Tesla: Not so easily bricked

http://idc-insights-community.com/posts/c7c83d1a9d

by kghose • 14 years ago

362 154 14 years ago

Pelayo• 14 years ago

Though I could easily believe that there was a coordinated attack against electric vehicles (I can think of a few groups), the response doesn't refute the previous article but tries to defend through vocabulary.

If you leave the car unplugged for a long period of time the battery will be ruined. If the battery is one huge battery pack or 8000 smaller batteries doesn't matter.

Also, having a car plugged in for months is a lot different that driving cross country with no oil.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

As someone who "bricked" his Jetta in college by forgetting to replace the oil, I can also point out that the replacement engine cost around $6k, a (hefty) fraction of the car's then value, but nowhere close to its total original retail price.

ericd4• 14 years ago

The Tesla Roadster costs in the neighborhood of $130,000, so $40k is a fraction of its price.

gwern• 14 years ago

Doesn't explain away the previous post - if repair is so trivial, why were 40k repair bills being discussed?

shin_lao• 14 years ago

Maybe the $ 40k repair bills never existed in the first place...

teamonkey• 14 years ago

Probably. The assumption was that the battery pack was destroyed and needed to be fully replaced, a new pack costing an estimated $40k. The original article didn't say how much it actually cost the 5 owners to repair their cars.

crusso• 14 years ago

Then why didn't this Tesla representative say so? Why didn't he say, "We have followed up with the source(s) of this story and been unable to find any instance of a need to replace all the battery cells in a so-called 'bricked' Tesla. All instances only required a charge and reboot with service costs never exceeding $2k." ... or something like that?

I like the trashing of a bad rumor against technology as much as the next geek, but this Tesla response was spin and speculation thrown against more substantial-sounding reports of a problem. It was weak and since the strong alternatives are easily imaginable, it was likely weak for a reason -- ie, the reports of $40k bills were relatively accurate.

jimbobimbo2• 14 years ago

It was never disputed by Tesla's PR + leaked emails point out the same number:

http://jalopnik.com/5887504/tesla-emails-gallery/gallery/1

yardie3• 14 years ago

It's one part (or series of parts) that cost $40,000. 53kWh batteries aren't exactly common.

DanBC3• 14 years ago

The original blog post made a few claims.

1) Tesla warnings were weak, and part of the Tesla documents said it's fine to leave the car unplugged for weeks.

2) Total discharge of batteries is possible under certain extreme conditions, and has happened to 5 people

3) Total discharge of batteries bricks the car, leaving it un-towable and needing a $40,000 battery replacement fix.

> Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false. The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge.

So, is it possible to totally discharge the battery pack or not?

maxerickson2• 14 years ago

The Jalopnik post has been updated with a statement from Tesla saying that the battery will take a long time to reach zero state of charge. My understanding is that the battery system will protect the battery during normal use but that there isn't much it can do if the car is left sitting unplugged.

So the 'confront misinformation with facts' tone of this article ends up being a little over the top, the blogger is interpreting the facts differently than even Tesla.

robotresearcher• 14 years ago

| So, is it possible to totally discharge the battery pack or not?

Physics says "yes".

WireSpeed• 14 years ago

So, if as this article says the previous blogs were nothing more than a smear campaign against Tesla, basically accusing them of being a propaganda campaign. Doesn't this seem amazingly like counter-spin?

The article says that the facts will shine through and prove them wrong, but it's amazingly absent of facts. "The design of the car will prevent that, trust me".

If you read between the lines though, he does admit that a full drain of the battery will destroy it.

mansolo2• 14 years ago

This comment doesn't clearly refute claims made by the original blog post. The statement "they probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing" sounds inconclusive.

All I am saying is if people are going to refute the original blog post as "nonsense" and will "confront it with facts", then do so convincingly and without contradiction.

yardie3• 14 years ago

The original blog isn't exactly sussed out either. We have an anonymous source giving vague anecdotes about 5 cars whose owners haven't been contacted to verify details.

mansolo2• 14 years ago

I'm in full agreement that the Tesla owners should step forward and give their side of the story.

I can empathize with why they wouldn't though, as this seems like a (ahem) charged and highly public issue.

motoford4• 14 years ago

The link to this article is down unfortunately, so I can't comment on it. But Tesla's statement did nothing to refute the article, it just stated that you have to put oil in a regular car, and that you can optionally have the car contact Tesla if it gets low.

