Jalopnik reports:
“Tesla Motors’ lineup of all-electric vehicles — its existing Roadster, almost certainly its impending Model S, and possibly its future Model X — apparently suffer from a severe limitation that can largely destroy the value of the vehicle.
If the battery is ever totally discharged, the owner is left with what Tesla describes as a “brick”: a completely immobile vehicle that cannot be started or even pushed down the street.
The only known remedy is for the owner to pay Tesla approximately $40,000 to replace the entire battery. Unlike practically every other modern car problem, neither Tesla’s warranty nor typical car insurance policies provide any protection from this major financial loss. ”
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The article continues:
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How To Brick An Electric Car
A Tesla Roadster that is simply parked without being plugged in will eventually become a “brick”. The parasitic load from the car’s always-on subsystems continually drains the battery and if the battery’s charge is ever totally depleted, it is essentially destroyed. Complete discharge can happen even when the car is plugged in if it isn’t receiving sufficient current to charge, which can be caused by something as simple as using an extension cord. After battery death, the car is completely inoperable. At least in the case of the Tesla Roadster, it’s not even possible to enable tow mode, meaning the wheels will not turn and the vehicle cannot be pushed nor transported to a repair facility by traditional means.
The amount of time it takes an unplugged Tesla to die varies. Tesla’s Roadster Owners Manual [Full Zipped PDF] states that the battery should take approximately 11 weeks of inactivity to completely discharge [Page 5-2, Column 3: PDF]. However, that is from a full 100% charge. If the car has been driven first, say to be parked at an airport for a long trip, that time can be substantially reduced. If the car is driven to nearly its maximum range and then left unplugged, it could potentially “brick” in about one week.[1] Many other scenarios are possible: for example, the car becomes unplugged by accident, or is unwittingly plugged into an extension cord that is defective or too long.
Source:
http://jalopnik.com/5887265/tesla-motors-devastating-design-problem
h/t to Popular Technology
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This seems to be a problem exclusive to lithium-ion battery technology, not lead-acid systems. Seems to me that all that is needed is a master kill switch for the mains. I’d rather reprogram my radio and other gadgets than spend $40k on a new battery pack.
What a waste. The Tesla. The 10k Volt subsidies. Solyndra. Windmills that are good for nothing but culling Bald Eagles. On and on.
Actually, green schemes are worse than a waste. Look at Europe. The costly, inept, grid destabilizing green schemes have played a major role in the massive debt and brink of bankruptcy. You can’t just pour trillions of Euros down the drain in economically unproductive subsidies.
Look specifically at the tale behind the disaster looming for Germany. A good read: http://notrickszone.com/2012/01/25/energy-expert-germanys-renewable-energy-transition-will-fail-spectacularly-heavily-damaging-the-economy/
There’s a reason that new,successful car companies haven’t been a feature of the economy for many many years. Imagining, designing, and bringing to market a new from the ground up vehicle is one of the most complex engineering exercises that exists, outside of the aerospace industry. The manpower and experience necessary to pull it off are seldom, almost never, available in any startup company. Even the giant auto corps, like Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, etc. have recall problems when introducing new vehicles. The difference being that they the financial and customer goodwill resources to weather the financial and PR hit that big recalls deliver. That Tesla and Fisker are running into these problems was always entirely predictable. It would be completely amazing if they weren’t, although for Tesla to have missed something this obvious is not the way I would have projected their downfall to transpire.
There’s a simple solution. Some cars have pop-up spoilers that operate above a certain speed. So sell Tesla owners an after-market boost pack. Pop-up wind turbines that deploy once the car’s battery hits 15%. Yours for $9,995. For an extra $9,995 we’ll add roof mounted solar PV. Less than half the price of a replacement battery, so greens, you know it makes sense.
I would still drive this car even if BRAKES didn’t work. That’s how much I love it!
I fell in love with it on Valentine’s day, when I went to dealership here is LA.
Sitting inside of it makes you feel like superhero, that’s why I wrote review about it on my blog. I have never seen car more beautiful…Of course it’s a new technology so some problems are normal but Electric cars are the future I embrase! Love this planet! Go green!
The answer of course is easy, just carry a high output diesel generator in the boot and every time you park you get the generator out and connect it to the battery pack. Oh you will of course need to tow a 500 hundred gallon diesel tank connected to the generator and hope someone doesnt steal it and you cant park in an enclosed space of course but with those slight difficulties aside its easy isnt it?
