Tesla Model S Gets Titanium Underbody Shield, Aluminum Deflector Plates 314
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."
Human guided missile? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Human guided missile? (Score:5, Funny)
We'll never see a Tesla in an action movie at this rate. They'll be too safe and lack the big fireball explosions.
Re:Human guided missile? (Score:5, Funny)
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And this is different than a Chevy Suburban or any number of gas-powered cars how? Would it be better if he made the more fragile so they disintegrate at impact?
Give the people what they want, eh? (Score:3)
I think you might have written the best advertising material for the car so far.
Sounds like (Score:5, Funny)
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"!
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Funny)
But seriously makes me want to buy one.
"Guess what my car can do? Here, hold my beer..."
Two minutes later, walk back and finish beer. "It didn't even get warm!"
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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"!
The Tesla Model S sounds like a tank. I needs a tank to traverse these pot-hole-riddled roadways. Where's the ammunition stored?
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Funny)
In the battery compartment.
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Funny)
You're driving 110mph in a titanium shielded metal box full of batteries. You ARE the ammunition.
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Interesting)
The Tesla Model S sounds like a tank. I needs a tank to traverse these pot-hole-riddled roadways. Where's the ammunition stored?
The combination of low profile tires + being low to the ground just doesn't handle that kind of stuff very well. You'd probably have to raise the suspension a little and replace the wheels with something that can handle higher sidewalls. I have a friend who owns one and he's had to replace two of the wheels (the entire metal wheel, not the tire) due to hitting fist sized rocks in the middle of the road that bent the rim. I'd imagine that a pothole might have the same effect.
Re:Sounds like (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of cities are like that in the US these days. Sad, really. And that's not even including Detroit, which is starting to look like a Mad Max movie.
I looked at the Tesla before I bought my current car, but the Tesla isn't really a luxury sedan despite the price (nice ride, though). One important consideration for me was practical wheel size and ground clearance. I don't need offroad tires, but a ~50 tire aspect ratio and reasonable ground clearance let you take pot holes and stupidly-steep ramps from streets to parking lots at a reasonable speed without fear of damage.
Ribbon-thin tires are just asking for trouble. Plus even the rap songs acknowledge "rims too big make the ride too hard".
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They tend to fall on the road from above, something that doesn't happen much in states like Florida or Texas.
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No, it's a normal road-going car, not a Land Rover safari vehicle. No normal road-going car is meant for forest roads. You need an SUV or truck for that.
You mean fire roads? That's nominally true, I guess. I'd take a Subaru. And in fact I have driven my good old 300SD way on up into the BLM land roads out of Upper Lake. If it were made out of steel, the A8 would probably do OK up there as well.
In fact, most SUVs are not much better than the best cars off-road. I'd take a Forester before I'd take an Explorer. But I'd take my F250 before either of them, sure. However, before the 4" lift it had 2" of front suspension travel. It's only got maybe three or four n
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The "cold weather energy cell" has been shown to be some bad 12V batteries in some cars (Tesla have the large li-ion battery pack and a more traditional 12V battery). AFAIK, those have been replace, problem solved. Elon tweeted about this about 3-4 months ago. Somebody will correct me in 1,2,3,4,5,...
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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.
I have to wonder if they are going to do a "Mad Max" version of the Tesla :-) Driving through massive potholes, smashing concrete blocks in the street, deflecting steel rods. Perfect for driving in NYC :-).
Titanium? (Score:3)
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I thought the same thing, but it might depend upon the specific alloy.
Re:Titanium? (Score:5, Informative)
Only as a powder or thin shavings. As a solid block, it'd make an effective barrier.
In the event of a crash where there is grinding across the titanium shield, there would be a lot of sparks on the outside, but no damage to the batteries.
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Tesla Model S Crashes, now 10 times more AWESOME!
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In the event of a crash where there is grinding across the titanium shield, there would be a lot of sparks on the outside, but no damage to the batteries
and this is a good thing?
what else could be ignited?
Re:Titanium? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're driving your Tesla at 110mph, you probably don't care what catches on fire as long as it's not you.
