
Tesla: Not so easily bricked - kghose
http://idc-insights-community.com/posts/c7c83d1a9d
======
feralchimp
This whole bricking story is a little ridiculous.

There are any number of easy ways to 'brick' an internal combustion engine,
and yet we're not all torches 'n' pitchforks over them. Partially because ICEs
have been around so long that the relatively short list of "things to avoid"
is burned indelibly into the popular consciousness. Partially because over a
hundred-odd years of continuous engineering, a typical ICE can take a hell of
a lot of abuse before it fails.

And note that the "shit that might happen to you" column still isn't trivially
dismissed on the ICE side, even after 100+ years of safety engineering. We
physically pump highly-flammable liquids into our gas tasks; people still
occasionally get burned or even _die_ doing that shit!

Couldn't find many stats, but this is interesting:
[http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/Research/FireSafetyVehi...](http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/Research/FireSafetyVehicles.pdf)

Let's assume the $40k figure is at all likely for a vehicle owner that RTFM'd.
I'm pretty sure anyone ever burned in a gas-fueled vehicle fire would gladly
go back in time to fork over $40k to avoid that experience.

~~~
abruzzi
If you run your ICE without oil, yes, you will kill it. And maybe these should
be thought of in the same way, but people worry about this because draining a
battery to zero seems like running out of gas, and most of us have run out of
gas at some point or another. Granted it's not the same because in the short
term the battery management system should reserve the bottom 5% for the health
of the battery.

But the second reason people are worried about this is killing that last 5%
and bricking the battery happens by doing nothing. Bricking an ICE while it is
unused, sitting in your driveway takes decades. With a replacement $50 battery
and $30 oil change I've restarted engines that have been sitting unused in
junkyards for 40 years.

~~~
X-Istence
I've been driving for 6 years now and I have never ran out of gas. Is this
really so uncommon that you can safely say that at some point or another most
of us have run out of gas?

I keep an eye on my odometer and on the gas gauge and know when it is time to
get gas. My car doesn't have a low fuel light warning so paying attention is
definitely required.

~~~
abruzzi
Where I drive, I am frequently 100 miles from the nearest gas station. Plus in
small remote areas, gas stations can be out of gas, out of business, or just
closed for unknown reasons.

------
SNK
"Here's the primary fact that the blogger in question doesn't understand: the
Tesla battery pack is not a battery."

Gee, where might he have gotten that idea? Tesla's website and documentation,
perhaps? "Custom microprocessor-controlled lithium-ion battery with 6,831
individual cells."

Not 8K, huh; talk about getting your technical facts wrong.

"Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars
discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false.
The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from
being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving
conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge
can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management
system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge."

Just asserted it was blatantly false and admitted it was true that full
discharge damages the battery in the same paragraph, hoo boy.

"But there's an antidote for this type of misinformation: confronting it with
facts."

Looks more like he meant to say that the antidote for these facts is
misinformation, yow.

~~~
stewartbutler
> Just asserted it was blatantly false and admitted it was true that full
> discharge damages the battery in the same paragraph, hoo boy.

No. He stated that, while discharging an individual cell below a certain
voltage will damage it, the battery management circuitry on each cell will not
permit the battery to discharge past that point. It simply disconnects the
battery from the circuit, which means the only leakage is chemical (self-
discharge), and thus very slow.

To clarify this point: "discharge fully" =/= zero percent. You will never want
to go below a certain percentage of absolute charge.

~~~
SNK
"Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars
discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is _blatantly
false_."

"It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can
potentially be damaging to a battery."

------
Duff
The headline should read "Tesla: Not so easily bricked under normal
circumstances".

The problem here is that not everyone lives in California, and most people
think of cars as durable (vs. perishable) goods. Those two things cause
problems for people who are edge cases. In places like Michigan or New York or
Massachusetts, it's not 70F all year round. We have this quaint concept called
"winter". In the winter, the local governments dump salt on the roads, snow
and slush make driving dangerous, and when it doesn't snow, you get dusty
blowing salt on the highways.

Because of this, people with the means to buy $50,000 sports cars leave them
in garages for the winter. Or they head to the Caribbean for a vacation. Or
both. For a car with an internal combustion engine, you usually remove the
battery or trickle charge it, but the consequence of not doing so is buying a
$100 battery at your local mechanic.

Another thing to consider is the meaning of "normal" as it applies to the
market. If you're a working stiff, you drive every day. You may even drive to
get to your vacation. People buying $50,000 cars with the limitations that
electric cars have today aren't working stiffs, and their leisure patterns are
probably quite different than most folks.

