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

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371–380 of 408 posts

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

#371

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And yet, I can't help but feel they're being very, very defensive over it. I can't blame them, of course, given how something trivial like a car fire (trivial given the average frequency of them) is turned into a national news event. At the same time, Tesla's attention to quality and perfection and what-have-you will end up in them being heavily scrutinised. It's not that different from Apple in that respect; random…

They're being defensive because a few fires crushed the stock price (irrationally), evaporating a ton of money. These headlines matter.

>crushed the stock price (irrationally)

The high valuation of this company is equally irrational. It's a massive speculative play, so there's a load of volatility.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, I can't help but feel they're being very, very defensive over it. I can't blame them, of course, given how something trivial like a car fire (trivial given the average frequency of them) is turned into a national news event. At the same time, Tesla's attention to quality and perfection and what-have-you will end up in them being heavily scrutinised. It's not that different from Apple in that respect; random…

Plane goes missing and it's the top story of every news cast. It's sad but there are so many other issues in the world right now that outweigh a missing plane. The news can sell that plane though.

>It's sad but there are so many other issues in the world right now that outweigh a missing plan

A plane? How about a plane with 200+ innocent, unsuspecting people on board goes missing, and all are now presumed dead? It's woefully ignorant to think the story is about the plane.

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

#373

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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?

That's really comparing apples to oranges.

At the airplane industry it's the government that does this calculation, with a publicly known value of C. Also, airplanes don't have the kind of problem that cause an accident by itself, every issue can be corrected on several levels, and normally when the proper fix isn't instantly applied some other action is done to attenuate the problem.

On any advanced country, around here it calculates nothing, even yelling "Are you insane? Do you know how many hospitals we could build with that kind of money?" won't make they think about numbers.

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

#374

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Or, god forbid, an advertisement delivery platform. (Yeah, radios deliver ads, but I don't have to listen to the radio. Can you imagine if your car ran banner ads around the spedometer?)

It would be driving us so we won't be looking at the speedo. Because of the new "free rides while you listen to our adverts" deal. Big red button for "just buy the goddamned product and leave me in peace".

> Big red button for "just buy the goddamned product and leave me in peace".

Finally a business plan where modern advertising makes any sense: Torture based freeware. "Send us money and we'll stop. Here are the products you'll hate today..."

They could even remove products from their list after payment from manufacturers.

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

#375

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Yup. Benevolent in this case has nothing to do with the person's personal treatment of others, and everything to do with the person being willing to serve the company/state rather than herself. The conventional dictators in failed states simply extract as much value as they can, at the expense of everyone else. A benevolent dictator uses her power to advance the cause. The way she does it might be suspect, even uneth…

> Yup. Benevolent in this case has nothing to do with the person's personal treatment of others, and everything to do with the person being willing to serve the company/state rather than herself Jobs made billions. Your sentence is subsequently nonsense.

Allow me to clarify. The difference between a failed-state dictator and a benevolent one isn't how much money they have in their banks at the end of it, but how much they grew their nation/state/company/organization/brand in the process. I think it's fine for a CEO to be compensated in the billions if he does it by making his company billions more. It's a question of the relationship the CEO has with wealth- does she help to create it, or is she just siphoning it into her pockets?

It's not always clear, but I think it's an important thing to consider. The size of a CEO's bank account alone is insufficient information for a meaningful answer.

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

#376

Are there any other car manufacturers that have similar levels of clearance? I'd be intrigued to see how they perform in the same test scenarios that the Teslas were run against.

The problem is the expectations for other car manufacturers are much lower in terms of safety. So these companies do not try to push the safety envelope any higher. The exception would be Volvo.

>The problem is the expectations for other car manufacturers are much lower in terms of safety.

Do you have anything to base this on?

Do you really believe the safety expectations of the Model S are much higher than those placed on companies building millions upon millions of vehicles for everyday people, families, police, ambulances, delivery and public transportation vehicles and race cars?

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

#377
"However, to improve things further, 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, substantially reducing the odds of a severe underbody impact."

That is just so cool.

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

#378
post #363

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Also a good explanation of Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew

ahahah, visakanv, you smart guy! that's a nice comparison. Capitalism without democracy is what we want!!! /s

Not sure what you're getting at. =\ If you have anything thoughtful to bring up, I'd love to hear it and we could have a constructive discussion.

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

#379

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I don't know if I'd go as effusive as the grandparent in my praise for Musk here. It's just PR. But on that note, I would say it's good PR in light of what's going on with GM. The current story in the media isn't so much the issues with GM's vehicles, but the company's negligence in not owning up to the problems. So, Tesla is simply getting out in front and contrasting themselves with that story. There is virtually n…

> 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 wal…

That is not just PR. That is damned amazing engineering.

Really? Choosing a high-strength material, turning it into a sheet and bolting it to the bottom of a car is "damned amazing engineering"?

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

#380
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wal…

That is not just PR. That is damned amazing engineering. Really? Choosing a high-strength material, turning it into a sheet and bolting it to the bottom of a car is "damned amazing engineering"?

No, but the survivability of the passenger in the story is evidence of such.
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