The oil analogy Tesla and others are using just doesn't work. A normal car doesn't total itself after sitting idle for a few weeks to few months depending on whose side you believe.

Imagine your new car of choice having a 5 gallon gas tank, and if it goes empty, your car burns to the ground. Oh, and the gas evaporates at rate of half a gallon a week.

I don't know about you, but that fear would keep me from enjoying the vehicle. I think the stress of always making sure it's charging would beat me down.

Peroni• 14 years ago

Hang on, at what point did anyone claim they were 'easy' to brick? The argument is not about how easy they are to brick, it's about the fact that the entire car is rendered useless if bricked unless you're willing to pay $40k to get your vehicle back on the road again.

If the cars were easy to brick there would be a significantly larger number of documented cases than what currently exist.

steve89182• 14 years ago

Exactly. The above article is answering a question that the first article didn't ask. The first article never said it was "easy", it said it was "possible". It was the possibility of bricking your car that is completely unexpected, as well as the $40k price tag if you do.

And the point of the article was that as you increase the number of users from 2500 to 25000, the number of bricked cars will increase substantially and will lead to bad headline risk for Tesla.

scott_s6• 14 years ago

When I read the blog post in question, and the comments here, I left with the understanding that if you left a Tesla car unused for a dozen or so weeks, it would be bricked and it would cost $40,000 to replace the battery. This post directly contradicts that notion.

osipov• 14 years ago

The response from Tesla does not contradict that notion. Note this quote: "It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. " Notice that "can potentially be damaging" is a weasel phrase for "brick". Further Tesla argues that to avoid discharge to zero percent "all that needs to be done is to tow the vehicle to a charger". Again, this misses the main point of the OP -- what happens if the vehicle doesn't get towed to the charger. The OP argues that then it discharges to zero percent which in Tesla's own words will be potentially damaging.

Tesla's PR people are particularly misleading by comparing the situation described above to someone draining oil and then taking a car on a cross country trip. Draining the oil requires action by car's owner. Leave a car in a garage for six months and the oil will still be there. The whole point of the OP is that inaction destroys Tesla's vehicles.

Angostura• 14 years ago

It contradicts it, but which account is correct. This new blog post says 'you just need to re-charge to fix'. The original post says 'you just need $40,000' to fix.

The orignial post appears to have better sources than this one, so I would say that it has been contradicted, but not refuted.

rdtsc3• 14 years ago

> This post directly contradicts that notion.

How does it _directly_ contradict that? Ok so he mentions how the management system will stop the charge from dropping too low. How does it do that, does have a robotic arm and goes and finds the nearest outlet, does it expand solar panels, because batteries will discharge even if completely disconnected. And it also highly depends on the ambient temperature. So I don't see a direct contradiction I see this post building a straw man and then proceeded to demolish it.

Look at this another way. So let's say this post is correct and those Tesla roadsters were not bricks. Why in the world would Tesla then charge owner $40k then? Is it saying that a routine recharge and tow costs $40k? Or did Tesla, like a shady mechanic decided to scam the guy and make $40k off of him?

SNK2• 14 years ago

"Here's the primary fact that the blogger in question doesn't understand: the Tesla battery pack is not a battery."

Gee, where might he have gotten that idea? Tesla's website and documentation, perhaps? "Custom microprocessor-controlled lithium-ion battery with 6,831 individual cells."

Not 8K, huh; talk about getting your technical facts wrong.

"Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false. The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge."

Just asserted it was blatantly false and admitted it was true that full discharge damages the battery in the same paragraph, hoo boy.

"But there's an antidote for this type of misinformation: confronting it with facts."

Looks more like he meant to say that the antidote for these facts is misinformation, yow.

stewartbutler• 14 years ago

> Just asserted it was blatantly false and admitted it was true that full discharge damages the battery in the same paragraph, hoo boy.

No. He stated that, while discharging an individual cell below a certain voltage will damage it, the battery management circuitry on each cell will not permit the battery to discharge past that point. It simply disconnects the battery from the circuit, which means the only leakage is chemical (self-discharge), and thus very slow.