Re:Titanium? (Score:5, Funny)
> In the event of a crash where there is grinding across the titanium shield, there would be a lot of sparks on the outside, but no damage to the batteries.
Thank god a Tesla could never crash into anything carrying gasoline.
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So I could equip my car with rocket launchers to blast away any obstacles, and it's not my fault that the other cars can't safely deal with my rockets?
Barbequed Proles (Score:3)
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.
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The car was going 110mph. The flux capacitator must have been broken.
Re:Titanium? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's probably still quite a bit better than having an internal combustion engine with all sorts of parts hot enough to ignite that same grass.
Re:Titanium? (Score:5, Funny)
So when you're driving your Tesla on the golf course, try to keep on the fairway and out of the rough. Especially avoid running over rocks and golfers carrying titanium clubs.
Re:Titanium? (Score:5, Funny)
Golf carts have batteries.
Teslas have batteries.
Coincidence?
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Yes, but the batteries can survive being sprinkled with sparks just fine. It's being impaled that makes them ignite.
That *is* funny! (Score:2)
Hilarious!
Re:That *is* funny! (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought it was pretty funny as an absurdist thing. "Yes, our car caught fire after crashing through a wall at 110 MPH, an unfortunate weakness in our battery-powered vehicle which any other car would have obviously brushed aside - the driver was fine, by the way." / "Yes, our cars catch fire after merely crashing through a wall, another wall, and a tree, after which the driver walked away...we suck :( "
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-- If my gas powered car would let me walk away after this type of incident -- I would buy that car again. Oh, wait...
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That's not a metal screw, it's a plastic pop fastener designed to hold plasticy bits in place.
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Hilarious!
And amazing the idiot survived. Should have been a Darwin award winner for sure. Testament to how tough that Model S really is, even before the added stuff.
Fitted because they were needed! (Score:2)
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.
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None of them would say that. That's like a CPU manufacturer saying multicore CPUs are unreliable. They're pretty much all selling them and they all know it's the future.
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Haven't they already broken the safety tests by being beyond the test limitations?
Not sure what else the *regulators* should do.
Re:Fitted because they were needed! (Score:5, Informative)
Haven't they already broken the safety tests by being beyond the test limitations?
Let's see, they had to come up with extraordinary measures in order to flip the Tesla for that safety test, they broke the crush machine at somewhere around the equivalent of 4 teslas stacked on top of the roof.
Thus far the Tesla has taken full advantage of it's electric design to make a vehicle that sneers at standard impact tests.
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That's only six stacked on the roof of one, and Volvos are lighter than Teslas by about a 2:1 margin.
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I remember the ad, and quite some time later the reality.
The Volvo(s) had help.
From a quick google search:
1971 Volvo print ad emphasizing roof strength. Called "Stacking," the ad showed six Volvo 144s stacked atop a seventh. They were real Volvos, but the impressive stack had help. Each of the six stacked cars rested in a wooden cradle that evenly distributed its weight across the top of the car immediately beneath--and also helped keep the stack from toppling over and ruining some hapless photographer
sky should be the limit... (Score:2)
for a $90k car...why not carbon fiber too?
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Agreed... carbon fiber has a brittleness, and while more sturdy than porcelain, exhibits some of the same behavior of cracking rather than absorbing any impact.
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BTW, thanks for calling me an "excited teenager" though. Makes me feel young!
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Yes, "toughness" is a technical term that refers to how much a material can yield before it breaks. In that sense, carbon fiber is not considered to be tough at all.
Crash structures that use CF normally depend on it's tendency to shatter violently at failure. If you watch any recent F1 crash that damages the monocoque, you'll see an explosion of debris -- this is by design. Done right, you can use up some of the crash energy as kinetic energy in the debris. Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult t
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Yes, you should use technical terms, and "toughness" is indeed a technical term. From Wikipedia:
"In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing. One definition of material toughness is the amount of energy per volume that a material can absorb before rupturing. It is also defined as the resistance to fracture of a material when stressed. Toughness requires a balance of strength and ductility."
Diamonds aren't very tough [wikipedia.org].
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Why? What happened? Isn't carbon fiber the magical Space Elevator material of the glorious 3D printed future?
