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Tesla's Inherent Safety Saves Five Joyriding Teenagers In Germany (arstechnica.com)
According to German newspaper Merkur, one 18-year old and four of her friends lost control of her father's Model S electric vehicle. The car reportedly flew more than 80 feet into a field before it came to a stop. Even though the driver and two of the passengers were airlifted to hospitals, none of their injuries were life-threatening, thanks largely in part to Tesla's skateboard chassis. Ars Technica writes, "The skateboard chassis used by the Model S and Model X is extremely safe, with crumple zones that are unconcerned with engines that can transfer kinetic energy into the passengers during a frontal collision." The images of the crash are not pretty, but one could imagine how much worse they would be if a front-engined internal combustion vehicle were involved instead of the Tesla Model S.
The car is as safe as any other modern car.
Plenty of cars in that price range have "inherent safety" and would protect its occupants in a similar accident, even though they run on an internal combustion engine.
Oh how long we've waited for this sign that physics worked exactly how we formulated it would. Think of the possibilities this entails, being able to plan out systems ahead of time using math and sound principles of modeled dynamics. We could call it a new field. I know, since it involved not having an engine in the front, we could call it "engineering!"
We'll build a better world, I tell you!
This forum Sig is licensed under the LGPL.
Next up: Tesla inherent awesomeness saves puppies.
This advertainment informercial has been brought to you by Tesla; saving kittens the world over.
This guy did a pretty good job....
http://insideevs.com/additiona...
In the end physics wins.
80 feet... into a flat field, beside a road that's also flat and on the same level.
Proof that the Tesla is a prototype for the long-promised flying car!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you fuck off, it'll be marginally more worth reading.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
So saying it is "inherently safe" or that a petrol vehicle would fare worse is pretty absurd. Inherently safe cars don't plant themselves 25m into fields in the first place regardless of their form of propulsion. And that's without even knowing what caused the accident in the first place.
It is news for nerd, at least me as a nerd, interested into security things like crumple zone , doing finite element analyzis etc... And if Tesla is using a different method with better effect then yeah that's highly interesting.
I think the problem is the way the information is delivered. TFA sounds more like a marketing guff than an informed analysis.
This being a news for nerds site, should have it's summaries tailored to this audience, not junk click bait from TMZ.
Given that most of the glass is still intact, I'm leaning towards this being either a low velocity impact, or a med/high velocity crash spread over a long distance and time (which also means low impact forces). Which means the fact that the front end shattered like that is really troubling. Perhaps the additional mass of the battery pack (the Tesla weighs as much as an SUV because of the battery pack) contributed to demolishing the front end despite the low impact forces? In an ICE vehicle, the bulk of the mass (engine) is in the front and it absorbs impact forces directly instead of through the structural beams. In a Tesla, the bulk of the mass is in the battery pack underneath the passenger compartment. Since the passenger compartment is designed to remain intact, the kinetic energy of the battery pack has to be fully absorbed by the structural beans in the front or rear.
I would assume Tesla strengthened the beams by a corresponding amount to pass the crash safety tests. But those tests only cover direct front impacts, not a car leaving the ground and impacting the ground at (say) a slight nose-down pitch. The cantilever forces in such an impact due to the additional torque caused by the heavy battery pack behind it could account for the front shattering and shearing off like that.
He referring to this Slashdot story, also posted today:
cientists: Electric Vehicles Produce As Many Toxins As Dirty Diesels
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
... I wonder if the driver survived the aftermath when her father saw what she did to his car. I doubt if the insurers are going to cover the loss.
"The problem with internet quotes is that you cant always depend on their accuracy" -Abraham Lincoln, 1864
flew more than 80 feet
The linked German article (as well as a follow-up) does not mention anything about the car flying... it says the car overturned until it landed back on its wheels (which explains all the bodywork damage in the photo...).
Also, 80 feet???? Germany have not used such a unit in a couple of years ^H^H^H^H^H centuries. Might still be in use in the USA, Burma and Liberia. And perhaps the UK and Canada.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Would a concrete wall (at around 100mph) followed by a tree count? With the fronts wheels completely sheared off? Driver walked away. There was a fire (after the driver exited), but the body blocked it from the passenger compartment.
Quote below from the link (photos at link):
http://insideevs.com/tesla-rev...