To clarify this point: "discharge fully" =/= zero percent. You will never want to go below a certain percentage of absolute charge.

SNK2• 14 years ago

"Another error on the part of the blogger is the claim that if the cars discharge fully, the battery packs will be damaged. This is blatantly false."

"It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery."

vacri8• 14 years ago

This blogger is wrong. A 'battery' is a collection of cells. The Tesla site is correct in stating that. Like 'battery hens' (many hens) or an artillery battery (group of artillery), a 'battery' means collection of power cells. Yes, common usage has made it also mean a single power cell - but this doesn't mean that the technical term is not correct.

ars• 14 years ago

The word battery doesn't mean that. It means to beat and batter. Which is what artillery does.

The electrical meaning came much later, possibly from the electron discharges which looked like artillery attacks.

I have no idea where battery cage came from. The original battery cages were warmed with electricity - maybe an actual battery?

steve89182• 14 years ago

If there are 8k individual cells in the battery pack, what happens when an individual cell reaches zero? Will that individual cell be permanently dead, or can it be revived?

You would think with 8k individual cells, if you left it unplugged for just a couple of weeks (instead of the 6 weeks needed to brick the entire battery pack), using a normal distribution you could expect that at least some of the cells would reach zero. Would that permanently reduce the capacity for the entire battery pack?

jroll• 14 years ago

Most battery management systems incorporate some sort of cell balancing algorithm to make sure cells stay close to a common voltage. Usually this is some sort of resistor (per cell) that dissipates a small current from that cell and bleeds it off as heat. This is usually used while charging to get everything in line.

That said, if a cell goes bad or has an extremely low capacity compared to the rest, there's not much you can do...

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

Do we have an answer on how long, from 100% and 80% charges, it would take for a Roadster to get bricked? That would strongly effect any judgement on the reasonableness of Tesla not prominently disclosing this risk.

tcarney• 14 years ago

I think the issue is that Tesla has a warranty problem, not a design flaw. With batteries, even if the battery management system shuts itself down and all subsystems, the battery cells will still internally drain to damaging levels. Until battery technology improves that will be a real problem with all electric cars. Unlike driving with no oil and needing an engine replacement, this is primarily a problem with the car (not driver negligence), so it should probably be covered under warranty, or qualify for the cheaper $12k replacement.

Note: I do not know how Tesla designed their systems, they possibly could do a better job to extend the storage time, but it will still be a problem. Any car with an electric start has this problem, if you don't charge the battery in storage it will require service/replacement. Of course it won't be $40k...

Do anyone have similar stories from other electric cars? Is there a maximum storage time listed for the Prius, Volt, or Leaf?

smacktoward2• 14 years ago

This is an exceptionally lame rebuttal.

> There is a fundamental problem when any rechargeable battery is discharged and then left to sit for months. Any boat owner understands that that's why you plug in a trickle charger when the craft is put into storage.

Yes, it's an excellent strategy to assume that your car buyers will also be boat owners, and therefore know all the things that boat owners know without you needing to explain them. Because who doesn't own a boat, right?

jmilloy• 14 years ago

I think the point there is that anyone purchasing an electric vehicle should do some basic research about electric cars and batteries. It's not that they should know this because boat owners know it; instead it's that they should take it upon themselves to find out this important and simple piece of maintenance, just as boat owner's have done. In other words, when you buy a boat, you understand that it's different from your (gas/diesel) car and you find out what you need to know. An electric vehicle is different, too, and you should act accordingly.

grannyg00se• 14 years ago

I don't think it's reasonable to expect the consumer to do research of any sort. It would be very easy for Tesla to mention this at the time of purchase, document it, and also provide a dashboard notification of some sort.

drzaiusapelord• 14 years ago

When you buy a Tesla the following happens:

* You are vebally told about this.

* You are then shown a document to sign that you were told about this

* Your car will beep loudly when its under 5% charge

* If its a newer Tesla it will beep and also log an issue with the service center, who will then continue to call you to tell you to plug it in.