~~~
Terretta
> _sports cars leave them in garages for the winter_

Live in CT, own a two seater that's never seen snow, for the reasons you
mention. It's on a trickle charger to avoid having to replace a regular
battery that would go dead if discharged fully, but still had to replace tires
that got flat spotted during last year's particularly long winter.

Knowing that about regular batteries, I'd be even more careful with a Tesla,
even w/o reading the manual. "Hmm, my regular car battery has to be replaced
if completely discharged, and this car is all battery ..."

I think the "different patterns" should actually increase awareness.

------
degusta
I wrote the original blog post about Teslas bricking. This IDC/IDG post is
embarrassingly wrong about basically everything. The cars are most definitely
not "just in need of servicing". Tesla's not even arguing that - I even have a
written statement from them that it's $40k to fix.

This alleged "expert" can even get the number of cells right (6,831 by the
way).

The article should be retracted.

~~~
qdog
My takeaway is that the Tesla Roadster is a very expensive toy at this point.
There are some electric charging stations now at my work (I can only assume
they would work with the Roadster, haven't look into it), but it really sounds
to me like the early adopters are going to be paying out the nose for electric
for a few more years.

I have a Civic Hyprid, which is pretty underwhelming, but functions pretty
much like a regular car. If I don't end up giving it to my step-daughter, I
almost assuredly will keep it until the more efficient electric vehicles are
as reliable.

------
ajays
I think the original article also made the same claim: Tesla is "not so easily
bricked" (given the fact that 'only' 5 cases could be found). So this isn't a
rebuttal.

If it was to be a rebuttal, the claim would be "Tesla cannot be bricked" or
something like that.

This article did not do any background work. Why didn't he talk to the Tesla
service manager(s) who were quoted in the original article? Even if he managed
to talk to 1 of the 5 and showed that it was not a bricking, then he would
have a point. But the way it is, the current article does almost nothing to
refute the original.

~~~
driverdan
Considering the original article didn't actually cite sources, just made
stated that a manager claimed this, a customer claimed that, it'd be pretty
hard for him to talk to the service manager.

~~~
ajays
Really? The original article lists sources like "Tesla’s Los Angeles area
service center manager", "340th customer", etc. And it also includes an
incident involving Elon Musk and J. Joost de Vries. I'd say there are enough
sources listed there that someone could do some verification.

------
Peroni
Hang on, at what point did anyone claim they were 'easy' to brick? The
argument is not about how easy they are to brick, it's about the fact that the
entire car is rendered useless if bricked unless you're willing to pay $40k to
get your vehicle back on the road again.

If the cars were easy to brick there would be a significantly larger number of
documented cases than what currently exist.

~~~
scott_s
When I read the blog post in question, and the comments here, I left with the
understanding that if you left a Tesla car unused for a dozen or so weeks, it
would be bricked and it would cost $40,000 to replace the battery. This post
directly contradicts that notion.

~~~
osipov
The response from Tesla does not contradict that notion. Note this quote:
"It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can
potentially be damaging to a battery. " Notice that "can potentially be
damaging" is a weasel phrase for "brick". Further Tesla argues that to avoid
discharge to zero percent "all that needs to be done is to tow the vehicle to
a charger". Again, this misses the main point of the OP -- what happens if the
vehicle doesn't get towed to the charger. The OP argues that then it
discharges to zero percent which in Tesla's own words will be potentially
damaging.

Tesla's PR people are particularly misleading by comparing the situation
described above to someone draining oil and then taking a car on a cross
country trip. Draining the oil requires action by car's owner. Leave a car in
a garage for six months and the oil will still be there. The whole point of
the OP is that inaction destroys Tesla's vehicles.

