land-Rover have been using aluminium body panels since 1948, and they can deal with untold amounts of abuse and still keep going. You just swap out the panels when they get too dented.

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

#293

Post by marcamillion » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:32 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #180

> we provided an over-the-air software update a few months ago to increase the default ground clearance of the Model S at highway speeds Let's just think about how awesome that is for a moment.

I was just about to write this....it's like Gran Turismo in real life!

This is one of those moments when we need to just stop, take a breath, and realize how truly epic and breakthrough this is.

Especially as someone that lives in a developing country...where the vast majority of the cars on the road are at least 10-years old....this is just mind-blowingly-awesome!

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

#294

Post by stephencanon » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:33 PM UTC

DEinspanjer wrote: post #289

stephencanon wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

tl;dr: You'll lose maybe as much as 10% of your charge overnight if not plugged in, and the first 15 to 20 miles would cost double the amount of energy. Most people charge every night so you always have an 80% full battery whenever you want to go somewhere. If you left it unplugged on a very cold night, you could lose maybe as much as 20 or 30 miles off the rated range due to the car using electricity to run the batt…

Very helpful, thanks for the detailed response!

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

#295

Post by ds_sp00k » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:45 PM UTC

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…

Pfff...Titanium. Wake me up when they start using Mithril.

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

#296

Post by johnward » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:45 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #224

johnward wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really love to drive a Model S. I'm not sure if all of the Californians on HN realize how special CA is for seeing awesome cars. I saw cars that I never thought I would see in person (in my lifetime) when I was in CA. Not only that but you would see them a handful at a time. I know of 4-5 Model S' in the Pittsburgh area but rarely see exotics.

Pittsburgh has more interesting cars than I'd expected: I've seen an orange lambo or two, and an Enzo... Not to mention all the cool stuff that comes out during the Vintage Grand Prix.

Hey Steve, not sure if you remember me from Vivisimo/PGH.RB but nice to see you drop here. I have yet to see an Enzo, I actually can't remember the last Ferrari I saw in the area. There is a GTR parked in front of the building every now and then and that is exciting in PA. In CA that's just an every day sight.

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

#297

Post by bashinator » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:55 PM UTC

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #278

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…

Reminds me of the saying: "people like to say that speed kills, but really it's a very sudden lack of speed that kills." I think that might be a Clarksonism...

Also, "No-one ever died from falling. They die from stopping falling."

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

#298

Post by Crito » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:56 PM UTC

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #282

mortenjorck wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Tesla was handled with kid gloves compared to Toyota. Remember the unintended acceleration crock?

The Toyota Acceleration issue ranks up there with the McDonald's Coffee lawsuit as one of the most doubly misunderstood corporate events in recent history.

Popular belief has there being an acceleration problem with Toyota cars. Slightly less popular is the correction that in fact it was all just senile old people and floor mats, nothing to do with the computers. Far less common is the correction that there were in fact technical problems with the cars.

Similarly popular belief has the McDonald's coffee lawsuit being absurd, because "everyone knows that coffee is hot and how much damage can it cause anyway?". Slightly less popular is the correction that the burns were in fact horrific and the coffee was stunningly hot, far hotter than industry standard. Far less common is the further correction that in fact McDonald's coffee was being served at an industry standard temperature, where "industry standard" is defined as how other companies also serve their coffee (Starbucks coffee is generally just as hot, and many companies serve hotter coffee than McDonald's was serving.) In fact, since the lawsuit, McDonald's hasn't reduced the temperature that they serve their coffee at. The only change that McDonald's has made since the lawsuit is adding warning labels, the coffee you buy there today can be just as hot as the coffee that burned Stella Liebeck... don't spill it on yourself!

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...)

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

#299

Post by SEJeff » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 7:59 PM UTC

ds_sp00k wrote: post #295

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…

Pfff...Titanium. Wake me up when they start using Mithril.

Or Adamantium

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

#300

Post by rkalla » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 8:04 PM UTC

This is what you get when a company/group/effort/community is lead by a "benevolent dictator" - someone with an absolutely pure vision of what they want their output to look like and the autonomy and strength to make it so no matter what.

I love this... I actually love that it probably pissed off Musk to no end the amount of attention the fires got and out of spite he went totally over the top and added ballistic plating to the bottom of the car as a super-constructive "fuck you" to everyone that bitched about it.

I am picturing this same thing happening at Chrysler or GM and I think 9 out of 10 CEOs would just let the whole non-issue blow over and go back to business - and the 1 CEO that would try and push for a ridiculous over-engineering solution like this would probably get shot down by the board.

That's why I like this, it's going way above and beyond because he can and because he believes in the vision he is selling so firmly that there is no wiggle room: "My cars are the best and goddamnit, I'm going to make them the best."

Just want to focus on the pursuit of perfection that I find so energizing - to put another way, if you had someone this passionate running each of the major airlines, I wonder what air travel would be like instead of the race-to-the-bottom experience it is now.