No boat experience required.

vacri8• 14 years ago

The original article describes that Tesla goes to some lengths to downplay and avoid this information. A once-off in the dazzle of a showroom is a pretty poor thing to hang your hat on.

csomar• 14 years ago

The blogger might be an ignorant, but the OP post doesn't reassure me. If I go in a 5 months travel doing consulting abroad, and I'm living alone; who guarantee that my car is being constantly put on the charger? There are many cases (plug dysfunction, electric problem...) and $40K is not a trivial amount.

maxerickson2• 14 years ago

I'm sure a reliable person could be located to look in on such a parked vehicle once or twice. Especially if they are offered a couple hundred a pop to do it.

If such batteries become prevalent, I would think that monitored charging garages and bonded maintenance services will spring up.

ljf2• 14 years ago

Did you read the article? It stated that not charging the the car WILL NOT lead to $40,000 bricking.

durandal1• 14 years ago

Where did it say that? It acknowledges that deeply discharging may damage the cells, and it does not refute that it would cost $40,000 to fix.

Even the owner's manual state this (except for the $40,000 cost of course).

Duff• 14 years ago

The headline should read "Tesla: Not so easily bricked under normal circumstances".

The problem here is that not everyone lives in California, and most people think of cars as durable (vs. perishable) goods. Those two things cause problems for people who are edge cases. In places like Michigan or New York or Massachusetts, it's not 70F all year round. We have this quaint concept called "winter". In the winter, the local governments dump salt on the roads, snow and slush make driving dangerous, and when it doesn't snow, you get dusty blowing salt on the highways.

Because of this, people with the means to buy $50,000 sports cars leave them in garages for the winter. Or they head to the Caribbean for a vacation. Or both. For a car with an internal combustion engine, you usually remove the battery or trickle charge it, but the consequence of not doing so is buying a $100 battery at your local mechanic.

Another thing to consider is the meaning of "normal" as it applies to the market. If you're a working stiff, you drive every day. You may even drive to get to your vacation. People buying $50,000 cars with the limitations that electric cars have today aren't working stiffs, and their leisure patterns are probably quite different than most folks.

Terretta2• 14 years ago

> sports cars leave them in garages for the winter

Live in CT, own a two seater that's never seen snow, for the reasons you mention. It's on a trickle charger to avoid having to replace a regular battery that would go dead if discharged fully, but still had to replace tires that got flat spotted during last year's particularly long winter.

Knowing that about regular batteries, I'd be even more careful with a Tesla, even w/o reading the manual. "Hmm, my regular car battery has to be replaced if completely discharged, and this car is all battery ..."

I think the "different patterns" should actually increase awareness.

ajays2• 14 years ago

I think the original article also made the same claim: Tesla is "not so easily bricked" (given the fact that 'only' 5 cases could be found). So this isn't a rebuttal.

If it was to be a rebuttal, the claim would be "Tesla cannot be bricked" or something like that.

This article did not do any background work. Why didn't he talk to the Tesla service manager(s) who were quoted in the original article? Even if he managed to talk to 1 of the 5 and showed that it was not a bricking, then he would have a point. But the way it is, the current article does almost nothing to refute the original.

driverdan• 14 years ago

Considering the original article didn't actually cite sources, just made stated that a manager claimed this, a customer claimed that, it'd be pretty hard for him to talk to the service manager.

ajays2• 14 years ago

Really? The original article lists sources like "Tesla’s Los Angeles area service center manager", "340th customer", etc. And it also includes an incident involving Elon Musk and J. Joost de Vries. I'd say there are enough sources listed there that someone could do some verification.

onemoreact3• 14 years ago

The rebuttal is in many cases a car will act like it's bricked, but can be returned to service without replacing the battery pack. I have had laptops do the same thing where after a deep charge I needed to go though a specific procedure before they where in full working order again. Honestly, 'reboot the battery management system' sounds like the same basic procedure.

vacri8• 14 years ago

'only 5' out of 300 is a failure rate of over 1%

feralchimp7• 14 years ago

This whole bricking story is a little ridiculous.

There are any number of easy ways to 'brick' an internal combustion engine, and yet we're not all torches 'n' pitchforks over them. Partially because ICEs have been around so long that the relatively short list of "things to avoid" is burned indelibly into the popular consciousness. Partially because over a hundred-odd years of continuous engineering, a typical ICE can take a hell of a lot of abuse before it fails.

And note that the "shit that might happen to you" column still isn't trivially dismissed on the ICE side, even after 100+ years of safety engineering. We physically pump highly-flammable liquids into our gas tasks; people still occasionally get burned or even die doing that shit!

