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Tesla Model S Gets Titanium Underbody Shield, Aluminum Deflector Plates
An anonymous reader writes "Tesla Motors made headlines several times last year for a few Model S car fires. Elon Musk criticized all the attention at the time, pointing out that it was disproportionate to the 200,000 fires in gas-powered cars over the same period. Musk didn't stop there, though. He's announced that the Model S will now have a titanium underbody shield along with an aluminum bar and extrusion. He says this will prevent debris struck on the road from breaching the battery area. Musk offered this amusing example: 'We believe these changes will also help prevent a fire resulting from an extremely high speed impact that tears the wheels off the car, like the other Model S impact fire, which occurred last year in Mexico. This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries and a fire, again limited to the front section of the vehicle, started several minutes later. The underbody shields will help prevent a fire even in such a scenario.' Included with the article are several animated pictures of testing done with the new underbody, which survives running over a trailer hitch, a concrete block, and an alternator."
What happened to the 3D printing revolution?
Is he saying they've upgraded safety to piloted weapon system levels?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries
Sounds like a scene from "the A team", where I would have been saying "that's so unrealistic"!
Isn't titanium pyrophoric, sort of like those golf clubs?
Clearly Elon is underplaying this a bit. Yes maybe there isn't a large risk but if they went to the trouble of making an engineering change that adds significant expense and weight to the vehicle then obviously they themselves believe there is a risk.
So it impacts range by ".01%" but how about cost?
I thought it was just announced that Titanium golf clubs were responsible for fires, now they covered the bottom of the car in it? CRAZY!!!!
Hilarious!
There's always something for lawyers to scream about, when searching to line their pockets.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is what the rest of the automotive industry will say, then: "This shows what we have said all along, these things are unsafe.". These (misleading) headlines will be quoted all over - "case proven, Tesla is not safe".
It would be amusing to see them held to the same standards - which the regulator could, nay - should, do.
for a $90k car...why not carbon fiber too?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
crown royal WMD peddlers wwworld wide shutting down social media, gassing the populations etc... etc.... crying foulish mistreatment by ungrateful unchosen subjects
This sounds like something yon might see if you're watching Road Runner
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries
I can't be the only one who finds this amazing. People survive these kinds of crashes, but to be able to get yourself out for the vehicle and walk away on your own is impressive.
Slow news day eh?
You know, I usually detest any sort of PR speak. That sort of bullshit where they desperately try to spin negative news to their advantage. It's just something I've come to expect from corporations and politicians.
But this?
We believe these changes will also help prevent a fire resulting from an extremely high speed impact that tears the wheels off the car, like the other Model S impact fire, which occurred last year in Mexico. This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries and a fire, again limited to the front section of the vehicle, started several minutes later. The underbody shields will help prevent a fire even in such a scenario.
That is some mighty fine PR smackdown.
Sure, there were other fires, but this one they got covered.
Can we please move to the post-bullshit era where authenticity is expected?
You should see some of the cars people survived accidents from. You'd think there's no way they could have even lived.
Indeed it does; it makes me wonder why they don't make the Tesla S look more like a badass car and less like a family sedan.Wouldn't take much revision to have, say, a Tesla Se, that's got minor revisions ala body panels.
Personally, I'm waiting for the Tesla minitruck (think 1980s Toyota). Maybe by then they'll have the "cold weather energy cell" issue fixed and the vehicle would be of some use to most people.
will it survive atmospheric reentry?
I know this will be modded flamebait, but seriously, how many gasoline power cars catch fire after hitting road debris? Compare this number to the number of gasoline powered cars on the road that hit debris but don't catch fire. Then do this same calculation for the Tesla. That's the number I am interested in. It shows the probability that your car/Tesla will burn to the ground after hitting something in the road.
So here's the daily Tesla slashvertisment. Now all we need is the daily Facebook, Bitcoin, and Snowden posts. And since it's Friday, need the weekly "Women in Tech" clickbait post.
"Even Prophets don't know everything"
I think I know the accident you speak of - it wasn't so much a 'metal spike' as a caltrop in the form of a trailer hitch on the road - One of those 3-ball types from some reports. I don't think it really weighed 50 pounds as I think it was a hitch like this one, putting it closer to 40 pounds(or less), given the shipping weight of 44 pounds.
