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. ”
…
The article continues:
…
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.
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Here’s what Slashdot has on the story:
“Bricking” means that it is uneconomical to restore a device to service. It usually refers to a programmable device of some kind. I know of no device that can be ‘bricked’ and then not re-programmed. It can be a bit expensive though. It cost a couple of hundred bucks to re-program my wife’s Nissan to clear a bogus error condition. It is easy to brick a $100 consumer device because it is much cheaper to buy a new device than to fix the old one.
If it costs a couple of hundred dollars to reboot a Tesla, then you can’t really say that it is bricked.
No doubt a flatbed tow truck could winch it even with wheels locked onto the bed. Someone will need to clean up the skid marks on the road though. And the owner will be spending bucks not just on the battery array, but also new rubber and possibly some internal linkage and other parts. Ouch.
Greenalina, you may have a typo in that paragraph. Shouldn’t you have written ‘Coal Fired Cars‘? Surely you realize that electricity is not an energy source but is actually an energy product. For some reason Gang Green just cannot get their basic Science straight, ever.
This Tesla mouthpiece is pulling the classic apples and oranges nonsense here. In fact it is more like apples and automobiles or whatever is the opposite of apples. When a car is unused for 6 weeks like when you go on a trip or something, you do not need to check the oil. And you don’t even need to start it to trickle charge the battery (well, unless you are in Alaska or something). Normally I would have nothing against these cars or Tesla or those that want to indulge in this pipe dream. But this communication from the Tesla guy is just as deceptive as those that attempt to equate the Climategate whistleblower with Peter ‘Principle’ Gleick.
I am also not a big fan of helping to subsidize these vehicles and the charging stations without being allowed to use them myself! I propose that all owners of these coal-powered automobiles make a point of thanking us taxpayers in every one of their posts here and elsewhere. Your welcome. 😉
What happened, how did they world come be so full of dumb people>
It would be hysterically funny it it wasn’t so potentially serious.
I remember seeing some piece on TV about the Tesla Roadster. What I remember is the assembling of a battery pack, where it looked like many flashlight batteries were loaded into long bores in a part of the pack.
Thanks to Wikipedia, I’ve found out those are 18650 cells, between a AA and C in diameter but slightly longer. They’re used in LED flashlights.
I remember thinking how stupid that was, due to the problems of keeping good electrical contact between the ends of just two batteries. Anyone else here “fix” a power problem on one of those old “ghetto blaster” stereos with the long stings of D cells, by just spinning those in the middle of a stack to get better contact? Or just shine up the ends of the batteries in a multi-cell flashlight and notice how much brighter the regular or krypton incandescent bulb got?
And with cells in a stack, there is also a spring on at least one end that keeps pressure on the stack to maintain contact, that can’t press too hard or it will deform the end of the cell it contacts and/or a “button” end will deform the flat end it rests against. Due to the expected deformation of the metal at the ends, you don’t hold together a cell stack with hard mechanical pressure like with a screw, the cells will get loose over time.
The Tesla Roadster entry says it uses 6,831 of those little batteries. That’s a lot of springs and a lot of surfaces that have to maintain good electrical contact over the stated lifespan of the entire pack.
From Mike Borgelt on February 23, 2012 at 1:30 am:
And the Roadster has 6,831 potential sources of possible calamity. And if only one cell of a stack goes bad then the stack goes bad, if there are other stacks connected in series then the assemblage goes bad, and other stacks that are simply connected in parallel will be affected.
Also note, as detailed here, the 18650 officially designates an unprotected cell. There’s a slightly larger version with protection circuitry that’s properly designated as a 19670, although it may be called a protected 18650 and improperly listed as a 18650. Going strictly by the info on hand, the Roadster uses the presumably-cheaper unprotected cells.
Tesla is poking Murphy’s Law with sharp sticks.
From commieBob on February 23, 2012 at 3:21 am:
From the article I linked to:
McCoy: It’s bricked, Jim.
I betcha the surplus’s never thought they’d find a valid customer base in Hollywood for the 300′ extension cord.
