Tesla Updates Model S Software As a Precaution Against Unsafe Charging

zlives writes "Tesla Motors has maintained that the most recent fire involving one of its Model S electric vehicles isn't the result of a vehicle or battery malfunction, but the company is still addressing the situation with a software fix, according to Green Car Reports. The California-based automaker has added a software function that automatically reduces the charge current by about 25 percent when power from the charging source fluctuates outside of a certain range, Green Car Reports says, citing the Twitter feed from an Apple employee, @ddenboer, who owns a Model S. You can read the text of the update below."

Comments

Damned if they do, damned if they don't

[Loki_1929]

So the basic idea is that if your power source is terrible (i.e. shoddy wiring in your home), then pulling too much through it could expose that problem via a fire. That isn't a problem with the car, but rather a problem with the substandard wiring. If Tesla merely responds with "it isn't us and isn't our problem", we'll invariably hear of more house fires and the Model S will be blamed.

So they develop a change that detects potentially substandard wiring from the symptom of poor quality power entering the vehicle. It then cuts the draw significantly in that case to reduce the risk of said substandard wiring causing a fire (notice the wiring would still be at fault). Suddenly, because Tesla has released a "fix", their car must have been at fault all along!

This is an absurd level of idiocy and quite frankly, if it continues and eventually sinks Tesla, then we deserve to choke to death on the smog of our own stupidity's making. It's really remarkable how terribly dumb the top of the bell curve is. All evidence points directly toward the future envisioned in the film Idiocracy.