Couldn't find many stats, but this is interesting: http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/Research/FireSafetyVehi...

Let's assume the $40k figure is at all likely for a vehicle owner that RTFM'd. I'm pretty sure anyone ever burned in a gas-fueled vehicle fire would gladly go back in time to fork over $40k to avoid that experience.

Nelson692• 14 years ago

Many of the things that "brick" an ICE can be repaired at relatively low costs. And almost all of those things brick the car by using it, Teslas will brick when you don't use them, you lock it safely in the temperature controlled garage and go away for too long and it dies.

It strikes me as a design problem of sorts, you've got a relatively expensive and sophisticated sports car with piles of electronics. I would think that maybe they could detect a certain critical level of energy is left in the batteries and flip a toggle that just shuts them off which wouldn't last forever but could buy you some more time maybe.

My grandfather's Buick has GM's onstar stuff in it, couldn't your roadster send a text message or something? Maybe they could have some sort of emergency mechanism to just plug a normal car battery in to gain a little charge from.

I like what Tesla is trying to do, they're changing the conversation and ultimately when I look at the auto industry I think more startups are needed. They're a startup though, the Top Gear story, I don't think it was bad or inaccurate, the Tesla just doesn't look like it's in the same league as many of the other sports cars they drive around and then this battery thing, rare as it might be they need a good story for it. How many drivers have run out of gas when they are experienced and know better? Stuff happens, it's more common than you might think, with an ICE it's just embarrassing and inconvenient, with a Tesla it might set you back some serious money.

sephlietz• 14 years ago

From the article: "The battery management system of the Tesla Roadster keeps the battery from being discharged to a damagingly low state of charge under normal driving conditions. It's true that a full discharge to zero percent state of charge can potentially be damaging to a battery. However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge."

baddox• 14 years ago

> How many drivers have run out of gas when they are experienced and know better?

Not many, right? I've certainly never even come close to running out of gas, and I can only think of one time in my life where anyone I knew ran out of gas (and that was only yards away from the gas station).

abruzzi5• 14 years ago

If you run your ICE without oil, yes, you will kill it. And maybe these should be thought of in the same way, but people worry about this because draining a battery to zero seems like running out of gas, and most of us have run out of gas at some point or another. Granted it's not the same because in the short term the battery management system should reserve the bottom 5% for the health of the battery.

But the second reason people are worried about this is killing that last 5% and bricking the battery happens by doing nothing. Bricking an ICE while it is unused, sitting in your driveway takes decades. With a replacement $50 battery and $30 oil change I've restarted engines that have been sitting unused in junkyards for 40 years.

feralchimp7• 14 years ago

"If you leave your $40k battery pack alone for months without a trickle charger, you will kill it" is no more challenging to communicate or implement than "if you run your ICE without oil, you will kill it."

outworlder2• 14 years ago

Restart, yeah. But I'd imagine that a car left unused for decades would require quite a lot of servicing before returning to the roads. Namely, there are many rubber parts, seals and so on.

It might run, but you really shouldn't.

Terretta2• 14 years ago

> people worry about this because draining a battery to zero seems like running out of gas, and most of us have run out of gas

Interestingly, the same applied to some models of RX-7. If you ran out of gas, you'd potentially need a service to re-prime it.

Didn't stop me from buying one.

// Not sure if myth. Never ran out.

X-Istence• 14 years ago

I've been driving for 6 years now and I have never ran out of gas. Is this really so uncommon that you can safely say that at some point or another most of us have run out of gas?

I keep an eye on my odometer and on the gas gauge and know when it is time to get gas. My car doesn't have a low fuel light warning so paying attention is definitely required.

krschultz• 14 years ago

When my grandfather was 85, he forgot to do all of the maitenance on his car. He drove like 40,000 miles without ever changing the oil and blew up the engine in his BMW 7 series. It wasn't exactly a cheap car.

Replacing the engine in the car was something like $7,000.

I see your point about safety - gas clearly isn't the safest substance in the world. But neither is electricity. My cousin is currently a police officer, and before that he was a first responder for car accidents. He has had specific official training to deal with hybrids becuase you have to avoid the battery cables after an accident when using the jaws of life and what not. And those batteries are more stable than lithium ion, in those cases they are simply concerned about compromising the battery cables. So it kind of cuts both ways.

