Do you know that you must keep your battery charged?

[VolkerP]

"Oil? where do I fill in that?"
"No, Daddy. I don't see any OIL cap."
"OK, I'll read them to you. Water, wiper fluid, 710. Yes, seven-hundred and ten. No oil."

 

[dsm363]

Someone else jump in here:
McBlog: On “Bricksâ€￾ and Hand Pumps: Musings on New Technology. | TheDetroitBureau.com

 

[JRP3]

You've got it pretty well covered. You might respond to his last post with the fact that the 50% SOC level allows the vehicle to sit unplugged for a year, and that lower SOC levels will indeed allow the vehicle to sit for many months, and zero SOC is still good for at least one month.

I am hoping you are right about how long the Model S and X can stay unplugged, though I would also hope that 50% is not the safe cutoff. It should be able to tolerate a significantly lower figure for at least a month or so to ensure that bricking is a rarity — or non-existent.

 

[dsm363]

You've got it pretty well covered. You might respond to his last post with the fact that the 50% SOC level allows the vehicle to sit unplugged for a year, and that lower SOC levels will indeed allow the vehicle to sit for many months, and zero SOC is still good for at least one month.

Thanks. Posted someone previously that is still waiting moderation. I thought I remember reading back last year that if you register on their site, your posts didn't need moderation but guess that's not accurate.

dsm363 says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
at
Tesla has chosen with the Model S to provide a good buffer against neglect but still provide great range. Since 99.9+% of customers in my opinion would never let a car sit for a year without plugging it in but drive their car every day, they’d rather have the extra range.

Do you think someone who ignores their car for a year is more responsible than someone who ignores it for 2 years? Where would you draw the line? If Tesla provided a 40% pad, people would critize them for selling a $60,000 car with the range that’s equal to the Leaf. This would all be so Tesla could protect the car from that one owner in 10,000 or more who can’t figure out how to read the manual or bother to plug their -Electric- car into an outlet once every year or more. It is impossible for Tesla to design a system where they make this problem non-existent but they have made it a rarity with the Model S I think. There will always be people who ignore every warning and trash their car and Tesla can only provide so much time and warning to these people.

In the Tesla blog they state
“Of course you can drive a Model S to 0 percent charge, but even in that circumstance, if you plug it in within 30 days, the battery will recover normally.”
Are you assume people are going to be driving everywhere down to 5% and then leaving their car on the side of the rode for a few months. Who would leave their luxury car abandoned?
That should be more than enough time in all but the worst case such as a hurricane hitting the city destroying everything on site and the owner ends up in the ICU for months on end with no one to check on the house or car. Could that happen? Sure but then there are probably bigger problems in that case than the car.

50% is the safe cutoff for people wanting to leave their car at the airport or storage for a year. But really, who would do that? As I said, you can’t protect against every conceivable scenario. You can burn through oil due to temperature of the engine in an ICE. The kid of person who would ignore their car for a year without plugging it in a single time is also probably the person who wouldn’t bother to ever change their oil. If that analogy doesn’t work for you, someone at TMC mentioned timing belts as something that if you don’t change can also ruin the engine.

Why are you not confident Tesla has not designed systems well enough to protect the battery? You said previously that there is no way Tesla could hit the 300 mile range without at 110 kWh battery pack as well.
Dave

dsm363 says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
at
“Well, as I mentioned earlier, there’s a big difference between being told to get your car in after a year to maintain the warranty and being told that after a few weeks your car is going to turn into a brick with the factory refusing to stand behind you. And, as you mention in one of your latest notes, being a few thousand miles (or even a month or two) late isn’t likely to cause that failure.”

My point was that if I had ignored that call, my car may have worked but the warranty would be void a for 2 years early. Company’s have warranties and they usually stick to them. Do you expect Tesla to accept all warranty claims regardless of level of owner neglect?

Drucker did more than a few weeks. He parked his car for 2 months without charging. Really, the key here is simple. If you’re going to park your car for an extended period of time, plug it in! This does not mean you can’t go the airport on a 2 month vacation and leave your car unplugged. You can, especially with the Model S but you can’t drive your car until you hit 0% right as the pull into the parking lot, ignore all the warnings saying ‘plug your car in now’ and then go on your vacation. Tesla can only do so much.

People talk a lot about personable responsibility these days but in Tesla’s case, it doesn’t seem to apply. They are designing an excellent car that provides maximal performance while offering a significant safety margin. It’s a much finer balance than the other companies offer (they are heavily weighted towards the safety side). For those people worried that they can’t plug their electric car in but every few months to a year then those might be the electric cars for them. For the people who are used to plugging their mobile phones each night, who have a garage and can install an outlet and who can do simple math and calculate how many months they can leave their car at the airport unplugged based on its current state of charge then the Tesla is probably right for them.
Reply

 

[stopcrazypp]

Someone else jump in here:
McBlog: On “Bricksâ€￾ and Hand Pumps: Musings on New Technology. | TheDetroitBureau.com

Here's what I posted. I don't see the "your comment is awaiting moderation" though (don't know where to see that) nor any evidence of my comment being posted, although if I try posting again, it says I have posted a duplicate comment, so I assume it went through.