Do bear in mind that the batteries in these cars do not store electricity, they store chemicals, and these are a lot nastier than the chemicals put into the petrol tank.
Here is why a low voltage cutoff switch will not work-“Part of Tesla’s secret sauce has been turning the same batteries used in laptops and other devices into reliable and safe energy sources for a vehicle. Tesla designed the battery pack with a series of monitors that balance energy among all of the 6,831 lithium-ion cells so one doesn’t set off a “thermal event” — i.e., catch fire. But doing so requires those systems to be on constantly, which creates a drain on the system that’s far greater than lithium-ion batteries typically suffer if just left alone.”
Someone mentioned 500,000k on a Prius and no battery issues. Well the duty cycle of a battery affects its longevity, but also its age. One is lucky to get more than 7 years out of a lead acid battery even in a daily driver. If you do get more than 7 years, its borrowed time. I replace my batteries when pushing six and my house hot water heater at 13 years. Don’t like borrowed time which can turn into inconvenient costly time. Speaking from experience.
I’m not a one-eyed electric car lover but the Tesla engineers have come up with a lot of clever stuff. Their battery packs are miles ahead of most of the competition and they were the first to market with a modern electric car with some type of range (it’s still not long enough, but it’s not golf-cart short). That they were able to make a battery pack like this that was even remotely close to affordable, serviceable and crash-proof is a testament to a very good 1.0 design in the roadster.
I just find it very hard to believe they didn’t think about this up front. It smacks of the Toyota ‘stuck accelerator pedal’ issue, which turned out to be nothing but stupid owners.
My car has a low voltage cutout that disconnects the electrical system in the event of a door left open or the lights left on. My laptop has a low voltage cutout that stops power in the event of complete battery discharge.
Colour me very skeptical about this particular claim.
The other thing I get annoyed with (and Jalopnik is known for Tesla-bashing) is why people have got to come down on the only new American car company to be created in recent years? I’m not American but I would be at least a little bit proud of a bunch of people trying to get a new car company going, particularly when they are at least making some effort towards manufacturing the Model S inside the USA. Sure, they took some DOE loans but they’re still around, and it’s just play money compared to what has been sunk into Government Motors. Give them a chance and let their product succeed or fail on it’s merits. I’m sure the equivalent chinese electric cars will be much, much worse.
“It is a hazard, like reving an engine past redline til it ‘bricks’. Just another failure mode to be aware of.”
True, but most gas engines have a rev limiter and it sure doesn’t cost $40,000 to replace your bricked chevy engine.
Also keep in mind where these batteries and the lithium itself comes from. Massive surface mining in Asia for the minerals (how’s that for green? ). And the vast majority of manufacturing of the batteries/cells also in Asia (how’s that work for balance of trade?) . What a deal. Feel the burn, greenies.
Quoted by nc on February 23, 2012 at 5:04 am (got source link?):
It sounds innovative to re-purpose a commodity item in such a way, like with the US Air Force building a supercomputer out of Playstation consoles.
But in this case, it is more like firing off 6831 .22LR shells at once and declaring the result equal to a howitzer blast. Or dispatching 6831 pick-up trucks to a quarry to replace a giant 4000 ton dump truck. There are good reasons to go big, and design big from the start.
Of course if they had big battery packs, the supplier would charge design and testing costs, startup costs, and want a minimum order. The way Tesla did it, they only have to buy multiple lots of the little batteries off the boat from China. After Tesla crashes, they’ll also be able to sell the leftovers on the regular battery markets at a good-enough price, rather than be forced to scrap whole packs with hazmat costs involved. Makes sense for a startup that might be closed down overnight.
OT
Relativity rules. OK!
It appears that the faster-than-light neutrino results, announced last September by the OPERA collaboration in Italy, was due to a mistake after all. A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-news-error-undoes-faster.html
First of all, I completely disregard the notion of parasitic losses in the electronic systems of the car. I work with an automotive accessory. Our bench mark is sub 1mA when turned off. I’ve measured a few cars, and for example the Dodge Charger, when you shut all of the doors, and allow the uControllers to sleep, take about 30 seconds, the car pulls less than about 10-50 uA from the battery. Further modern uControllers are capable of sleep currents in the low nA range.
