This just came out earlier: Tesla's Top Engineer Leaving At Critical Juncture. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018...-time-family-critical-moment#comment-11661996 What do you all think? Game over for Tesla? It doesn't smell right. Huge gap down days coming?
Correction: meant to say: Huge gap UP days coming. forgot this is a TSLA thread. my bad. $320 - $350 next week? I think we can count on TTT (The Tesla Team) to make it happen.
How Tesla PROBABLY Gamed Crash Tests So here's what Tesla probably did -- they probably indeed crashed cars with no charge and thus claimed their "excellent" results. Here's what the NHTSA should have done, and almost-certainly did not do: ... ... (see linked article) https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=233468
The lack of rigor on this thread is simply appalling! So you want to know if Tesla's cars' batteries were charged during their NHTSA tests. How would one go about figuring this out? We wouldn't want to lookup the NHTSA test protocols for electric vehicles, which one can find with a 20 second google search and read from the source document (https://one.nhtsa.gov/Vehicle-Safety/Test-Procedures for the challenged folks here). The one that says that prior to the test the battery must be charged to the "maximum state of charge recommended by the manufacturer, as stated in the vehicles owner’s manual or on a label that is permanently affixed to the vehicle" or if there is no such label, to "a state of charge of not less than 95 percent of the maximum capacity of the battery system." Or you could just find the blog of some jackass on the internet who's too lazy and/or too stupid to actually look something that basic up, and states on nothing more than their own authority that the test was "probably" done with discharged batteries. And if he's a jackass, what does that make the people who quote him as a "source"? Seriously people!
The Tesla Firebomb Problem https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=233457 Tesla isn't alone in this risk, incidentally....it's common to all electrical vehicles. The risk is fires immediately following a collision -- fires that cannot be put out. A fuel-fed fire, such as one in a gasoline vehicle, can be mitigated in a number of ways. There isn't much fuel in the vehicle in other than the fuel tank itself, which is mounted and designed to make it very hard to rupture it. This became important after the Pinto fiasco, where the tank was mounted in a fashion that the differential could easily puncture it in a crash. The fuel pump is designed to be disabled when a crash is detected (e.g. airbag deployment) or the engine is stopped, minimizing the risk of feeding fuel into the fire. But with an electric car you have a battery in it which is the store of energy. Anything that shorts that battery internally or otherwise is an instant disaster, because electrical fires are nearly impossible to extinguish as long as the system is energized. Unfortunately in a battery-powered car the battery is always, by definition, energized. If it is shorted internally by a crash then the resulting fire will burn until all the energy in the pack has been consumed; it is nearly impossible to put it out because the heat source (the short circuit) cannot be removed. There's not much you can do about this because of the size of the pack that's required. As such protecting it from taking enough damage in a crash to violate its integrity is basically impossible. This risk of fires is not unique to Tesla; it exists with any battery-powered vehicle and there is little or nothing you can realistically do about it, since a short in the pack itself will heat the surrounding cells sufficient to cause them to short. The energy density requirements make it essentially impossible to eliminate this risk. In a serious accident the occupants of the vehicle are frequently stunned, severely injured or the vehicle is sufficient damaged that they cannot immediately get out under their own power, and the amount of time available before a fire occurs in the event of a serious internal short-circuit may be just a few seconds. There's no real fix for this, and a wreck that was almost-certainly survivable in Florida is just one example -- a Model X was also recently immolated as a result of essentially the same process. In short all EVs are essentially Pintos in that if the battery pack integrity is damaged during a collision the risk of fire is quite high and there's little or nothing you can do about it in the vehicle's design -- unlike a gasoline or diesel-powered car.
As Sig showed:174,000 car fires resulting in 445 deaths means 1 dead per 391 fires. I know already of 3 deaths in Tesla burnings in a very short time (2 in Florida and 1 in the Netherlands). As there is average 1 dead per 391 fires there should have to be at least 1,173 burning Tesla's to be like average, just based on the 3 deaths I know about (there are surely much more deaths). First of all Sig told that there are clearly no 1,173 Tesla fires, which means that the risk of dying in a burning Tesla is hugely bigger as the total average is only 1 dead per 391 fires.
I cannot believe Elon Musk has the audacity to claim that he's "flattening the management structure" after a few more senior executives have left Tesla for dubious reasons. Does he really expect people to be so dumb as to believe it? Sure there are some stupid, uninformed investors and fund managers out there, but Elon Musk can't pee on their shoes and tell them it's raining. New, sleek, comparable electric cars from Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Nissan etc will be here in a few months. Elon Musk should cut back on his BS and stop embarrassing himself.
Another One Today: The Entire Car Practically Melted https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018...ash-switzerland-killing-driver-trapped-inside Tesla should drop Model 3 and start a Model C (the Cremator) series with full autopilot to target the 75 year old to 150 year old customers. The incinerating fire would be more legit that way. That would be enough for a $20 jump the next few days?
Isn't that scary for a tiny little battery?! Now imagine a 1200 lbs Tesla Lithium Ion battery pack that just got punctured / shorted due to crash, overheating, overcharging, insulator breakdown ... 1200 Pounds!!!!! How many seconds do you think the Tesla driver can possibly have to break the window or the deformed car door and get out before being cooked alive?! 5-6 seconds at the most perhaps, assuming no incapacitating electric shocks. Given the explosive fire and the high intensity of heat from a1200 lb battery pack, it doesn't take more than a few seconds to have the human eyes, fingers, and muscles in the arms and legs cooked to medium rare. That's why I will never buy a Tesla or any other EV with similar battery capacity and configuration.