~~~
scott_s
My understanding of what this post meant is that a full discharge is prevented
by the controller in the battery itself - much like in laptops, and much like
everyone here was surprised that the Tesla battery does not have.

So, to be clear, my understanding of this post, with full clarity, is: "A full
discharge is disastrous. However, the situations reported were _not_ full
discharges. The controller in the battery shut them off before full discharge.
The reported situations did require being towed, but once towed, it was
trivial to recharge the batteries."

~~~
swombat
Actually, it seems to me the article doesn't really contradict the accusation
at all.

 _There is a fundamental problem when any rechargeable battery is discharged
and then left to sit for months. Any boat owner understands that that's why
you plug in a trickle charger when the craft is put into storage._

The line above indicates, on the contrary, that yes, if you don't drive it for
a while and it wasn't plugged in to a sufficient power source, your car _will_
in fact be bricked, and potentially damage its batteries. Apparently this is a
problem with boats too, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a problem
with electric cars.

This "response" is in fact full of double speak... Check this one out:

 _Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars
discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false.
The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from
being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving
conditions._

"This is blatantly false"......."under normal driving conditions". The
original article was not talking about normal driving conditions. This reads
like a deliberate attempt to mislead.

If anything, it seems to me that this article validates the claims made in the
other article. It states:

 _This is the most likely explanation for the five "bricks" that the blogger
claims to have heard about. They probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in
need of servicing._

This is hardly the kind of certainty-filled rebuttal that one would expect if
the original article's claims were, in fact, incorrect.

~~~
notJim
> This is the most likely explanation for the five "bricks" that the blogger
> claims to have heard about. They probably aren't actually bricks, but cars
> in need of servicing.

Your attack on this point is spot on. The point of the original post this one
fails to rebut is that the cars are in need of servicing! Maybe that posts use
of the word “bricked” is imprecise, but the real thrust of it was that it
costs $40,000 to perform this servicing, which this post does not even
dispute.

~~~
ericd
It would cost $40k to replace the batteries, it would obviously not cost $40k
to recharge a battery that had shut itself down for safety. I doubt every
instance in the original post actually required a replacement, though it was
implied.

------
Pelayo
Though I could easily believe that there was a coordinated attack against
electric vehicles (I can think of a few groups), the response doesn't refute
the previous article but tries to defend through vocabulary.

If you leave the car unplugged for a long period of time the battery will be
ruined. If the battery is one huge battery pack or 8000 smaller batteries
doesn't matter.

Also, having a car plugged in for months is a lot different that driving cross
country with no oil.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
As someone who "bricked" his Jetta in college by forgetting to replace the
oil, I can also point out that the replacement engine cost around $6k, a
(hefty) fraction of the car's then value, but nowhere close to its total
_original retail price_.

~~~
ericd
The Tesla Roadster costs in the neighborhood of $130,000, so $40k is a
fraction of its price.

------
jimbobimbo
"They probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing."

$40k bill is not a "servicing" - it's a new car.

My problem with counter-arguments that use "drained oil" as an example, is
that oil change is done every few _thousand_ miles (say, 3000 miles in case of
my car). Now, this is _recommended_ (albeit, strongly) frequency. This means
that if I drove my car around 3000 miles, then went to airport, left my car
sitting on the parking lot for a month, chances are I'll drive back home sound
and safe, and my bill for oil change will be the same $30, as it would if I
get it change on or below recommended 3000 miles. Note that I don't need to
trickle-change the oil in this case.

Now, if we compare battery drain to fuel tank depletion (which is technically
more correct, since battery _is the fuel_ for Tesla), then comparisson is even
less pleasant for Tesla.