As for mild steel - not unless it was bought from some shady chinese store.
That's basically what it amounts to. If you see a rusty trailer hitch in the road, try not to hit it so hard that it lifts your car up into the air.
I'd tend to say 'try not to drive over stuff, especially big bits of metal'.
I don't read AC A human right
....maybe he can make it cost $150,000 just to make sure it's completely out of reach by the proles!
WAY TO CHANGE THE WORLD* ELON.
*for the 1%
eh?
You're an idiot, please get a fucking education so you can stop sounding like a worthless shitbag.
Did anyone else notice those seem to be successive tests on the same car? In the alternator test you see a fastener toward the back of the belly plate gets loosened, in the trailer hitch test you see the fastener actually come out, then in the concrete block test you see the belly plate actually flap under impact, and you can see what appears to be the hole that fastener came from.
I am fairly impressed that, not only did they do real world tests (which do fall short of shearing off wheels and battering through concrete walls) but they apparently did not put the car on a lift and return it to perfect condition between successive tests.
That makes the test a bit more real world like, cars get driven and accumulate wear and tear, so they are not necessarily going to be in factory mint condition when they hit something.
You get the feeling, regardless of what you think of Musk or the car, that he is very proud of that car, and it appears justifiably so. Yes, he is defensive when the press screams disaster and trumpets doom and gloom about the car, but he doesn't ever try to hide from the press or try to spin the reports, instead he makes a change to improve the car, then does his spin on his own terms.
Obviously titanium might be a bit pricey for the "cheap" Tesla when it arrives, but I bet the anti-penetration armor design will be there, even if it ends up being constructed of less expensive materials.
In this way the response to the overhyped Tesla accidents and fires will help us all in the long run, just like the German automakers pioneered crash simulation in the 80s and 90s, and now all cars have crumple zones.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
It is Tesla's indifference to the customer's safety that makes this car a death trap. Somone ever so gentily nudges a barrier (an old one that crumbled for 15 feet) at a relatively slow speed of 110 MPH and the two front wheels fly off and the car is flung in to a tree. All we hear from Telsa is "Save the batteries, save the poor batteries". What about the driver? Who is looking out for him?
The safest car ever built was the Yugo. A 200 pound car with a top speed of 15 MPH; how much damage can you do?
They might need another coating to protect it from GOP "Free-market" policies.
Love the mis-quote dude!
The Formula 1 titanium skid plates let them run very low ground clearance. They would bottom out frequently, generating a shower of sparks.
So the folks in the other involved vehicle(s) will be quickly torched by leaking gasoline ignited by the long-lasting sparks from the shield designed to protect the rich man's batteries. Aces.
Looking at the pictures, you see that from all appearances, the car itself wasn't even involved. It simply happened to be there.
The fire department has torn down large amounts of sheet rock, trying to get at the fire, which says they thought it it was in the walls, or
the ceiling. This sounds like an electrical fire, or something hot enough to possibly have ignited the studs behind the sheet rock, so they
have to tear it down to make sure.
The firemen are paying no attention to the car, they are looking as something on the wall or floor in front of the car.
I'm thinking arson or a can of lawn mower gas leaked.
Another instance of there being a fire on the same city block as a Tesla and the press rushing to report it.
Like you.
Spoken like a true pothead.
Anyway, there's a reason that the A-10 pilot sits in a titanium "bathtub".
Is it their balls of steel?
Yeah, cos that never happens with petrol cars. Never at all. Not even once.
Sorry, I'm not a Tesla nut. I hate current generations of electric cars. We had milk-delivery "floats" since the 1960's in my country that used lead-acid batteries and were entirely electric, they were great for what they were. The top-end models are now viable all-electric cars. And cost ridiculous prices. And have some serious flaws (limited range, etc. that can't even come close to competing with my 15-year-old cheap second-hand petrol car).
But we haven't saved the planet. In fact, we've probably broke it a little more (lithium, power generation infrastructure, etc.).