Best bet to avoid a bricked Tesla is to rip out the electric drive and fit a big lusty V8. Probably cost less than the $40,000 brick replacement! 😉
Our Merc CL500 has a low battery voltage warning system but it doesn’t work but the on board electronics still cancel the startup once below a preset voltage so you don’t need a Tesla Roadster to have an immobile car! Even unsubsidised gas guzzler cars do it……
My crap detector is going off, just don’t believe this story…..
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/02/bricked-tesla-roadsters/
“The company likens the need to maintain a minimal charge to ensuring there is sufficient oil in a conventional engine.”
What are these people smoking? I know lots of people who were driving around a quart low before noticing it, myself included. These days with included service on new vehicles, I’d wager a lot of people do it as we’re getting trained to wait for the Check Engine light, which in my experience doesn’t come on until about two quarts down, some people can’t even find the oil dipstick to check the level, and we’re being passively dissuaded from even looking under the hood to check stuff as “that should be left to the professionals.” Plus many people who notice an oil leak, or said light, will drive the vehicle to where it can be serviced. Insufficient oil does not auto-brick an engine.
““This is what you’d expect with batteries. The same thing will happen with the battery used by your internal combustion engine. If you don’t maintain it, it will go dead.”
I’ve had vehicles, like my current one, that have had the battery go dead, from annoying things like the trunk latch not closing fully thus not shutting off the trunk light switch (bring back the mercury switches!). I put the charger or booster pack on, the battery recovers, with most likely a shorter total lifespan and possibly a lower maximum charge. It does not auto-brick.
“The Tesla manual warns that a fully charged Roadster pack will drop as much as 50 percent in the first week, then lose about 5 percent per week thereafter.”
50%! Just how much electricity does a plugged-in Tesla waste while just being parked? I want to see that amount figured in to those otherwise-imaginary “e-mileage” figures. Who would drive a conventional vehicle that would lose half of a full tank of fuel while parked?
“Koslowski and others said the simplest solution for any EV owner is to plug the car in whenever possible, particularly if it’s going to be sitting for an extended period. This is akin to putting a trickle charger on the battery under your hood.”
Imagine being told that for your gasoline-powered vehicle it is recommended to plug in a “gasoline drip” whenever you park to keep the tank topped off.
“The Tesla Motors “Disclosures and Acknowledgements” form specifically states, “Note, your Roadster warranty as it relates to the battery does not cover damage caused by exposing an unplugged vehicle to ambient temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit for over 24 hours, storing an unplugged vehicle in temperatures below -40 degrees Fahrenheit for over seven days or leaving your vehicle unplugged where it discharges that battery to at or near zero state of charge.””
Is that cumulative? 24 hours over 120°F could be two days in Texas, Nevada, etc. Heck, with a detached shut-up garage or a steel storage unit and enough summer sunlight, you might be able to hit that anywhere in the US, even Alaska. So what happens if you plug it in? Some form of air conditioning comes on to cool the battery pack, expelling the heat to the closed-in storage space?
Is it just me, or would Tesla have been far better off designing a vehicle that kills the big lithium battery when the car is not in use, and uses a common lead-acid battery to keep the standby electronics running?
kakatoa says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:13 pm
The Leaf doesn’t have this issue.
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From what I have seen of him with regard to solar issues he is ever fully charged. (oops, sorry, a different Leif. (-;
GogogoStopSTOP says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:31 pm
Hey, you engineering marvels with $10, easy fixes. There’s one fix… CHARGE THE BATTERY
A low “anything” sensor wouldn’t work, you must CHARGE THE BATTERY before it goes dead.
There’s only one fix, even when you know the battery is going low… CHARGE THE BATTERY.
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Yep, thats what the CAGW enthusiast said to himself as he drove from the lot. One week later, after driving the car to the brink on a long work commute, he got home late just in time to leave with the wife on that promised vacation. He plugged the car in, took a shower, jumped into the back of the RV while his wife drove. There was a power outage in his neighborhood shortly after he left. When the power was turned on the surge tripped his breaker. He came home finding out that his trip cost him forty grand more then planned. (Murphy’s law will get you)
This is a DC (battery) powered vehicle, it should have been named ‘Edison’, Tesla was genius of the AC (alternative currents) and the high frequencies.