Having said that, I don't see anything wrong to bringing the potential battery
bricking issue up (especially in light of arrival of more affordable vehicles
from Tesla) - Tesla should've used this as an opportunity to educate people
and do right by the owners of bricked cars by picking up part of the repair
bill with some strings attached.

~~~
devy
Totally agreed.

There is simply no comparison between a internal combustion engine vehicle and
a plug-in electric vehicle as the engines work very differently.

Also $40K service (reboot) is NOT a service, is a COMPLETE REPLACEMENT for the
battery packs.

------
othermaciej
It turns out that the poster of the original story is the owner of one of the
'bricked' Teslas. This was apparently leaked to hurt his credibility but at
least for me it only enhances it, as it seems he had a first-hand experience
with the brick problem.

[http://jalopnik.com/5887499/who-is-trying-to-smear-the-
tesla...](http://jalopnik.com/5887499/who-is-trying-to-smear-the-tesla-
battery-problem-whistleblower)

~~~
ricardobeat
> "I'm not stupid, it wasn't a mistake"

 _Any_ lithium battery is damaged after 2 months at 0% charge. How isn't that
a mistake?

~~~
tadfisher
I'm skeptical of his story, because if he was been following instructions as
he claims, he would have near 100% charge at the beginning of those two
months.

------
DanBC
The original blog post made a few claims.

1) Tesla warnings were weak, and part of the Tesla documents said it's fine to
leave the car unplugged for weeks.

2) Total discharge of batteries is possible under certain extreme conditions,
and has happened to 5 people

3) Total discharge of batteries bricks the car, leaving it un-towable and
needing a $40,000 battery replacement fix.

> _Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars
> discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false.
> The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from
> being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving
> conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge
> can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management
> system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of
> charge._

So, is it possible to totally discharge the battery pack or not?

~~~
maxerickson
The Jalopnik post has been updated with a statement from Tesla saying that the
battery will take a long time to reach zero state of charge. My understanding
is that the battery system will protect the battery during normal use but that
there isn't much it can do if the car is left sitting unplugged.

So the 'confront misinformation with facts' tone of this article ends up being
a little over the top, the blogger is interpreting the facts differently than
even Tesla.

------
smacktoward
This is an exceptionally lame rebuttal.

 _> There is a fundamental problem when any rechargeable battery is discharged
and then left to sit for months. Any boat owner understands that that's why
you plug in a trickle charger when the craft is put into storage._

Yes, it's an excellent strategy to assume that your car buyers will also be
boat owners, and therefore know all the things that boat owners know without
you needing to explain them. Because _who doesn't own a boat,_ right?

~~~
jmilloy
I think the point there is that anyone purchasing an electric vehicle should
do some basic research about electric cars and batteries. It's not that they
should know this because boat owners know it; instead it's that they should
take it upon themselves to find out this important and simple piece of
maintenance, just as boat owner's have done. In other words, when you buy a
boat, you understand that it's different from your (gas/diesel) car and you
find out what you need to know. An electric vehicle is different, too, and you
should act accordingly.

~~~
grannyg00se
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the consumer to do research of any
sort. It would be very easy for Tesla to mention this at the time of purchase,
document it, and also provide a dashboard notification of some sort.

~~~
onemoreact
Based on what drzaiusapelord said I don't think there is any research required
of any sort.

 _When you buy a Tesla the following happens: You are vebally told about this.
You are then shown a document to sign that you were told about this Your car
will beep loudly when its under 5% charge If its a newer Tesla it will beep
and also log an issue with the service center, who will then continue to call
you to tell you to plug it in. No boat experience required._

~~~
smacktoward
Funny how neither the linked post nor Tesla's official statement on the
subject [1] mention any of that stuff.

That omission is either just monumentally bad PR, or they're not really that
fastidious or consistent about educating the customer. (Not that I doubt
drzaiusapelord, but if they were, you think they'd be shouting that from the
rooftops rather than leaving it to random commenters on HN to explain.)