Carbon fiber [wikipedia.org] or carbon fiber reinfoced polymer [wikipedia.org] are not the same thing as carbon nanotubes [wikipedia.org]. For example, carbon nanotubes have 15 times higher tensile strength than carbon fibre [wikipedia.org]. I couldn't find toughness numbers for carbon nanotubes, though. And we can't really make anything large with nanotubes yet (not without losing most of their strength).
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Aluminum sucks for wheels which are at risk of impact, no matter what kind of vehicle you're talking about. That's why you often still see steel wheels on 4x4s even now that aluminum wheels are cheap. But CF spokes with a steel rim would be all right. That way your rim wouldn't explode if you ran over a curb or a rock.
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It would only take one incident of scratching the wheel on a curb and a CF-spoke rim would be trashed.
That's only true for wheels with a massive offset (I always get which is positive and which is negative wrong, so uh, outwards.) And while those are in the majority today, some sort of protective hubcap could be used. It could feature transparent elements to show off the CF for markets which desire that sort of thing.
So you're not likely to see any CF-spoke wheels for roadgoing cars, except maybe from some aftermarket companies that include giant warnings and disclaimers.
I suspect that eventually someone will come up with a clever way to determine whether the CF is failing. Some sort of capacitance test through an edge connection (conductive epoxy?) is my gut i
Re:sky should be the limit... (Score:4, Informative)
You need either a materials science class or a reading class...
Diamonds are not tough in that they can be crushed and they do not appreciably deform.
Anvils are tough in that they can be repeatedly hit with a hammer, which will create dents etc. but will not fracture the metal.
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They achieve that with an elaborate multi-layer hand laid structure that would be too expensive to employ in volume production.
Re:sky should be the limit... (Score:5, Informative)
Carbon fiber has a failure mode that you could describe as "explosive". It absorbs a lot of energy, which is what the race car driver wants, but it doesn't necessarily prevent a sharp object from penetrating the area, which is what Tesla wants.Titanium has incredible toughness given its weight, which makes it a good candidate here. It's expensive, but in a $100,000 car, so what?
Anyway, there's a reason that the A-10 pilot sits in a titanium "bathtub".
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Actually laymen tend to think carbon fibre is very cool. It actually gets used in a lot of gift products that have little or no justification for it's combination of lightness and strength. E.g. Carbon fibre lighters, pens, smartphone cases.
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The same is true of titanium.
Titanium sporks are popular for camping.
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And most of that is probably faux carbon fiber too - just a fancy design printed on the plastic material they're using. Do it via hydro-dipping and it conforms to the surface in ways the real thing would, too.
It's far too pricey for cheap ass geegaws - if it was really c
Who the hell was driving that car? (Score:3)
This sounds like something yon might see if you're watching Road Runner [wikipedia.org]
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Meep.
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That's 'Meep Meep!'
Never get a monkey to do a bird's job.
Wow (Score:3)
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.
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VERY impressive for a production vehicle.
Check out some Volvo ads (Score:2)
You should see some of the cars people survived accidents from. You'd think there's no way they could have even lived.
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This. One of the unsung heros of the late 20th Century and beyond are the automobile engineers. Modern cars can take an enormous amount of impact energy and distribute it away from the passengers. It's actually unusual to see serious injuries in major car crashes - it certainly happens but not to the frequency it did previous to energy absorbing frames, airbags, active tensioners and the like.
No kaboom.. No earth shattering kaboom. But you can't have everything.
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It's actually unusual to see serious injuries in major car crashes
You mean except for the 1.24 million deaths [who.int] annually on roads? Or the 20-40,000 people who die each year in car crashes in the US alone? Interesting definition of unusual you have there.
PR smackdown (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:PR smackdown (Score:5, Informative)
The other fire involved tripping over a 50 pound metal spike at 70mph, causing it to upend violently and drive itself through the underside of the car with the force of a cannon.
