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Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

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Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#361

Post by mywittyname »

qume wrote: post #199
icebraining wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Lisbon no such distinction is made, any diesel or gasoline car built before 2000 is banned from the city center.

Wow that's very interesting, I didn't know that. Although going by year is a little arbitrary (a 1995 honda vs a 2005 GM SUV?) I do support the concept. Personally I'd like to see most city centers car free.

Emissions standards get more strict each year, so it's not arbitrary at all. As technology advances, emissions systems get more advanced and ten years makes a world of difference. A 1995 Honda might be legally allowed to spew 1000x the amount of NOx that a 2005 Tahoe can. So a newer car could be much cleaner than an old one, even with a 3x larger engine.

This is also completely ignoring the fact that older engines are more likely to have various parts of their engine and emission systems degrade over time, reducing their effectiveness.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#362

Post by mywittyname »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #28

why wouldn't an electric car be easier to service? A combustible engine has so many moving parts, fuel pump, filter, oil changes, regulator, etc etc. an electric car is just a battery and an electric engine, which is actually a pretty old peice of technology. I do concede that the battery is a pretty complex piece of engineering. My fear is that DRM "authorized" replacements will become like the toner cartridges of t…

In practice, manufactures of EVs haven't been able to achieve the kind of reliability that most other auto makers have. You can buy a Camry and expect 100k miles on the drivetrain with reasonable maintenance costs.

Edmund's had needed four drive unit replacements in their Model S to go half that far.

ICEs are theoretically more complicated, but a few hundred million man-hours of refinement over the past 100 or so years have made them quite reliable.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#363

Post by smileysteve »

ericd wrote: post #110
zanny wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to potentially break your car has never stopped any other car in history from having an accessible engine compartment. This is basically in tandem with the John Deere story - the consequences of proprietary software bleed into the physical world and cause an incredible amount of difficulty for people who do not even recognize what the problem is. Tesla can only get away with all this because of how digita…

Tinkering with an electric car when you don't know what you're doing will kill you so much more easily than a gasoline car will. That probably has something to do with it?

This seems unlikely to be true.

Seems that the chance of death from a gasoline explosion is much greater than an electric shock (of which a gas engine also has through smaller wires traditionally over longer runs).

I've definitely had my share of gas spills working on cars and boats. There are also very high voltage sparks going on. Then a gasoline car has several moving parts w/ vibrations while electrical motors are relatively vibrationless (assumes less chance of vehicle falling on you).

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#364

Post by smileysteve »

saulrh wrote: post #326
TD-Linux wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your computer power supply has a ~400 volt rail in it. Are you unwilling to ever open a desktop computer? The Tesla battery has contactors inside of it, so you'll only have 400V live when the car is on. Additionally, assuming the HV is floating relative to the chassis, you need to touch two spots at different potentials to actually get shocked. That said, it looks like this is an attempt to prevent service of a lot o…

> Your computer power supply has a ~400 volt rail in it. Are you unwilling to ever open a desktop computer? If it's plugged in and turned on - yeah, sure, I don't want to muck around in there. The thing is, my computer power supply: * Can be completely physically disconnected from the rest of the computer * Doesn't have a battery in it If I pull the plug on my desktop, disconnect the power supply, and maybe if I'm be…

> Doesn't have a battery in it

Any work done on a car w/ airbags (the last 20 years) has had a risk of airbag explosion with any localized short.

The Takata airbag recall means that many of these may shoot shrapnel at you. And the original airbags were known for occasionally flinging phosphorous at you.

Beyond that, Lead Acid batteries can be dangerous when the battery or the alternator fails - that's not steam, that's sulphuric acid steam.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#365

Post by ericd »

smileysteve wrote: post #363
ericd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinkering with an electric car when you don't know what you're doing will kill you so much more easily than a gasoline car will. That probably has something to do with it?

This seems unlikely to be true. Seems that the chance of death from a gasoline explosion is much greater than an electric shock (of which a gas engine also has through smaller wires traditionally over longer runs). I've definitely had my share of gas spills working on cars and boats. There are also very high voltage sparks going on. Then a gasoline car has several moving parts w/ vibrations while electrical motors ar…

The battery pack on an electric car is a completely different league from the electrical system in a gasoline car. You cannot compare the risks.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#366

Post by ericd »

zanny wrote: post #135
ericd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinkering with an electric car when you don't know what you're doing will kill you so much more easily than a gasoline car will. That probably has something to do with it?

"Sticks a potato in exhaust pipe" "Drives around car" "Dies" Alternatively, disconnect the steering column and drive off a cliff. There are a thousand easy ways to kill yourself making uninformed modifications to any motor vehicle, by its nature. Its a ton of steel that goes up to a tenth the speed of sound. If anything, the reduced complexity of electric vehicles gives you fewer vectors for wrongdoing to screw yours…

It's much easier to intuit the risks from a mechanical danger than an electrical one. It's the difference between breaking a mechanical linkage and accidentally brushing up against a live terminal.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#367

Post by saulrh »

smileysteve wrote: post #364
saulrh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your computer power supply has a ~400 volt rail in it. Are you unwilling to ever open a desktop computer? If it's plugged in and turned on - yeah, sure, I don't want to muck around in there. The thing is, my computer power supply: * Can be completely physically disconnected from the rest of the computer * Doesn't have a battery in it If I pull the plug on my desktop, disconnect the power supply, and maybe if I'm be…

> Doesn't have a battery in it Any work done on a car w/ airbags (the last 20 years) has had a risk of airbag explosion with any localized short. The Takata airbag recall means that many of these may shoot shrapnel at you. And the original airbags were known for occasionally flinging phosphorous at you. Beyond that, Lead Acid batteries can be dangerous when the battery or the alternator fails - that's not steam, that…

I don't know why airbags aren't opto-isolated digital devices activated by simple challenge and response over canbus (read a single byte off address 0, write the same byte back to address 1 to trigger). I'd have expected pyrotechnics to have been first on the list for conversion to digital.
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