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/22/tesla-roadsters-ev-
accuse...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/22/tesla-roadsters-ev-accused-of-
bricking-tesla-responds/)

------
tcarney
I think the issue is that Tesla has a warranty problem, not a design flaw.
With batteries, even if the battery management system shuts itself down and
all subsystems, the battery cells will still internally drain to damaging
levels. Until battery technology improves that will be a real problem with all
electric cars. Unlike driving with no oil and needing an engine replacement,
this is primarily a problem with the car (not driver negligence), so it should
probably be covered under warranty, or qualify for the cheaper $12k
replacement.

Note: I do not know how Tesla designed their systems, they possibly could do a
better job to extend the storage time, but it will still be a problem. Any car
with an electric start has this problem, if you don't charge the battery in
storage it will require service/replacement. Of course it won't be $40k...

Do anyone have similar stories from other electric cars? Is there a maximum
storage time listed for the Prius, Volt, or Leaf?

------
WireSpeed
So, if as this article says the previous blogs were nothing more than a smear
campaign against Tesla, basically accusing them of being a propaganda
campaign. Doesn't this seem amazingly like counter-spin?

The article says that the facts will shine through and prove them wrong, but
it's amazingly absent of facts. "The design of the car will prevent that,
trust me".

If you read between the lines though, he does admit that a full drain of the
battery will destroy it.

------
brudgers
What is interesting to me is what the author does not dispute - that Tesla
charged $40,000 to fix the problem.

Anecdote is not evidence, but last year I had a dealer offer to reset my cars
computer to reflect a scheduled inspection for $220 when it was in for a
windshield replacement - this wasn't for the inspection, which is part of any
routine service, but for resetting a 32,000 mile cycle which displays a
warning.

The reset process is relatively arcane, but only took me about five minutes,
including digging out the printed instructions which I had downloaded from the
internet following an oil change and a couple of false starts.

So it wouldn't surprise me that a dealer would seek $40k to reset a system.

~~~
Zarathust
Absolutely. The author even claims that all is needed is a reboot of the
hardware controller. This would seems even more scandalous that it costs 40
grands.

------
jwr
Well, the truth is really somewhere in the middle. The article says that the
battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to discharge the
battery fully. But batteries lose charge over time and if they are not
charged, there is nothing that any battery management system can do about it.

So I guess while the original article was overly sensationalistic, this one is
overly optimistic — if you park your car with batteries very low at the
airport and leave for vacation, you might kill some cells.

------
gwern
Doesn't explain away the previous post - if repair is so trivial, why were 40k
repair bills being discussed?

~~~
shin_lao
Maybe the $ 40k repair bills never existed in the first place...

~~~
crusso
Then why didn't this Tesla representative say so? Why didn't he say, "We have
followed up with the source(s) of this story and been unable to find any
instance of a need to replace all the battery cells in a so-called 'bricked'
Tesla. All instances only required a charge and reboot with service costs
never exceeding $2k." ... or something like that?

I like the trashing of a bad rumor against technology as much as the next
geek, but this Tesla response was spin and speculation thrown against more
substantial-sounding reports of a problem. It was weak and since the strong
alternatives are easily imaginable, it was likely weak for a reason -- ie, the
reports of $40k bills were relatively accurate.

------
steve8918
If there are 8k individual cells in the battery pack, what happens when an
individual cell reaches zero? Will that individual cell be permanently dead,
or can it be revived?

You would think with 8k individual cells, if you left it unplugged for just a
couple of weeks (instead of the 6 weeks needed to brick the entire battery
pack), using a normal distribution you could expect that at least _some_ of
the cells would reach zero. Would that permanently reduce the capacity for the
entire battery pack?

~~~
jroll
Most battery management systems incorporate some sort of cell balancing
algorithm to make sure cells stay close to a common voltage. Usually this is
some sort of resistor (per cell) that dissipates a small current from that
cell and bleeds it off as heat. This is usually used while charging to get
everything in line.