This one's easy to spin: "Tesla hits piece of metal on the road, catches fire." Problem was it hit a piece of metal on the road while going incredibly fast--fast enough for a piece of mild steel to puncture a 1/4 inch aluminum plate. Go find a 6mm thick piece of aluminum and try putting a nail through it. In theory, if the metal flipped upwards, it would skid off the bottom of the plate; if the ground end caught so it rotated, it would still skid across the aluminum plate. In reality, if you hit it hard enough, it'll either create a dimple or (more likely) it'll hit with enough force to wedge itself, creating enough friction that it tilts upward rather than skids--and if you're moving fast enough, that's enough energy to drive the fucking thing through the underside of the battery.
The other fires--fires caused by faulty wiring or wall chargers, who knows--were caused at the wall.
So the plate was replaced by a plate that can withstand retarded morons who should not be driving. That's basically what it amounts to. If you see a rusty trailer hitch [greenoptimistic.com] in the road, try not to hit it so hard that it lifts your car up into the air. You should also try not to crash into a concrete barrier wall at 110mph, then through a reinforced buttressed concrete wall, then headlong into a tree. These are things they recommend against doing in driver's ed.
Trailer hitch accident (Score:3)
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 [etrailer.com], 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'.
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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?
Can we please move to the post-bullshit era where authenticity is expected?
Is Fox News gone yet? No? Keep waiting.
Thse tests are all the same car (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Tesla = Death, Yugo = Life, you decide (Score:3, Funny)
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?
Cowcatchers? (Score:3)
Next up: CowCatchers on the Tesla X!
Re:Very amusing but... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're here dealing in the realm of engineering + political risk = decisions.
There is a risk, but you can't say it was an engineering risk and just a political one.
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We're here dealing in the realm of engineering + political risk = decisions.
There is a risk, but you can't say it was an engineering risk and just a political one.
Welcome to the world of automotive manufacturing.
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We're here dealing in the realm of engineering + political risk = decisions.
There is a risk, but you can't say it was an engineering risk and just a political one.
I wouldn't even say it was political. This is merely dealing with stupid. It's Tesla's fault that there was a fire after the incident described in Mexico? Puh-lease! The trailer hitch thing in Tennessee was even a fluke accident that could have easily ruptured a fuel line under the car and caused a fire if it was a gas powered vehicle. That kind of thing is just plain rare no matter what. My concern at this point is how much range was lost because of safety features added to the vehicle because of these inc
Re:Very amusing but... (Score:5, Informative)
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It's marketing. And it's excellent marketing. Plausible risk has little to do with it, but it makes me want to invest in the company.
Its very good marketing, I can almost hear him saying "oh yeah, take that".
On the negative side, I bet there is some teenage brat "suffering" from Affluzenza who is going to drive this car off a cliff, and when he skins his knee he is going to get his daddy to sue the company for a billion or so dollars.
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Everything is risk mitigation. Tesla could try to mitigate the risk of Zeus throwing a thunderbolt from the heavens at a Model S, but the risk is so low, and nobody cares about it, so they're not doing it.
As we have seen, there is far less fire risk in a Tesla than in all gasoline-powered cars on the road, so mitigation of that risk shouldn't be a priority either. However, the media has played up the "Electric cars catch fire, duh!" meme so much that this is basically a forced PR move.
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It's not a Faraday cage, but lightning does use the skin effect for most of its charge, and thus goes over the surface of the car. However, this doesn't work so well with the huge number of cars on the road with a non-metal skin.
You are usually okay if your car's skin is metal, you don't happen to be touching anything in the interior at the time, and if nothing in the car catches fire due to the strike.
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That is small. I suspect that means that either the weight of the impact shield is negligible compared to that of the car, or that the improvement in aerodynamic efficiency negates the losses to increased mass.
Now that I think about it it seems kind of odd that most cars *don't* have an undercarriage shield, even if only plastic - think of how much engineering effort is spent on improving the aerodynamics of the body, which accounts for less than 3/4 of the surface area. Meanwhile the undercarriage is lef
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Most German cars (which is who Tesla competes with) have undercarriage engineering for reasons of sound and high-speed aero concerns. They are expected to sustain 200kmh, and the relevance of drag rises exponentially with speed, but also, controlling airflow is important so that the car doesn't have too much high speed lift. What you do NOT want is a vehicle that loses significant grip as speed rises, yet most cars are shaped like (poor) airfoils so this is a concern.