This is a problem lithium ion powered electric cars. We shouldn't sweep it under the rug. It should be solved now while there are 10,000 electric cars and not 10,000,000 electric cars. It seems like the solution is a combination of educating/warning owners & notifying them by phone or email if the car starts to get too low. That isn't exactly the end of the world. But ignoring it is not the solution.

feralchimp7• 14 years ago

> Replacing the engine in the car was something like $7,000.

Which, for many drivers, may as well be $40k.

> the solution is a combination of educating/warning owners & notifying them by phone or email if the car starts to get too low

I never advocated ignoring anything. My point is not that "Tesla is great" or "boo ICE yay electric," it's that all the hysteria around "OMG car bricking" doesn't actually promote whatever communication/engineering solutions would actually make the product better or more consumable for people.

ams6110• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure anyone ever burned in a gas-fueled vehicle fire would gladly go back in time to fork over $40k to avoid that experience.

The reason gasoline is dangerous is that it stores a lot of energy. You need a lot of energy to move a heavy car a couple of hundred miles, and keep the occupants comfortable with heat and/or air conditioning. A battery in a Tesla contains a lot of energy. The dangers compared to a tank of gasoline are different, but in either case, the sudden and uncontrolled release of that energy can do a lot of damage.

vacri8• 14 years ago

The real issue is that those events are extremely rare given the intensely frequent use of ICE vehicles. Replace all the ICE with electric vehicles, and you'd see just as many electrocuted people. It's simply not a real argument.

eridius• 14 years ago

A glass of water has a lot of energy stored in its atoms. The sudden and uncontrolled release of that energy could be catastrophic. The question isn't how much energy is in the system, but how hard is it for that energy to be released in an uncontrolled fashion.

ruby_on_rails• 14 years ago

I think the fact that you are agreeing with an article either written directly by Tesla PR or paid for by Tesla PR, which has a minority opinion on the matter, which is backed up by statements which are in disagreement to both knowledgeable parties and the Tesla owner's manual, is frankly unflattering.

I bet I can find some blogger who can make a better argument about the holocaust never happening, then this lousy excuse for a journalist. Then again, that individual would still be a minority among the knowledgeable populace.

Hey, lets give it a go here. Electric is the new comer to the party. They have to prove themselves. ICE proved itself. ICE isn't on trial here.

feralchimp7• 14 years ago

I stated an opinion and my reasons for holding it. I don't owe you a disclaimer about whether the linked article (which I didn't reference, btw) happens to be full of shit.

If you form all of your opinions worrying about all the idiots or evil people who might happen to agree with you, or use your arguments to further their own nefarious ends, you're destined to lead a very quiet life.

> ICE proved itself. ICE isn't on trial here.

The usability and cost/benefit of electric drivetrains versus the status quo is relevant. My point was not "we should distrust ICE," so much as "we should discuss cost/benefit tradeoffs of technology like reasonable people instead of resorting to ZOMG BRICKING".

jimbobimbo2• 14 years ago

"They probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing."

$40k bill is not a "servicing" - it's a new car.

My problem with counter-arguments that use "drained oil" as an example, is that oil change is done every few thousand miles (say, 3000 miles in case of my car). Now, this is recommended (albeit, strongly) frequency. This means that if I drove my car around 3000 miles, then went to airport, left my car sitting on the parking lot for a month, chances are I'll drive back home sound and safe, and my bill for oil change will be the same $30, as it would if I get it change on or below recommended 3000 miles. Note that I don't need to trickle-change the oil in this case.

Now, if we compare battery drain to fuel tank depletion (which is technically more correct, since battery is the fuel for Tesla), then comparisson is even less pleasant for Tesla.

Having said that, I don't see anything wrong to bringing the potential battery bricking issue up (especially in light of arrival of more affordable vehicles from Tesla) - Tesla should've used this as an opportunity to educate people and do right by the owners of bricked cars by picking up part of the repair bill with some strings attached.

devy• 14 years ago

Totally agreed.

There is simply no comparison between a internal combustion engine vehicle and a plug-in electric vehicle as the engines work very differently.