So, no, I'm not a Tesla fan by any stretch of the imagination. The closest I get is that I once priced up an all-electric moped now that my job is ten minutes away rather than 2 hours. But even that was only because I already have a 32A charging socket on the outside of my house (for a kiln), could plug it into a 13A socket and - just in my lunch hour -charge it enough to get home. And I get free road tax. And no congestion charge. And cheaper insurance. And even then, I can't really justify the purchase price compared to an old clunker of a huge second hand petrol car that I can put a 12ft shed in (plus a complete replacement once a year or so).
But, actually, electric cars are just the same as petrol cars here. When you have something of that energy density contained in a metal box, that's tinkered with by random garages and amateur enthusiasts, that's parked up by the side of the road or driving over speed bumps at 50mph... eventually, statistically, enough of them will blow to provide a news story or two. And the automotive testing and recall process has been in place for decades now and you can be pretty sure that it's hard to get such products through the testing, especially with new technologies, if they are really that dangerous.
Fact is, you can cherry-pick any story you like and fudge the statistics as much as you want... an electric battery of just about any kind of this power is safer than the equivalent of sloshy, leaky, fumey explosive that your ordinary cars run off at the moment. In fact, it's one of the reasons that fuel cells just haven't taken off... as soon as you get back to putting sloshy leaky explosive stuff in a can, people go "No, thanks, I'll use a battery".
Can we get slashdot off Musk's nutsack please? This nutswinging on Musk and Tesla is the greatest car ever is horseshit is getting old. Now he's changing the design great, work the problem Elon. Let us all know when your cars don't catch fire from just sitting there.
What? Like a Porsche GT3? You speak as if gas powered vehicles don't randomly catch fire all the time, and nobody says boo. Troll.
According to the report, none of the electrical systems of the Tesla were affected by the fire, and in fact, the fire did not originate from the car at all.
Crap on the roads?
That stinks.
A depleted uranium front grille would give so much more penetration
Next up: CowCatchers on the Tesla X!
At least Porsche are taking some responsibility for their problems like other manufacturers. Two out of 785, 0.25% Porsche recalls the cars. That's a responsible action.
Right now you can't get actual customer delivered numbers out of Tesla, they're coyish about it I'd imagine that their percentage of fires due to accidents or unknown problems would be the same or better. Without the numbers from the coyish Musky boy you don't know how bad the problem really is. To be sure the NHTSA has just given them a clean bill of health curiously at the same time this was announced so all the Nutswingers out there can rejoice, right? I call it a back room deal.
Now let's talk about two other cars that are similar or competitive with the Tesla in terms of new tech. The Volt and the Leaf. As a Leaf owner I'm not sure I've seen any article or news story indicating an unexplained fire in a Leaf. Actually I can't find any. Good for me and Nissan! WooHoo! The same for the Volt, so these two cars by different, more mature, manufacturers are doing better than Tesla but I don't hear the fanbois out there jumping for joy over that. To be sure GM has egg on it's face for the ignition switch problems but that's big car manufacturing. Problems do exist, recalls exist and that's life. Musk now announces that they're changing the design of his car but strangely enough not fixing that 25,000 or so other cars already delivered. That would seem those poor folks have a bit of a conundrum aren't they? Not very responsible if you ask me. If this was done by a recall then he'd have to fix those wouldn't he, but no he's skirted the dreaded recall word once again. But oh no the Tesla had no design issues for all those unexplained Tesla flambe' scenarios right? Fanbois and nutswingers rejoice Musky has delivered your salvation and the Tesla can do no wrong all heretics to be burned alive in a new Tesla!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
For every alternator in the road, that I ran over ...
All those other car manufacturers are now bemoaning pointing fingers @ Tesla - no one else makes a passenger vehicle that could allow their passenger to survive that kind of crash (with or without explosion from ruptured fuel tanks).
Oh the irony...
Seriously lawyers are the only reason Tesla is doing this.
When Tesla examined the car, they found the fire had not touched the battery, the charging system, or the electrical connectors. In other words, all of the parts of a Tesla that could cause a fire weren't involved in the fire.
Something is fishy about the owner's claim of the fire starting spontaneously in the car.
"Elon Musk criticized all the attention at the time, pointing out that it was disproportionate to the 200,000 fires in gas-powered cars over the same period."
Really,
And just how many Mercedes Benz S class cars of similar age caught fire ??