You may recall that the first gen Audi
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My 1997 BMW 5 series (the Tesla competes with the 2014 7 Series) has a thick plastic underbody shield. It was designed in ~1992 and started production in Europe around 1994. So it's not a new concept. It also still gets 33mpg @ 70mph on the highway from Dallas to Houston and isn't a diesel.
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Battery swaps aren't a dumb idea. If you want to recharge your electric car as fast as it takes a gas-powered car to refuel, that's the only way to do it with current tech. This doesn't mean it'll actually happen though; economic and regulatory problems could prevent battery swaps from ever becoming an available option. Technically, they make perfect sense.
When the Empire State Building was designed, it was planned that dirigibles would dock there and people would be able to get on and off from the deck
Re:Very amusing but... (Score:5, Interesting)
>You have to manage an inventory of expensive $20k+ parts that could be stolen,
All inaccessible and underground. They're also fairly useless to thieves; who would they sell a stolen Tesla Model S battery pack to?
The battery packs are heavy, unwieldy, and can't be resold to anyone. If you're a thief, there are much better targets.
>you have multiple sizes and model of battery,
All the loaner packs can be the same size and model.
> and different wear states. The batteries lose power constantly.
Since they're at the charging station, they can keep the batteries topped off. As they wear out, they'll be replaced. Tesla owns the loaner packs. The battery swap is actually a loan, not a true swap like propane. You have to go back to that station and get your original pack back.
>You have to manage liability, if you install a defective battery and it catches fire who pays.
Tesla, since they're both the manufacturer and the battery swapper.
>You have complicated machinery that you need to have many of to handle rushes that go unused at other times
It takes 93 seconds to swap batteries. http://www.teslamotors.com/bat... [teslamotors.com]
They really only need one swapping machine on site for the foreseeable future, and if they get to the point where they need more swapping machines, then they're doing very very well.
Especially since swapping isn't going to be used day-to-day; you'll charge at home or work. Swapping is really only for long-distance trips.
>And you still need to have the same order of magnitude of power available to charge up the swapped out batteries as you would to just charge them in the car.
Of course. The advantage of battery swap is that you can run out your current battery, swap at the station, drive wherever you're going, come back, swap back for your now-recharged pack, and go home. 186 seconds during the trip, versus having to stop and charge for a few hours.
Re:How does this impact price? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have to ask, you weren't going to buy one anyways.
Re:"extrusion"? (Score:4, Insightful)
What happened to the 3D printing revolution?
It's more of an evolution than a revolution. Give it time. But it still won't be the right tool for every job.
Re:"extrusion"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"extrusion"? (Score:4, Insightful)
50k tons is indeed huge,
Huge isn't the word. The battleship USS New Jersey is 58,000 tons, Empty its 48K tons. Can you imagine bench pressing a battleship?
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We had a couple of 700-ton presses around here. They looked like they were very precisely designed to fit in a semi trailer and not have room left over (and that's probably how they were designed). Scale up by a factor of 70.
Re:"extrusion"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why people see every new bit of technology like it's some magical panacea, ready for mass consumption the instant they learn of its existence.
You wouldn't try to print 100,000 books on an ink jet printer. While you might do mockups on that ink jet, you'd have the actual run output on a printing press. 3D printing is the same exact thing. Great for prototyping, but too slow, inefficient and expensive for mass production. That may change some day, but currently were a ways away from that being feasible.
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Printing presses are also increasingly under pressure (no pun intended) by start ups like Lulu [lulu.com] that essentially print books on demand.
Re:"extrusion"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Extrusion *IS* "3D printed" with a massively parallel head that can print the entire cross-section all at once. It has been optimized to "print" something with an uniform cross-sectional area. Same can be said about pasta machine. :)
Welcome to Tomorrow done yesterday.
Re:"extrusion"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Extruding aluminum tends to be stronger than cast aluminum. I imagine 3-D printed aluminum is not as strong not to mention it is a lot more expensive and much faster.
Re: (Score:3)
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. [slashdot.org]
What? Like a Porsche GT3? [businessinsider.com] You speak as if gas powered vehicles don't randomly catch fire all the time, and nobody says boo. Troll.
Re: (Score:3)
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.