That said, if a cell goes bad or has an extremely low capacity compared to the
rest, there's not much you can do...

------
csomar
The blogger might be an ignorant, but the OP post doesn't reassure me. If I go
in a 5 months travel doing consulting abroad, and I'm living alone; who
guarantee that my car is being constantly put on the charger? There are many
cases (plug dysfunction, electric problem...) and $40K is not a trivial
amount.

~~~
ljf
Did you read the article? It stated that not charging the the car WILL NOT
lead to $40,000 bricking.

~~~
durandal1
Where did it say that? It acknowledges that deeply discharging may damage the
cells, and it does not refute that it would cost $40,000 to fix.

Even the owner's manual state this (except for the $40,000 cost of course).

~~~
ljf
quote from the article:

Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars
discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false.
The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from
being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving
conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge
can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management
system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge.

~~~
wmf
_However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to
reach that low level of charge._

This is just plain wrong. If the car is not charging, self-discharge will
happen and nothing can stop it.

------
richardw
Tesla needs to publish an exhaustive analysis of the problem. What will brick
it, what will harm the battery X%, what happens when you discharge fully
repeatedly, what it will cost to fix at each point of damage.

------
9999
His letter to Musk makes him seem much more reasonable than Tesla honestly.

[http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073312_is-tesla-
brickin...](http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073312_is-tesla-bricking-
story-just-an-angry-owners-shakedown/page-2)

The part that really registered with me is the request for a simple phone
call. Why didn't Tesla call the owners and warn them about the battery
discharge issue? Why didn't they just upgrade the original cars to include
that low battery notification service? What do you think the actual real cost
of that upgrade is in hardware and work hours? $100? $500? How much would they
have spent having some people call the owners of those 500 original roadsters?
A few hundred dollars to personally notify their first customers? It was a
100K+ car was it not? This guy might be foolish for not closely scrutinizing
the warranty/owner's manual, but Tesla's customer service and PR response are
horrible.

------
gte910h
The fundamentally silly part about all is that Tesla doesn't offer insurance
for this rare thing.

Seems trivial to setup an insurance scheme for this rare, but exceedingly
costly event, either internally, or via an external insurer. _It may not be
cheap_ but this PR issue can be fixed in an afternoon talking to Farmers
insurance or the like.

~~~
DanBC
Or even just having big clear warnings in the manuals, and then pointing to
those warnings when this comes up.

~~~
gte910h
I don't find a line in a maintenance manual an effective tool for handling
this 40k expense.

------
noonespecial
I wonder why their super computerized battery doesn't just sacrifice some of
its 6,831 commodity, 18650 form-factor, Li-ion cells to preserve the others
and why aren't these cells cheap to replace being the most common form factor
of lithium cell in the world.

------
JumpCrisscross
Do we have an answer on how long, from 100% and 80% charges, it would take for
a Roadster to get bricked? That would strongly effect any judgement on the
reasonableness of Tesla not prominently disclosing this risk.

------
replax
IMO, there are two things Tesla could do, one is an automated notification
when your battery runs low, presenting you the options to a) let it just sit,
b) turn off all electronics to preserve a little more battery and c) to let a
Tesla service guy come to save your battery.

The other thing is, that you should be able to enter tow mode just from an
external power supply, so it will be trivial to pull it out of your garage.

------
thewisedude
The op does not state whether the claim that replacing all cells will cost
$40K! In many cars today... replacing the engine or any single major
component(because of mechanical failure) would hardly cost $40K unless you are
talking about super cars! So for people who want to drive cars that cost less
than $100K, $40K is a big chunk of money!

------
orenmazor
this isn't much of a rebuttal. he's basically agreeing that a non-trickle
charged battery can fail completely, which was exactly the problem pointed out
in the original post.

the problem isn't that an EV is battery based which has this flaw. the problem
is that its not really addressed enough for people who dont daily drive their
EV.

------
Uchikoma
"However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to
reach that low level of charge."

