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.
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.
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.
My understanding of what this post meant is that a full discharge is prevented by the controller in the battery itself - much like in laptops, and much like everyone here was surprised that the Tesla battery does not have.
So, to be clear, my understanding of this post, with full clarity, is: "A full discharge is disastrous. However, the situations reported were not full discharges. The controller in the battery shut them off before full discharge. The reported situations did require being towed, but once towed, it was trivial to recharge the batteries."
Actually, it seems to me the article doesn't really contradict the accusation at all.
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.
The line above indicates, on the contrary, that yes, if you don't drive it for a while and it wasn't plugged in to a sufficient power source, your car will in fact be bricked, and potentially damage its batteries. Apparently this is a problem with boats too, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a problem with electric cars.
This "response" is in fact full of double speak... Check this one out:
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.
"This is blatantly false"......."under normal driving conditions". The original article was not talking about normal driving conditions. This reads like a deliberate attempt to mislead.
If anything, it seems to me that this article validates the claims made in the other article. It states:
This is the most likely explanation for the five "bricks" that the blogger claims to have heard about. They probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing.
This is hardly the kind of certainty-filled rebuttal that one would expect if the original article's claims were, in fact, incorrect.
Agreed 100%. This post was kind of a non-denial denial by focusing on "normal driving conditions" and not some of the scenarios the previous author brought up like leaving your car at the airport with 5% charge while you go on a trip.
Also the author stoops to ad hominem by insinuating that the author of the original post is part of a conspiracy to discredit electric vehicles. The author of the original post claims to have a $5000 deposit in on a Tesla X which, if true, is not the usual behavior of an EV skeptic.
> This is the most likely explanation for the five "bricks" that the blogger claims to have heard about. They probably aren't actually bricks, but cars in need of servicing.
Your attack on this point is spot on. The point of the original post this one fails to rebut is that the cars are in need of servicing! Maybe that posts use of the word “bricked” is imprecise, but the real thrust of it was that it costs $40,000 to perform this servicing, which this post does not even dispute.
It would cost $40k to replace the batteries, it would obviously not cost $40k to recharge a battery that had shut itself down for safety. I doubt every instance in the original post actually required a replacement, though it was implied.
Yeah, that is what I picked up from this post. But, I still don't understand how towing and recharging the batteries can cost $40k. Either the original claim about the cost involved in recharging is wrong, or this post claim that the fix is to recharge the batteries is wrong. There is a third highly unlikely case that Tesla is fleecing the customers, who in its mind, made the mistake of letting the charge fall down to zero.
For the sake of electric vehicles, we need to know which of the three scenarios is true.
The other article suggests that the cars cannot be towed when bricked; and that the battery pack is not rechargeable after bricking but needs replacement.
I'm not sure what happens to the value of the dead battery pack when they fit a new pack. Do you get to sell the dead battery back to them or to anyone else? Or is that included in the $40,000 charge?
That's actually the weakest point of the other article - any towing company will be able to move your bricked car even if the wheels leave skid marks all the way onto their tow truck.
Yes, you've hit the stronger point: why should you have to pay $40k, and it's not covered by your warranty or insurance?
I interpret this post in the same way, but this contradicts the original post, which said that a car was sitting at a Tesla service center and required $$$ for battery replacement. If all that it takes is a recharge, why is the owner unable to pay?
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?
Well I am running with what the original post had in it. Yeah it could be an lie, and if it is, it would be very easy to check, it is not a nebulous claim. Tesla just has to respond and say "no we never charged $40k" if it is in fact not true.
This is my frustration with getting news from blogs. Had this appeared in a standard newspaper, I am confident the reporter would have contacted Tesla and asked them directly if they did indeed charge $40,000. Hence, I am not comfortable taking the original post completely at face value, since the author (from what I can tell) did not perform the kind of reporting I expect from journalists. That leads me to doubt basic questions of fact, such as whether or not Tesla charged those people $40,000.
I'm sorry, you give too much credit to "standard newspapers."
They do very little fact checking, if any.
However, being well-established might make them an easier target for libel / defamation. That doesn't seem to scare them into better reporting, though.
That sentiment is popular, but I don't buy it. The original post made no effort (or, he told us about no efforts) to corroborate the anecdotes with Tesla or the people who performed the servicing. That is, he did no reporting. That story would not be run in the NY Times or Washington Post without doing that.
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 $40,000' to fix.
The orignial post appears to have better sources than this one, so I would say that it has been contradicted, but not refuted.
As this article points out, after deep discharge you need to 'reboot the battery management system' which means many 'bricked' cars can be brought back without buying a new battery. Battery chemistry means they lose capacity after a deep discharge, but that does not make the battery pack useless.
However, many of the people that bought a first gen Tesla are also the type of people when told 'you just lost 2-5% of your total range don't do that again.' Will say, just replace the battery. And when told 'That's 40k' they will say 'I don't care just replace it'. Which is a different situation.
PS: Don't forget you need to buy a 100,000$ car and not drive it for months before this becomes a real problem. Most people that can afford to do that have a vary different view of money than the average person on HN.
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.
If the cars were easy to brick there would be a significantly larger number of documented cases than what currently exist.