"Barring someone completely letting the oil run out, ie through a leak or bad rings, I have yet to hear of a gas engine being “bricked” because the oil wasn’t changed at, say, 6,000 miles"
Then you probably have not owned or known owners of cars which "drink" oil, no leak required.

Some engines use up to 1 quart per 1000 miles (spelled out explicitly in the manual), esp in VVT or turbocharged engines. By 6k miles you might have used up 6 quarts, enough to do serious damage to your engine depending on the oil capacity.

Here's some examples from the RX8, which required an engine replacement (in the $10k range) because of low oil from not knowing the requirement spelled out in the manual to check the oil level every single week.
rx8 engine rebuild - RX7Club.com
RX-8 Recall: "We will not walk away from any Mazda Owner" - RotaryNews.com

If you multiply the replacement cost with the car prices (with the Tesla roughly 4x the price), you end up with $40k.

Here's some more examples of people with blown engines from running low on oil in engines with significant oil consumption. It's rare, but the Tesla bricking is rare too.
http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/another-blown-engine-2005-legacy-2-5gt-turbo-162696.html
Isuzu Rodeo Engine Blown out of Nowhere? Now What? - Car Forums - Edmunds
Blown Engine Please Help!!! - Page 2 - Subaru Impreza WRX STI Forums: IWSTI.com

Anyways, I find this situation probably closer to timing belt maintenance. People are less aware of it (unlike oil changes) and when a timing belt snaps it can do a lot of damage.

 

[dsm363]

Here's what I posted. I don't see the "your comment is awaiting moderation" though (don't know where to see that) nor any evidence of my comment being posted, although if I try posting again, it says I have posted a duplicate comment, so I assume it went through.

Looks like they were approved after you visited the site. Comments awaiting moderation don't show up to anyone but the poster. For example, I don't see your post yet. I replied to his post.
I asked for individual confirmation or some journalism about these 4 other cases of bricking.

 

[Norbert]

An impression I get from more than one of the articles posted above is that they create the impression that bricking is something that can happen unexpectedly. While they avoid completely ignoring the fact that the manual warns about SOC 0%, they do not explain that the behavior (up to 50% in the first week, 5% in following weeks, resulting in 11 weeks from SOC 100% and 10 weeks from SoC 50%) is well-defined and predictable in terms of a specification.

They mix the two questions of whether the Roadster has a well-defined behavior, and whether it could have been constructed in a "better" way, as the Model S will be this year. And this is one of the hooks they try to use to bash Tesla, as these articles aren't really reporting with an open mind, but more to defend the current mainstream technology (and their "freedom" to buy an ICE next time they need a new car).

 

[daniel]

"Nothing can be made foolproof... fools are too ingenious."

This nicely summarizes the whole issue!

How much do you want to spend, and how much do you want to limit owner choice, in order to prevent occurrences that are extremely unlikely, or that imply extreme negligence? Tesla could have decreed that at 25% SoC the car stops, and at 20% SoC the battery is completely disconnected so that it would take (???) two years to fall to zero percent and die. In order to protect idiots and neglectful owners, we'd all be limited to 75% of the present range of the car. But instead, Tesla decided to allow us (the owners) to use the entire battery capacity, but with the proviso that we are responsible for charging the car.

When you are building a product for negligent people (the general population) you design in a high level of failsafe. When you are designing a product intended for aficionados you give the user more flexibility and with it more responsibility.

No matter what Tesla did, there would be idiots that would ruin their car. The Model S has a wider target market, so they're being more conservative by keeping the last 5% as a buffer against fools. Somebody will complain about getting stuck ten miles from home because the car would not let them have that last 5%.

 

[dsm363]

How much do you want to spend, and how much do you want to limit owner choice, in order to prevent occurrences that are extremely unlikely, or that imply extreme negligence? Tesla could have decreed that at 25% SoC the car stops, and at 20% SoC the battery is completely disconnected so that it would take (???) two years to fall to zero percent and die. In order to protect idiots and neglectful owners, we'd all be limited to 75% of the present range of the car. But instead, Tesla decided to allow us (the owners) to use the entire battery capacity, but with the proviso that we are responsible for charging the car.

That's exactly the point I brought up as well after Paul Eisenstein said:

I happen to agree that Tesla has complicated matters by using virtually no pad at the low end of battery range. When the battery says “0″, that’s pretty much it. The folks at Nissan (and GM and Mitsubishi and Toyota) will tell you that they recognize the likelihood that consumers WON’T fully recognize the potential problem — which is one of several reasons why they opted for larger battery packs for a given range than Tesla. On the Volt, for example, I believe they’re currently using just 10 of the 16 kWh. Leaf isn’t accessing much more of its 24 kWh. Tesla seems to have taken the strategy of maximizing stated range and hoping that buyers will be more careful in battery maintenance. This strategy is in question. The fact is that should a Volt or Leaf owner hit zero, they’ll actually have a lower likelihood of bricking because of the pad.

