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Under the Chassis: A Look At Tesla's Battery Shield
cartechboy (2660665) writes "Tesla said a few weeks ago it would add additional safety shielding to protect the battery of every Model S car on the road against damage from road debris. But it offered no photos of its update as it would look when installed--so one owner took his own. These may be the first detail shots of what the three different pieces look like. There's a half-round aluminum tube, a titanium plate, and a T-shaped section--and you can see how they combine to deflect and direct impacts to minimize damage to the battery. Do these updates look like they'll solve Tesla's problems?"
And you are the only person in the world who reads /. obviously...
" Do these updates look like they'll solve Tesla's problems?"
You mean Tesla's problem of already being the safest car money can buy?
Or do you mean Tesla's problem of having every minor pecadillo be over-hyped by the media, especially right wing news outlets that want to downplay Tesla's success because admitting Tesla is successful is tantamount to admitting a policy of the Obama administration that the right wing fought against actually turned out to be a good policy. It might fix that.
These accidents all seem to stem from the drivers and their carelessness. From crashing through brick walls to hitting large chunks of debri in the road rather than going around it. All Tesla has done is made their vehicles less prone to the driver being careless. (good move none the less)
Next up - Tesla cars catch fire after drivers park them in the ocean.
Telsa did this in response to i) dubious driving by end users and ii) dubious journalism by commentators. Would it be better put then not as 'solving a [pr] problem' but rather sliding along a scale with trade offs between weight and strength / safety.
Really given the 'error rate' that Tesla has with this issue they have fixed something that wasn't really a problem at all. Or at least it was one that was so insignificant it's no big deal. I'd also like to say: Great Job Tesla on showing how to make a great product and stick it to the old guard as well.
My hybrid probably has some protective plates on its undercarriage, should I post that as a story?
Do these updates look like they'll solve Tesla's problems?
Since Tesla's biggest problems come from buggy whip... I mean, car dealership... protectionism, combined with a dislike bordering on zealotry from a media that still considers the Chevy L88 as the engine to beat for every compact sedan they review?
No. No, these updates will not solve Tesla's problems.
Do these updates look like they'll solve Tesla's problems?
Tesla's problems are incumbents in the auto industry who are terrified of a well-funded, highly-desired auto manufacturer coming in and stealing their sales faster than the incumbents are willing/able to evolve and are thus willing to engage in whatever FUD campaign is required to tarnish Tesla's image to damage their business, regardless of how accurate the FUD is so, no, this won't solve Tesla's problems.
is there in one of these plates? Are they detachable by thieves to be sold for the metal value?
I'm not the biggest fan of Musk and (as an hybrid battery engineer for a competitor) I was disgusted by the way he handled the reports of the fires as they arose but I have to give him some credit for these changes. We all, and by all I mean anyone mechanically inclined in this field, knew that there's no way their battery would be protected in real world driving conditions. It could have been their simulation models or maybe they were trying to stretch the boundaries of what determines a "safe" vehicle, most likely it would probably be attributed to the maturity of the company that led to the inadequate protection of the original vehicle. I know what kind of costs are involved with adding the extra protection and for the retrofit of the existing vehicles and I must say that I was surprised to hear that Musk had implemented the change.
I don't think any number of technical improvements can fix a problem that only exists in people's heads.
Hysteria, superstition, preconception and failure to understand statistics are the *real* problems that Tesla faces in marketing their product.
Yes, because it makes a whole lot of sense not to think of cars as technology, and Slashdot never reported on electric cars before Tesla.
Incidentally, he never thought about sueing Volkswagen - back then, he figured if he was stupid enough to drive an automobile into a lake, he got what he had coming. Nowadays, I'm pretty sure the settlement would've been worth millions.
Ever heard of the placebo effect?
Specifically, post video of your car running over the same kinds of debris that Tesla demonstrated here.
Story
Looks like its not all roses for all owners. It also looks like they are caliming they don't have to abide by lemon laws if they are not a dealership. 66 days getting fixed in the first 5 months of ownership of a $100k car sounds unacceptable, but laws are for other people I guess.
Employees of Tesla. Owners of Tesla vehicles. Geeks (well, nerds actually) who want to own a Tesla. Proponents of zero emission vehicles. People who are interested in new or inventive technologies...