Is it a price worth paying to bring Nikola Tesla’s name to attention of many?
As long as few school kids are fascinated by his inventions and ideas, I sure it is even if the car is a ‘brick’.
For the grown ups there are some other aspects of Tesla’s life mentioned here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Nikola%20Tesla.htm
As a young student I lived just around corner of his museum, and often went in to marvel at the modest but fascinating selection of exhibits.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 22, 2012 at 11:56 pm
“The Tesla manual warns that a fully charged Roadster pack will drop as much as 50 percent in the first week, then lose about 5 percent per week thereafter.”
50%! Just how much electricity does a plugged-in Tesla waste while just being parked? I want to see that amount figured in to those otherwise-imaginary “e-mileage” figures.
Interesting. The average German car owner drives 10,000 km a year; I was astonished – my insurance asked me
how much I drive, I told them 25k km a year, they told me that that’s a lot.
So, the average car will stand still for 23 hours a day. Assuming it has a 50 kWh battery, it will lose
23/24.0*0.05*50 kWh a week just by standing there; that’s 2.4 kWh a week or, when we express it as
constant power dissipation averaged over time, 0.014 kW. A million electric cars of this kind will
lose 14260 kW or 14 MW or the average power output of 28 2.5 MW wind turbines, assuming a 20% capacity factor;
30 million electric cars (the entirety of the German car park) would therefore lose the output of
840 such wind turbines constantly.
And that’s before they’re driving the first kilometer…
A commemoration after Nikola Tesla’s death was broadcasted on New York Radio on January 10, 1943. The Mayor of the City of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia delivered a eulogy to Tesla. “Nikola Tesla was a great humanist, a distinguished scientific genius and a poet of science” said Mayor LaGuardia.
http://www.teslasociety.ch/info/ton/Fiorello_La_Guardia_uber_Tesla.wma
Amazing if true. A normal battery that powers the killswitch and idle electronics would suffice to solve the problem. Cost, virtually peanuts. Main battery should only power traction and reload auxillary battery.
Problem solved. What Tesla need to do is invest in some new technology. They could install a series of overhead wire thingies along the roads carried on poles, provide a pick-up rod to the car that could attach to these overhead wire thingies, drawing electricity fed into the wires through the rod to power the car. Mind you steering could be an issue keeping the overhead wires in position, so they may need to invent some special tracks set into the road surface to guide the vehicle along! They may even invent larger versions that could take lots of people all at once, like a sort of trolly vehicle. It should work in theory. 😉 Can I have my million dollars now? Sarc off, there’s always a downside to everything.
what it needs is a trailer towed behind with a vast array of solar panels, that should keep it just about above brickling.
All you wanted to know about the care and feeding of various battery chemistries:
http://www.batteryuniversity.com
IIRC if you discharge a Li-ion battery under load the voltage drops and it catches fire. The individual cells are usually fitted with low voltage cutoffs to prevent this.
I didn’t know thats what they meant when they said “Charge it”!
It’s a very pretty car. Do they do one with a proper engine?
So they go for 100 miles, maximum unless you use lights, AC, indicators, ICE systems, then become useless if not charged by a, probably, coal fired power station.
What a waste of money!!!!
After ‘snowmageddon’ in DC there were several streets where cars were snowed in for several weeks. Including cars parked that their owners thought would take them home the next morning.
Tesla must respond to this and demonstrate that it is not the case their batteries don’t fail – or they go out of business. When a new battery costs the same as relatively high end cars, then not only is it a huge risk that a car could brick – but what happens to the resale value? A second hand Tesla battery going – and you’ll need to shell out more than the car’s worth for a new battery? They may be able to get posers to buy these cars new, but they’ll be worthless second hand.
A more objective commentary on this: http://tinyurl.com/7r22eqe
No, Disko, only electrics and the current models cost (last time I looked) over $70,000 after state and federal subsidies. So this is not a car the average person will be driving, it is a heavily subsidized (by the taxpayer) toy for the very rich.
Alan the Brit says:
February 23, 2012 at 1:12 am
“They may even invent larger versions that could take lots of people all at once, like a sort of trolly vehicle. It should work in theory. 😉 Can I have my million dollars now?”
Trolley systems continue to be used and expanded.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/07/trolleytrucks-trolleybuses-cargotrams.html
Disko Troop :
Look up Lotus Elise.