1mA from a 20kWh battery should last decades 🙂
It is the parasitic losses in the battery, and maybe a battery cooling system that chew up the power.
Further, even a long extension chord is going to be able to give you 110V at 8 to 10A, maybe 100V at 8A worst case. So that would be 800VA or 800 Watts, and this article suggest the 800VA is not sufficient for a trickle, or maintenance charge??? really, I call BS on that as well.
But I can believe that if the battery does go below a certain point in the charge, it will destroy itself, and without power the “transmission” parking brake can not be turned off with the loss of power.
Fun, fun. For the most part, I discount EV’s because of the impact of mining and refining of all the materials for the battery, and recycling those materials when they have met the end of their life.
The only way you could change my mind, is when we start using gen IV reactors for producing the energy to charge these puppies, and all of the industrial steps to manufacture and recycle the batteries. But that’s just me. What do I know.
“DGH says:
February 22, 2012 at 8:28 pm
I assure you that nobody who loves cars and has driven the Tesla Roadster would allow it to sit until its batteries are fully discharged. My bet is that the 5 people who have bricked their batteries would have seized their gas engines for a lack of oil.”
You lose. Read the article and you will find that in at least three of the four cases mentioned the owners had “legitimate” reasons for letting the battery discharge. Additional ones comes easily to mind, sickness for example.
Here’s a NEAT story that I bumped into while looking for something else…. Edison batteries built in the 1920s, used steadily for 50 years in a lighting system for an Adirondack resort. Left semi-idle for 20 years then refilled with new water. Not bricks. Just perfectly functional batteries after 80 years.
Boy, I’m glad we’ve advanced beyond this primitive functional stuff. Now we can build super-advanced batteries that explode when you bump them, and fail permanently when you look at them crosseyed.
http://www.battcon.com/PapersFinal2011/DeMarPaperDONE2011BU_21.pdf
What happens to the nickle metal hydride, etc., when the useful life of these conveyances ends and they go off to the junk yard? Isn’t NMH toxic? What kinds of chemical byproducts come from the manufacture of these kinds of vehicles? As the drain on the power grid increases through vehicle charging, what kind of power generation will help supplant what is needed? Wind? Solar? Coal? Oil?
Do the people who believe that these alternatives will help improve our environment ever completely think these things through? My guess is “no.”
Why wouldn’t they just program the stupid thing to shut off all systems if the battery drops below some minimum level? Sure maybe you have to tow it, but at lease you don’t have to spend $40K on new batteries…
Craig said:
Why wouldn’t they just program the stupid thing to shut off all systems if the battery drops below some minimum level? Sure maybe you have to tow it, but at lease you don’t have to spend $40K on new batteries…
I highly doubt it is the electronic system, the only thing that would be consuming power is a battery cooling system, and that is likely NOT optional 🙂 What would you rather come home to, a burnt down house, or a dead car. Granted, I guess it depends on what is in the house and your home owners insurance …… Seriously, the car’s electronics should be able to drop down to much less than 1mA when not in use. Leaving a standard car battery (70Ah * 12V -> .84kWh) being able to keep the radio settings for about 8 years. The Telsa’s battery is north of 95kWh, or without parasitic battery losses, or cooling, it should be able to keep the radio settings up for about 894 years.
The battery loss is likely the parasitic losses in the battery. All batteries self discharge, some more than others 🙂 Apparently, I am led to believe the Tesla battery is one of those in the “more than others” category 🙂
Reading this post reminded me of the discussion a few years ago on life-cycle energy costs, where a comparison of those costs was made between the Hummer and the Prius. Thinking I would re-familiarize myself with that discussion, I Binged “Prius life cycle energy costs” . The third article on the list was written by Dr. Gleick. http://www.evworld.com/library/pacinst_hummerVprius.pdf
By the way, those who quote Murphy’s Law should remember that Murphy was an optimist.
So coal powered cars aren’t the answer.
Whoda thunk it?
“DGH says:
February 22, 2012 at 8:28 pm
I assure you that nobody who loves cars and has driven the Tesla Roadster would allow it to sit until its batteries are fully discharged.