Also $40K service (reboot) is NOT a service, is a COMPLETE REPLACEMENT for the battery packs.

brudgers• 14 years ago

What is interesting to me is what the author does not dispute - that Tesla charged $40,000 to fix the problem.

Anecdote is not evidence, but last year I had a dealer offer to reset my cars computer to reflect a scheduled inspection for $220 when it was in for a windshield replacement - this wasn't for the inspection, which is part of any routine service, but for resetting a 32,000 mile cycle which displays a warning.

The reset process is relatively arcane, but only took me about five minutes, including digging out the printed instructions which I had downloaded from the internet following an oil change and a couple of false starts.

So it wouldn't surprise me that a dealer would seek $40k to reset a system.

Zarathust• 14 years ago

Absolutely. The author even claims that all is needed is a reboot of the hardware controller. This would seems even more scandalous that it costs 40 grands.

jwr• 14 years ago

Well, the truth is really somewhere in the middle. The article says that the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to discharge the battery fully. But batteries lose charge over time and if they are not charged, there is nothing that any battery management system can do about it.

So I guess while the original article was overly sensationalistic, this one is overly optimistic — if you park your car with batteries very low at the airport and leave for vacation, you might kill some cells.

richardw• 14 years ago

Tesla needs to publish an exhaustive analysis of the problem. What will brick it, what will harm the battery X%, what happens when you discharge fully repeatedly, what it will cost to fix at each point of damage.

degusta• 14 years ago

I wrote the original blog post about Teslas bricking. This IDC/IDG post is embarrassingly wrong about basically everything. The cars are most definitely not "just in need of servicing". Tesla's not even arguing that - I even have a written statement from them that it's $40k to fix.

This alleged "expert" can even get the number of cells right (6,831 by the way).

The article should be retracted.

shock-value• 14 years ago

You should to post that statement regarding the $40k (with any sensitive info blacked out, of course). Seems like a lot of the back and forth on this issue hinges on whether they are really charging that much to correct this problem.

qdog• 14 years ago

My takeaway is that the Tesla Roadster is a very expensive toy at this point. There are some electric charging stations now at my work (I can only assume they would work with the Roadster, haven't look into it), but it really sounds to me like the early adopters are going to be paying out the nose for electric for a few more years.

I have a Civic Hyprid, which is pretty underwhelming, but functions pretty much like a regular car. If I don't end up giving it to my step-daughter, I almost assuredly will keep it until the more efficient electric vehicles are as reliable.

othermaciej• 14 years ago

It turns out that the poster of the original story is the owner of one of the 'bricked' Teslas. This was apparently leaked to hurt his credibility but at least for me it only enhances it, as it seems he had a first-hand experience with the brick problem.

http://jalopnik.com/5887499/who-is-trying-to-smear-the-tesla...

phreanix• 14 years ago

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073312_is-tesla-brickin...

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

> "I'm not stupid, it wasn't a mistake"

Any lithium battery is damaged after 2 months at 0% charge. How isn't that a mistake?

tadfisher• 14 years ago

I'm skeptical of his story, because if he was been following instructions as he claims, he would have near 100% charge at the beginning of those two months.

gte910h2• 14 years ago

The fundamentally silly part about all is that Tesla doesn't offer insurance for this rare thing.

Seems trivial to setup an insurance scheme for this rare, but exceedingly costly event, either internally, or via an external insurer. It may not be cheap but this PR issue can be fixed in an afternoon talking to Farmers insurance or the like.

DanBC3• 14 years ago

Or even just having big clear warnings in the manuals, and then pointing to those warnings when this comes up.

gte910h2• 14 years ago

I don't find a line in a maintenance manual an effective tool for handling this 40k expense.

hyperbovine• 14 years ago

Why is it that fully discharging a Li ion battery ruins it for all time? I have experienced this with my MacBook too. Closed it at 1% and forgot about it for two weeks. Battery was a paperweight when I returned.

TeHCrAzY• 14 years ago

You can go look it up on wikipeadia; but in summary, the battery relies on a chemical reaction to produce electricity. After a certain discharge point, the chemical reaction is irreversibly changed, and can no longer be recharged.

orenmazor• 14 years ago

this isn't much of a rebuttal. he's basically agreeing that a non-trickle charged battery can fail completely, which was exactly the problem pointed out in the original post.

the problem isn't that an EV is battery based which has this flaw. the problem is that its not really addressed enough for people who dont daily drive their EV.

noonespecial• 14 years ago

I wonder why their super computerized battery doesn't just sacrifice some of its 6,831 commodity, 18650 form-factor, Li-ion cells to preserve the others and why aren't these cells cheap to replace being the most common form factor of lithium cell in the world.