The battery management system is in not position to not allow the battery to
discharge itself over time. It can only stop the car from powering up to
prevent active battery usage.

------
hyperbovine
Why is it that fully discharging a Li ion battery ruins it for all time? I
have experienced this with my MacBook too. Closed it at 1% and forgot about it
for two weeks. Battery was a paperweight when I returned.

~~~
TeHCrAzY
You can go look it up on wikipeadia; but in summary, the battery relies on a
chemical reaction to produce electricity. After a certain discharge point, the
chemical reaction is irreversibly changed, and can no longer be recharged.

------
ericd
ICE cars have a number of problems that EVs don't:

ICEs depend on a single form of stored energy. The single source dependency
creates a dependency between the functioning of the one's country's economy
and the stable supply of a difficult to obtain resource from many countries
with potentially hostile attitudes towards the country.

ICEs require a massive active infrastructure for refining and transporting
oil. With EVs, you suddenly don't need to drive energy around in heavy
chemical form except to a much smaller number of locations which can be
serviced by much more efficient freight trains.

ICEs are extremely inefficient at extracting energy from oil compared to large
turbines at power plants. So not only do you not have to spend energy and
human labor driving chemical energy around to deliver it all over the place,
you get more from that stored energy.

ICE cars are mechanically more complex than EVs, and they require more in the
way of maintenance than EVs (the Roadster, an exotic sports car, has a
recommended maintenance interval of once per 12k miles). EVs can be more
modular, since they can have a simple electric motor on each wheel or axle
instead of having a single engine with a complicated system of driveshafts and
gearboxes to transfer mechanical forces all around the chassis. Also, no oil
changes and no emissions checks.

Keep in mind that the problem described here mainly affected the first 500
cars Tesla ever built, and was largely mitigated in later versions. Overall, I
think it is obvious that if the cost can be reduced to ICE car levels for 200+
miles of range, EVs will be the most practical form of automobile for all but
long trips, and I think even the long-trip challenge will eventually be
solved. I think it's really silly and a bit embarrassing to call the future of
the electric vehicle into question over an early design flaw which exacerbated
a problem which is really easy to mitigate, even in a fashion that requires no
user intervention. The up-front cost of the vehicles due to the cost of
batteries is 1000x more important in practical terms, and what we should be
focusing our energy on.

~~~
ericd
Why the downvotes? I'm reasonably sure there aren't any inaccuracies in there,
and I think it's important to remember all the downsides of our current cars
versus electrics, especially when some commenters are claiming that the ICE
has already proven itself and isn't on trial here. It most definitely is, and
I think it's losing handily, regardless of some potential new complications
with EVs.

------
noss
How heavy would a small ICE unit need to be to produce enough current to keep
the batteries alive for longer periods of time? And how much fuel would such a
thing use?

------
davvid
Here's a business opportunity: Battery insurance.

------
mansolo
This comment doesn't clearly refute claims made by the original blog post. The
statement "they probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of
servicing" sounds inconclusive.

All I am saying is if people are going to refute the original blog post as
"nonsense" and will "confront it with facts", then do so convincingly and
without contradiction.

~~~
yardie
The original blog isn't exactly sussed out either. We have an anonymous source
giving vague anecdotes about 5 cars whose owners haven't been contacted to
verify details.

~~~
motoford
The link to this article is down unfortunately, so I can't comment on it. But
Tesla's statement did nothing to refute the article, it just stated that you
have to put oil in a regular car, and that you can optionally have the car
contact Tesla if it gets low.

The oil analogy Tesla and others are using just doesn't work. A normal car
doesn't total itself after sitting idle for a few weeks to few months
depending on whose side you believe.

Imagine your new car of choice having a 5 gallon gas tank, and if it goes
empty, your car burns to the ground. Oh, and the gas evaporates at rate of
half a gallon a week.

