"It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#101

Post by chc » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:02 AM UTC

earl wrote: post #81

jdietrich wrote: post #75

Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Nissan are now in full production of the Leaf, a practical electric car that's half the price of the Model S. Renault have the Fluence ZE on sale in Israel and ready to go internationally this year. Mitsubishi are selling the i-MiEV in quantity in Hong Kong and Japan. All of these big…

since I was unaware: Tesla S seems to practically cost (with the large battery that still only gets you 300 miles) $70K after a $7.5k tax credit [1] and the Nissan leaf costs $35K but that seems to be before the $7.5k tax credit. [1] http://www.teslamotors.com/models/options [2] http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index#/leaf-elect...

The Leaf claims 100 miles on a charge, making its range a little less than the base Model S. That means that the Tesla costs about $19k more in practice. Considering it's supposed to be a "nicer" car in general, that doesn't seem too unreasonable.

I don't think Nissan genuinely expects anyone to buy the base model Leaf. For $2,000, you give up the ability to charge your car in minutes rather than hours (and, apparently, to use any of the charging stations that are supposed to materialize in the near future).

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#102

Post by moonchrome » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:04 AM UTC

I don't think this affects Model S as much as it does the roadster - reason being - Model S is a car that you intend to use, not keep it in a garage as a collectors item - so it's probably going to be recharged on a regular basis. Stressing that it should be plugged if you intend to leave it for weeks is still important.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#103

Post by rdl » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:05 AM UTC

pclark wrote: post #98

r0s wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the battery, leave a 'normal' battery through a few months and it's dead. What happens to a normal car once all the fuel is drained? Coolant? Oil? How did these design flaws make it out of engineering?!

You can comfortably leave a regular car alone for 6 months and when you return at worst the battery will be flat and there'll be some rust on the brake pads. I regularly do this to my poor old diesel SEAT. Even if the battery is flat I can either bump start it, or worst comes to worst, buy a new $50 battery.

Diesels are a fair bit more tolerant, and low end cars are actually much more robust than performance cars. Try leaving a dodge viper unattended for 6mo.

I drove a diesel land cruiser (lm78) which had been sitting on an airfield unused for years. Aside from needing tires and a battery (and wiper blades) no problem. Even the fuel was ok.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#104

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:11 AM UTC

Steko wrote: post #50

[deleted] wrote: post #20

[deleted]

"The article indicates that a 100 foot cord connected to a standard outlet does not provide enough power to prevent a Tesla car from discharging..." Pretty sure they say that to make sure people don't just use any old cord. A 24 AWG cord with 66% voltage drop as the low end would change your cost analysis radically.

You probably meant 4 AWG, a 100' of 24 AWG cord has about 2.5 ohms of resistance in it. Since power dissipation is exponential with current pulling even 2 amps through it would have the wire trying to dissipate 10 watts and that would represent 100mW/foot, easily enough to raise the temperature of the copper to the point where it would be too soft and break.

[1] http://www.cirris.com/testing/resistance/wire.html

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#105

Post by run4yourlives » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:12 AM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #87

Let me tell you how to brick a top of the line 2009 BMW. Easy-peasy. Lots of small trips, under 5 km, for 9 months. That's it. Apparently the discharge caused by starting the car and a draw from all the packages that are strapped to it are not offset by the charge received while driving unless the distance is at least 10 km per engine start. The only warning that the car gives is an "excessive battery discharge" and…

Unless BMW's are using some "buy only at BMW" type of design, a battery at costco will probably run you $100.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#106

Post by SeanLuke » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:17 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #75

Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Nissan are now in full production of the Leaf, a practical electric car that's half the price of the Model S. Renault have the Fluence ZE on sale in Israel and ready to go internationally this year. Mitsubishi are selling the i-MiEV in quantity in Hong Kong and Japan. All of these big…

> Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency.

Completely disagree. Tesla is, I think, unquestionably the most impactful company in the game, including GE and Nissan. For two reasons.

First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. GE didn't do that. Nissan didn't do that. Toyota didn't do that. Tesla did. I think fundamentally changing people's perceptions of what an electric car is and what it can do is the single most impactful action in the industry so far.

Second, Tesla's critical product isn't their cars. Their critical product is their battery technology. It is second to none, in a business where the battery is everything. This is the reason that both Daimler and Toyota have invested in the company. I think you are seriously underestimating how important this is.

As to the article proper: it seems to me that running down your car is a pretty simple problem to engineer away. This might be an issue, perhaps a burp that Tesla has to get fixed pronto. But it's hardly, to use the breathless headline, devastating.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#107

Post by simcop2387 » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:17 AM UTC

kijin wrote: post #53

simcop2387 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, that would mean that a bricked roadster on a hill would possibly roll away.

Whatever happened to good old parking brakes? Sometimes, low-tech is better.

They may have them, I'm not rich enough to buy a brick that big. But from what I've noticed in friends and family, most younger people don't even realize they're there. "Isn't that what P is for?". It makes me feel old driving a manual transmission and knowing what all of those things are for.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#108

Post by rdl » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:20 AM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #87

Let me tell you how to brick a top of the line 2009 BMW. Easy-peasy. Lots of small trips, under 5 km, for 9 months. That's it. Apparently the discharge caused by starting the car and a draw from all the packages that are strapped to it are not offset by the charge received while driving unless the distance is at least 10 km per engine start. The only warning that the car gives is an "excessive battery discharge" and…

This use pattern damages a lot more than just the battery. You can basically trash the engine if you keep up a 5-10min per day use pattern for long enough. At the very least, a car which would otherwise comfortably last 200-300k miles will probably be worth selling at 50-100k. Certain engines are affected more than others, but basically you are never letting the engine warm up to design temperature, so nothing fits well, accelerating wear. It is particularly bad to do this from mile 0 with a new engine.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#109

Post by philwelch » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #75

Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Nissan are now in full production of the Leaf, a practical electric car that's half the price of the Model S. Renault have the Fluence ZE on sale in Israel and ready to go internationally this year. Mitsubishi are selling the i-MiEV in quantity in Hong Kong and Japan. All of these big…

I'd go even further and say that energy efficiency fundamentally can't be reached by carrying individual 100-300 pound humans around in 1000-2000 pound vehicles.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#110

Post by arjunnarayan » Wed, Feb 22, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

SeanLuke wrote: post #106

jdietrich wrote: post #75

Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Nissan are now in full production of the Leaf, a practical electric car that's half the price of the Model S. Renault have the Fluence ZE on sale in Israel and ready to go internationally this year. Mitsubishi are selling the i-MiEV in quantity in Hong Kong and Japan. All of these big…

> Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Completely disagree. Tesla is, I think, unquestionably the most impactful company in the game, including GE and Nissan. For two reasons. First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. P…

> First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. GE didn't do that. Nissan didn't do that. Toyota didn't do that. Tesla did. I think fundamentally changing people's perceptions of what an electric car is and what it can do is the single most impactful action in the industry so far.

Sure, but that's the same as saying that Sun Microsystems changed the world. Before Sun, people thought of C++ as the be all and end all of programming and we were stuck without decent typesystems and helpful compilers. Microsoft didn't change that. Nobody changed that. Sun did.

Look where they are now. Sure Tesla might have changed people's worldviews and I'm grateful for that. But moving forward, that counts for nothing. I just want the best damn electric car there can be. I'm not paying for changing the narrative.