I suggested that people would really complain if they took the Volt strategy: "I paid $57,000 for the base Model S and it only has a 70 mile range?" (assuming you keep 40% as backup).

Tesla needs to be even more clear than they were with the Roadster. I think the strategy of given people options, warning them if they want to proceed, and warning them again is fine. I'm assuming when you hit 5%, maybe the Model S will actually say 0 on range left. It will then say 'do you want to access the emergency buffer in order to get to the nearest charging station? You must plug in immediately or risk ruining your battery making it inoperable. This is not covered under warranty. Press ok to continue...etc)

 

[3lectronica]

Tesla needs to be even more clear than they were with the Roadster. ... I'm assuming when you hit 5%, maybe the Model S will actually say 0 on range left. It will then say 'do you want to access the emergency buffer in order to get to the nearest charging station? You must plug in immediately or risk ruining your battery making it inoperable. This is not covered under warranty. Press ok to continue...etc)

When you drive a Roadster to "0-miles" shown in Range mode, there is actually about 5% to 8% state of charge remaining in the battery, in order to prevent the inevitable. That safety buffer has already been thought of and implemented in the vehicle since day 1.

 

[Norbert]

When you drive a Roadster to "0-miles" shown in Range mode, there is actually about 5% to 8% state of charge remaining in the battery, in order to prevent the inevitable. That safety buffer has already been thought of and implemented in the vehicle since day 1.

I think you are the first to say that. How do you know?

 

[markwj]

I think you are the first to say that. How do you know?

Define 0 SOC. It is not 0 volts.

 

[Doug_G]

I think you are the first to say that. How do you know?

That's well known. When you hit somewhere around 25 km of ideal range, the VDS flashes up an error saying something like "battery low - range estimate uncertain", and then displays 0 on the odometer and no range estimate on the VDS.

 

[dsm363]

When you drive a Roadster to "0-miles" shown in Range mode, there is actually about 5% to 8% state of charge remaining in the battery, in order to prevent the inevitable. That safety buffer has already been thought of and implemented in the vehicle since day 1.

I was referring to the Model S and guessing Tesla will add an additional buffer on top of that. They could reset 'zero' at 5% above the Roadster's 0% after range mode. You'd have to agree to continue to keep going and Tesla could point out that you agreed to continue driving then still didn't plug the car in for 2 months for example. I have no knowledge of what they're actually going to do of course though.

 

[Norbert]

That's well known. When you hit somewhere around 25 km of ideal range, the VDS flashes up an error saying something like "battery low - range estimate uncertain", and then displays 0 on the odometer and no range estimate on the VDS.

Ah, yes, remember now, but you can still drive even further, IIRC.

 

[vfx]

And driving to "0" is not the same as parking to "0".

 

[Norbert]

I was referring to the Model S and guessing Tesla will add an additional buffer on top of that. They could reset 'zero' at 5% above the Roadster's 0% after range mode. You'd have to agree to continue to keep going and Tesla could point out that you agreed to continue driving then still didn't plug the car in for 2 months for example. I have no knowledge of what they're actually going to do of course though.

I don't think they'll offset zero:

Of course you can drive a Model S to 0 percent charge, but even in that circumstance, if you plug it in within 30 days, the battery will recover normally.

Plug It In | Blog | Tesla Motors

But maybe they add a legal confirmation dialog at 5% or so. Means you would have to stop, though, and when you need the last electrons to reach the next charger, and are on a highway, maybe that's not what you want to do?

 

[dsm363]

I don't think they'll offset zero:


Plug It In | Blog | Tesla Motors

But maybe they add a legal confirmation dialog at 5% or so. Means you would have to stop, though, and when you need the last electrons to reach the next charger, and are on a highway, maybe that's not what you want to do?

You're probably right. I would imagine they 17" would just flash and complain until you acknowledged it. I don't think they'll cut power while on the highway, especially since there would be no technical reason to do so with power still left. We'll see that they do I guess.

 

[JRP3]

I highly doubt they are actually letting you take the cells to zero SOC, even if they are letting you think so. I can almost guarantee there has always been a bit of buffer at the bottom, there is no good reason to allow the driver to take a cell to zero SOC so they can drive the car another couple of miles.

 

[dsm363]

I highly doubt they are actually letting you take the cells to zero SOC, even if they are letting you think so. I can almost guarantee there has always been a bit of buffer at the bottom, there is no good reason to allow the driver to take a cell to zero SOC so they can drive the car another couple of miles.

I didn't mean down to zero SOC at the cell level I guess. the Roadster doesn't do this, right? I thought they don't even use the max or min of the cell. I meant they may reset the 'zero' baseline which is actually 5% SOC but that's a guess from their blog. Maybe they'll still call 5% "5%" and warn you then and allow you to agree to continue to 0% ideal miles which still has a smal buffer below it allowing your Model S to sit for 30 days unplugged.