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.
I realize it's a fan site link for EVs, but it has the coverage as I remember it.
And I'm not a fan boy, I respect Elon Musk and his RESULTS. He's pretty good in the results category, and in the dream categories.
BlameBillCosby.com
The actual article is behind a pay wall, but the Daily Mail summary unambiguously says:
- That was finding of a study looking at particles from tyre and brake wear
- Made heavier by batteries and parts meaning tyres and brakes wear faster
The Daily Mail article itself continues with multiple references to brake wear. Not once does it mention regenerative braking.
Now I do admit that I should know better than to assume that a Daily Mail article about a paper would be in any way related to the actual contents of the paper, and it's entirely possible that the actual paper, behind the paywall, says exactly the opposite. Maybe it will even say that EVs are cleaner after all.
Fine with me; he's the closest thing to an idol we've got and for good reason.
The car is as safe as any other modern car.
Nope. It actually *is* safer.
Here's why (from the top of my head):
1) The center of weight is notably lower (huge battery pack along the floor, no huge motor up front), making the Tesla Model S safer in handling than other limosines.
2) It has no motor and thus a *way* better crumpling zone in the forward trunk.
3) Right now tt has the best driving-assistance on the streets and in end-users hands.
My 0.02 Euros.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The images of the crash are not pretty, but one could imagine how much worse they would be if a front-engined internal combustion vehicle were involved instead of the Tesla Model S.
You can imagine all day, but as long as you're only using your imagination and not crashing testing or computer modeling, you're just being a stupid ass.
The fact is that the Tesla is not at all unique in its ability to protect the occupants from harm in a ridiculously major collision. Look at Audi A8 crash photos sometime. There have been a fairly high number of incidents in which the car was very well mangled (even to the point of "what part is that?") and yet all the occupants walked away. You can expect this to be true out of basically any of the truly modern premium vehicles, that is, made out of Aluminum or better. That's because they don't have to make poor tradeoffs for crash safety, they just cost more money. But mind you, lots of the really scary-looking crashes I'm talking about were in the original A8, which was finalized way back in 1993 and appeared as a 2004 model.
The idea that the essential design of the vehicle protected these passengers better than would another car in the same price range is specious at best.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Really? No idol of mine
Then go find a site that worships your god.
My idiot friend (at the time - now he's just an idiot) lost it on a country bend at what the police later estimated to be around 80mph, and flipped us clean over a dry stone wall and easily 60 metres into a field. The car rolled at least once, and the front passenger corner of the roof took the brunt of it. All four of us walked away, although one of the rear-seat passengers still has a nasty scar from sticking his head through the rear window.
That was 20 years ago, and the Ford Fiesta was easily 15 years old at the time. The reason the rear-seat passenger stuck his head out the rear window? No seat-belts fitted in the back. Idiot friend convinced another idiot to winch the wreck out of the field, then drove it 20 miles to the scrap yard. Roadworthy it most certainly was not, but it was drivable...
So: Amazing OMGWTFBBQ Tesla safety, or the same sheer blind luck we had?
"However, due to the increased weight of electric vehiclese, they are subject to more tyre wear and they cause more road wear"
I can't recall anyone making much fuss over the many, many, many F-150s, other trucks & SUVs that have been causing excessive tyre & road wear since the 80s, or acknowledging that 18-wheelers & buses should bear the burden of paying for most of the road repair since they cause, by far, most of the damage.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I was in a '82 Honda civil at highway speeds as the car in front of me changed lanes. The Ford LTD now in front of me hit the nearly stationary car in front of it. Its rear end rose with the impact. I was able to bring my car to a stop just short of the bumper when the Chevy Econovan plowed into me from behind at 100 km/h. The Ford's bumper sheared off my hood. My glasses ended up sitting on the Ford's bumper. Every window in the civic was smashed. I had linear bruises from my seatbelt.
The engine was still running.
Tough little car, caught between a immovable object and an irresistible force.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
What if you don't give a shit about the environment and just think they are sweet cars?
Also, worth mentioning that climate change is a much bigger issue than strip mining. Strip mining is no worse the natural geologic processes the Earth goes through reshaping itself every day.
The "Little Brown book of Contemporary Trolls - volume 5".