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"Catastrophic Failure" sounds a bit dramatic.
Are you sure? A catastrophe is often defined as “A complete failure” and the car certainly meets that criteria.
It may have been catastrophic for his afternoon plans, but the car has clearly be repaired.
On the flip side, how cool is it that cars are now smart enough to diagnose themselves and prevent you from driving before what could potentially be an unsafe situation has a chance to occur?
>...the pyrotechnic battery disconnect... What the?! Sounds sorta awesome.
>...the pyrotechnic battery disconnect... What the?! Sounds sorta awesome.
tl;dr There is a "pyrotechnic charge" to disconnect the battery in case of danger.
"Catastrophic Failure" sounds a bit dramatic.
TFA mentions a "pyrotechnic battery" which sounds like a great feature for a military fort but not so much for an automobile?
Here's the patent for all the gory details:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9221343
The fact that this part has a "problem" probably means that it was triggered, e.g., maybe some type of false collision detection, short circuit or other failure which ended up triggering the disconnect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The check engine light doesn't send a notification directly to your phone with a diagnosis of what's wrong.
It also doesn't leave you stranded. Some cars have been driven for tens of thousands of miles with this light on.
Eventually had a redneck guy working out of the back of his pickup truck have a go at it. After hearing about the history he spent hours unplugging, cleaning, and replugging every single wire connection and socket. And the light stayed off.
On the flip side, how cool is it that cars are now smart enough to diagnose themselves and prevent you from driving before what could potentially be an unsafe situation has a chance to occur?
"Now"? This has been implemented for years - most people just call it "Check engine light" ;)
I was very disappointed that the author's idea of Catastrophic was far less interesting than what I pictured in my head. It's definitely not the only time an expensive car has failed in the first 6,000 miles of use. Also, the author's assumption that ICE cars don't fail while parked is a bit of hairsplitting. This isn't much different from any of the dozen or so times I've driven somewhere and discovered my car won't…
I like Tesla as much as anyone else here, but that last image, imho, takes a bit of ownership/agency away from the owner of the car. I don't trust any company enough to have a $50k+ asset that _only they_ can work on.