I don't know about you, but that fear would keep me from enjoying the vehicle.
I think the stress of always making sure it's charging would beat me down.

~~~
yardie
A normal car engine unused for a long time has to be handled just as well. If
you're lucky the worst you'll have is a dead battery. If you're unlucky the
engine has seized and the tires are deformed and need to be replaced. Ask any
university town mechanic what happens when students leave cars parked in the
lot, untouched, for months.

Actually as a former car owner (city dweller now), my biggest concern was
making sure the car was still there when I came back later.

Really the biggest responsibility this car has is for the owner to keep
batteris charged up, not check the oil, not check the coolant, nor check the
break fluid or transmission fluid. When did spending a lot of money on a car
mean you could also switch your brain off.

~~~
dodedo
I've run down the battery on my car, motorcycle, mower, or other vehicles I
don't often use. It is not an expensive ($40,000) fix -- often it just takes a
recharge because lead-acid batteries are not as easily damaged as lithium-ion.
Replacement is relatively cheap too.

When you talk about tire deformation, this is rare and would not happen before
many years of disuse. And engine seizure? Again, unlikely to happen even if
left to sit for a decade. You're more likely to have issues with rust in the
gas tank and bad, coagulated gas, than a seized engine.

The point is that it is relatively safe to leave a vehicle unattended in a
garage for long periods of time. The vast majority of its value will remain
undamaged. Contrast to the Tesla, where if left for a year with a low charge
it is alleged that it's likely to lose fully half of the car's value
($40,000).

This is a big deal.

~~~
drone
Firstly, given that gas contains up to 10% ethanol now, no, your engine will
be seriously damaged if you leave your car with gasoline in it for ten years
and then start it without flushing it first. That's because the ethanol
attracts water, and water does not compress as easily as gasoline, and the
attempt to spray a high volume of water into your cylinder and then compress
it will likely destroy something along the way. Agreed though that what passes
for gasoline in that tank is anything but gasoline.

Now, add further that all of the rubber hosing, if your car was built in the
last two decades, will likely have dry-rot, and the vehicle is unlikely to run
again without replacement on all of them. Should a rear main, or other
important seal have been damaged, you'll be looking at around $1,000 in labor
alone to disassemble the engine. How much was that car worth again?

I've had lifters separate on me while driving taking out the engine block,
radiator, and several other components along the way - the cost to replace
with a -new- engine and radiator exceeded 40% of what I paid for the vehicle.
(Don't be confused by the pricing on a used, junk-yard engine, and a new crate
engine. Gets even worse with a V8 - have you seen the price on a 6.1L crate
Hemi?)

I still don't see what the big deal is - if I leave -any- electronic device
with an li-ion battery in it discharged for a long period of time, that
battery is toast. You think it's absurd that the battery in the car costs
$40k? I'm sure mac laptop batteries would be even more expensive once you
chained enough of them together to get to that level of sustained discharge
capability.

~~~
dodedo
Yes, I mentioned the gas/rust/coagulation issue in the post you replied to. I
should mention that I have been through this process myself and I am well
aware of the steps necessary to restore a long-sitting gas vehicle to service.

If a car is left to sit for a year the gas will be bad, but there will likely
be no further repair necessary other than flushing the fuel system. This is
relatively cheap. Even if one mistakenly tries to start it and gets water in
the engine, the repairs are far less costly than the $40,000 battery price tag
on the tesla.

I had mentioned a decade specifically in regard to engine seizure -- you will
not have this problem over a shorter time period such as one year. Nor will
you have dry-rot of your hosing or any other major mechanical malfunction.
Ruined gas and a dead battery are about the limits of damage in the one year
period -- possibly a tire may go flat.

The big deal is that if I leave my $80k gasoline car in a garage for a year it
will take very little to get it running again. Probably a few hundred bucks.
Perhaps up to several thousand dollars if I foolishly try to start it and get
very unlucky. But you can't reasonably construct a scenario where a garaged
gasoline car is likely to sustain $40,000 in damages just from safely sitting
out of the elements. It's just not possible, period.

------
Trk
I checked out the Tesla sedan and would definitely buy it if I could afford
it!