Trk• 14 years ago

I checked out the Tesla sedan and would definitely buy it if I could afford it!

9999• 14 years ago

His letter to Musk makes him seem much more reasonable than Tesla honestly.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073312_is-tesla-brickin...

The part that really registered with me is the request for a simple phone call. Why didn't Tesla call the owners and warn them about the battery discharge issue? Why didn't they just upgrade the original cars to include that low battery notification service? What do you think the actual real cost of that upgrade is in hardware and work hours? $100? $500? How much would they have spent having some people call the owners of those 500 original roadsters? A few hundred dollars to personally notify their first customers? It was a 100K+ car was it not? This guy might be foolish for not closely scrutinizing the warranty/owner's manual, but Tesla's customer service and PR response are horrible.

noss• 14 years ago

How heavy would a small ICE unit need to be to produce enough current to keep the batteries alive for longer periods of time? And how much fuel would such a thing use?

thewisedude• 14 years ago

The op does not state whether the claim that replacing all cells will cost $40K! In many cars today... replacing the engine or any single major component(because of mechanical failure) would hardly cost $40K unless you are talking about super cars! So for people who want to drive cars that cost less than $100K, $40K is a big chunk of money!

replax2• 14 years ago

IMO, there are two things Tesla could do, one is an automated notification when your battery runs low, presenting you the options to a) let it just sit, b) turn off all electronics to preserve a little more battery and c) to let a Tesla service guy come to save your battery.

The other thing is, that you should be able to enter tow mode just from an external power supply, so it will be trivial to pull it out of your garage.

davvid• 14 years ago

Here's a business opportunity: Battery insurance.

ericd4• 14 years ago

ICE cars have a number of problems that EVs don't:

ICEs depend on a single form of stored energy. The single source dependency creates a dependency between the functioning of the one's country's economy and the stable supply of a difficult to obtain resource from many countries with potentially hostile attitudes towards the country.

ICEs require a massive active infrastructure for refining and transporting oil. With EVs, you suddenly don't need to drive energy around in heavy chemical form except to a much smaller number of locations which can be serviced by much more efficient freight trains.

ICEs are extremely inefficient at extracting energy from oil compared to large turbines at power plants. So not only do you not have to spend energy and human labor driving chemical energy around to deliver it all over the place, you get more from that stored energy.

ICE cars are mechanically more complex than EVs, and they require more in the way of maintenance than EVs (the Roadster, an exotic sports car, has a recommended maintenance interval of once per 12k miles). EVs can be more modular, since they can have a simple electric motor on each wheel or axle instead of having a single engine with a complicated system of driveshafts and gearboxes to transfer mechanical forces all around the chassis. Also, no oil changes and no emissions checks.

Keep in mind that the problem described here mainly affected the first 500 cars Tesla ever built, and was largely mitigated in later versions. Overall, I think it is obvious that if the cost can be reduced to ICE car levels for 200+ miles of range, EVs will be the most practical form of automobile for all but long trips, and I think even the long-trip challenge will eventually be solved. I think it's really silly and a bit embarrassing to call the future of the electric vehicle into question over an early design flaw which exacerbated a problem which is really easy to mitigate, even in a fashion that requires no user intervention. The up-front cost of the vehicles due to the cost of batteries is 1000x more important in practical terms, and what we should be focusing our energy on.

ericd4• 14 years ago

Why the downvotes? I'm reasonably sure there aren't any inaccuracies in there, and I think it's important to remember all the downsides of our current cars versus electrics, especially when some commenters are claiming that the ICE has already proven itself and isn't on trial here. It most definitely is, and I think it's losing handily, regardless of some potential new complications with EVs.

Uchikoma• 14 years ago

"However the battery management system of the Roadster won't allow the car to reach that low level of charge."

The battery management system is in not position to not allow the battery to discharge itself over time. It can only stop the car from powering up to prevent active battery usage.

Tesla: Not so easily bricked

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