How many Porsche 911 GT3s have been involved in fires?
I worked on this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/1980/...
It was a hacked GM X-car with batteries in what was the transmission tunnel, and most of the rest of the underside of the car. And, in fact, it had a full under-pan.
I don't recall it being touted as a safety feature, but instead, it was there to help reduce wind resistance.
I think the major hazard was the potential for chlorine leaks. It leaked on The Today Show. "Oh, that? It's just chlorine, just like in your swimming pool..."
Tell that to the Madison Height, Mi. fire department! (We had them out a few times...)
Surely you mean that drag increases quadratically with spead, not exponentially. (And at lower speeds (before the air flow becomes turbulent), it's linear.) If it really were exponential, planes and rockets wouldn't be going anywhere fast.
To illustrate: With quadratic drag, drag is four times greater at 100 km/h than at 50 km/h, and 16 times greater at 200 km/h, and so on, to 400 times greater at 1000 km/h. But if it were exponential, then the progression that matches the first two points would be one which quadruples for every 50 km/h increase in speed. So one would have: 100 km/h: 4 times, 150 km/h: 16 times, 200 km/h: 32 times, 1000 km/h: 1,099,511,627,776 times greater!
I think you might have written the best advertising material for the car so far.
Tesla Model S Gets Titanium Underbody Shield, Aluminum Deflector Plates
This sounds more like a starship upgrade than a car upgrade.
http://www.espimetals.com/index.php/msds/296-titanium
Autoignition Temperature: 1200 oC for solid metal in air, 250 oC for powder in air.
* * *
Unusual Fire and Explosion Hazards: Flammable when exposed to heat or flame. May burn in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, nitrogen or air. Titanium, in the absence of moisture, burns slowly, but evolves much heat. Water applied to hot titanium may evolve hydrogen, causing an explosion. Titanium powder is a dangerous fire and explosion hazard.
Yes, basically the poor guy's house caught fire and a Tesla happened to be parked inside.
"This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries and a fire, again limited to the front section of the vehicle, started several minutes later."
I'm throwing cash at my monitor right now! TAKE IT!!
won't the titanium cause it to heat up faster due to the friction of metal on concrete?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II#Durability
Error, invalid question? I didn't describe any fatalities. Matter of fact, I specifically mentioned non-fatal accidents, just ones where the car ended up being mangled beyond recognition. I did so because that's what swb was talking about: horrific looking accidents where you wouldn't expect survivors. Those are NOT typical accidents, survival or otherwise. Neither is 100+mph through two concrete barriers and a tree, much less with the driver surviving, being able to exit the vehicle under his own power elevates it to 'astonishing'.
As for the Tesla, to date that I'm aware of there have been NO fatalities(knock on wood) to the occupants of a Tesla in an accident. There have been fatalities to people HIT by a Tesla, but the occupants in those cases were fine*.
*Alive and relatively unharmed, though I understand a couple of them are facing serious legal consequences to their actions.
I don't read AC A human right
Maybe Tesla should also put airbags under the car.
Catalytic converters are notorious for starting fires, especially in dry grassy areas.
Imagine what could happen if they reverse the polarity of the deflector shield!
is the cost. both on R&D and projected issues with the fitment of such a piece. Racing tech has made it to real world applications, but diffusers and the like tend to be pretty remote since real world conditions are far less favorable to designs like this for servicing and longevity (10 years later, panels start flying off from fittings being improperly replaced/bolts stripped or missing/rusting from salt roads/etc/etc). Probably the most recent examples of aero taken from racing that are more easily visible are the hedgehog spikes on the back of the Lancer Evo MR, and the rear diffuser panel under Toyota Camrys, and the aforementioned issue Audi had with first gen TTs. Rear lift on that car forced rear spoiler fitment.
RTFA, they're adding the shield free of charge if you take it in for service
Right from the linked article (I know, you would have had to RTFA):
Tesla service will also retrofit the shields, free of charge, to existing cars upon request or as part of a normally scheduled service.
Sam
There are other articles indicating that they won't fix it so the message is confused. If it were under a recall then Tesla would be compelled to fix it not just wait for a customer to ask for it especially since the shielding is for safety reasons.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"