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Gimme a break. There are guys that own cars with performance, which the lil’ Tesla couldn’t dream of aspiring to (Shelbys, 911’s, Vettes, Ferraris), who let their cars sit idly for months and even years at a time. There are even guys that let exotic expensive cars fall into various states of disrepair. Rich guys typically have a lot going on.
Craig says:
February 23, 2012 at 8:49 am
Why wouldn’t they just program the stupid thing to shut off all systems if the battery drops below some minimum level? Sure maybe you have to tow it, but at lease you don’t have to spend $40K on new batteries…
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#1 All batteries self discharge when sitting idly with 0 load. The degree of this self discharge depends on the particular type of battery. #2 Lithium Ion battery packs utilize what is known as protection circuitry. This cannot be disabled. There will always be a net drain on the battery pack.
commieBob says:
February 23, 2012 at 3:21 am
“Don’t believe recent claims made by a blogger that non-functioning batteries in the Tesla Roadster cause the electric cars to be bricked, says IDC analyst Sam Jaffe. ‘Here’s the primary fact that the blogger in question doesn’t understand: the Tesla battery pack is not a battery,’ says Jaffe. ‘It’s a collection of more than 8,000 individual batteries. Each of those cells is independently managed.
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Jaffe is wrong. Just about any battery pack one encounters is a collection of cells even a conventional car battery is 6 lead acid cells in series. The Tesla joke battery pack only needs a small portion of cells to fail in order to be hurt badly. There a lot of things that Jaffe has partially wrong & partially correct, but The main thing is that any battery pack that is discharged below a certain level is a hurt battery pack it will usually never have the same capacity it once had. If it is discharged low enough it can be basically destroyed as a useful battery pack.
It seems that it never rains but what it pours for Tesla Motors at the moment…
“Judge Throws Out Tesla’s Top Gear Libel Lawsuit”
http://jalopnik.com/5887611/judge-throws-out-teslas-top-gear-libel-lawsuit
Shame that such a good concept is having trouble – let’s hope there isn’t a third problem!
I mainly bought my ford explorer for the sole reason that it would be relatively easy to fix just about anything myself without having to go shell out money for a “professional” to look at it with a diag tool that’s almost as expensive as the vehicle itself! That’s the big problem with a lot of the overengineered crap out there these days. Something simple leaves you high and dry, and these guys tout it as a feature, not a bug!
Tesla fans everywhere; if you love the Tesla and have the oversized hole in your wallet to prove it, do yourselve a favour and steer a very wide berth of the Lotus Elise that was bastardised to spawn this ‘lecky lump of endulgence.
Your overweight dodgem car handles as mediocre as it does because it’s architecture is borrowed from the Elise – a lesser car would deliver an appalling experience with all that weight to lug about.
Since your Tesla roadster is an Elise with an ugly dress and a weight problem (The Elise’s fat ugly sister one could opine – they trundle down the same production line in Hethel until the Dell man comes to install the laptop batteries) it must be gut-wrenching to contemplate that you could buy three Elises for the same money as your Roadster and that the fuel tank will last long after your lithium-ion batteries are contaminating landfill somewhere.
Should you ever be foolish enough to drive a proper Elise, it will bring tears to your eyes because while a Tesla might be good for one or two drag races away from the lights or a for a smug cruise past the neighbours before being plugged in to charge for the night, the Elise delivers a truly ashtonishing drive, even at modest road speeds, it looks soooo much better and it only takes five minutes to refill the tank. Given the attention given to adding lightness, you will find yourself stopping at the petrol station for five minute refills surprisingly infrequently; a properly ‘green’ sports car, (especially if delivered in a coat of Krypton or Lotus Racing Green ;O)
A thought; since Li-on batfone batteries and laptop batteries lose their ability to hold charge so quickly even when completely discharged before each charge as recommended, what is the expected life of a Tesla battery (even if the resident ‘passion fingers’ is kept away from the keys)? The Tesla looks like a very expensive indulgence just for the sake of smugly driving past the neighbours with one’s nose in the air.