There's the trap - come to be a troll, but look out - you may learn something here if you're not careful!
Do these updates look like they'll solve Tesla's problems?
No, because Tesla never had a problem in the first place, so this improvement wasn't really necessary.
Better known as 318230.
Right before this announcement, there were stories of California fire officials asking golfers to be careful when using the now rather common titanium clubs in the rough, as the sparks generated when duffers hit rocks with them can last long enough to start a dry brush fire.
So again; what happens when such sparks encounter spilled fuel from a conventional car involved in an accident with a Tesla? (Here come the downvotes).
I was really hoping they would have gone for us reactive armor for the battery shield.
But I will never EVER willingly buy a car that reports back everywhere it is.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Are they detachable by thieves to be sold for the metal value?
Would be a LOT easier to just steal the whole car.
Incidentally, my (dinosaur powered) truck has a full skid plate under the carriage. That's an optional piece of equipment on my pickup, a vehicle which is even more likely than a passenger car to encounter operational conditions which include a greater chance of undercarriage damage (my truck's a 4x4 and was clearly designed with occasional off-road use as an intended capability). Mind you, I feel that my truck is quite well designed and is correctly engineered to perform its primary function adequately through many years of use; but Tesla is already exceeding even that mandate here, overengineering their product and even updating their design to accommodate "edge cases".
(Oh, and what you refer to as the "Chinese way" - we call that planned obsolescence in this country - it's practically the holy grail of manufacturing design for many firms, nationality notwithstanding)
"zero emission vehicles"
Derp.
This is Slashdot, please explain this article with a car metaphor.
I don't know why they don't have the entire bottom covered. Better aerodynamics and protection against road debris in one.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Add this one too: Anyone who has seen that an electric car is simply the best way to go into a modern city.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
The linked article headline implies (intentionally or otherwise) that the NHTSA closing the investigation had something to do with Tesla adding the additional under-body protection. That is not true. The investigation said that there was no defect in the original cars. The fact that it came to an end at around the same time as Tesla taking additional, pro-active steps to make the car even safer is a correlation, not a causation as far as we know.
That will bring us closer to the future of the MSV:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
(n/t)
"Hey, look at that S Car Go!"
It might be OK if there was something technically interesting about it. But what's technically impressive about Tesla? Connecting a load of Li-Ion batteries to an electric motor isn't anything remarkable.
There've been more novel (and relevant) improvements to combustion engines over the past decade.
The car shipped with a shield, it's just that it turned out some events could pierce said shield so they reinforced it.
Some of this stuff is learning experience on the differences between a petrol vehicle and a battery-electric. They only gained minimal knowledge from the industry's history of protecting the gasoline tank.
I don't read AC A human right
You missed the point - Survival after a 100mph crash isn't really unusual(though a lot of people die in them). It's the ability to walk away after the crash with no serious injuries that's unusual.
Oh, and going by the results of the crush test(broke the test machine), it doesn't need the additional protection a roll cage would provide.
I don't read AC A human right
14 of the last 20 posts about "electric cars" have been pro-Tesla propaganda. How much is /. getting for the advertising? /. tell me which the best?
I need some toilet paper too, can
you could have saved a lot of typing by just calling them what they are then;
idiots
The devs are rolling out a patch for an issue where an external hardware crash caused a loss of system integrity. While no personal data has been lost to date, the vendor apparently wants to reduce the recovery time and inconvenience for early adopters.
Fanbois coo admiringly. Critics snipe cynically. Nihilists whine about the story appearing at all.
And the beat goes on...
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Here's that sick squid I owe you
whats not zero emission about an electric vehicle in drive mode? There may be a current issue about the manufacturing process which will probably be removed when more and more manufacturing will be powered by renewable energy.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
you can make the same argument about ICE. compare the first decade of progress of the ICE to the first real decade of electric vehicles. If you think connecting a battery to a motor is all that makes up a modern EV, then maybe you have an argument but its not.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
well, fuck off to another site then and stop polluting /. with your shit
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Propaganda is disinformation intended to skew perception. The stories about Tesla are not disinformation. It seems you just don't like Tesla.
You are just shifting the pollution from the car to the power plant charging the car.