Comment Re:The peril of new technology (Score -1, Troll) 293
Right, I got that. The problem is that your suggestion is false. It's not easy. It actually takes major impact.
I am not sure why you're fighting the evidence in front of you. It clearly doesn't take major impact, so either it needs to be better built, or the battery needs to be moved. Your retort will likely be, "Oh, but that was TOO major to take," in which case - to reiterate - it's in the wrong place. If it can't be moved because it's too heavy then, well, there's another reminder of why EVs aren't there yet.
(N.B. I have no doubt that EVs are the future, but they won't get far as long as douches like Musk respond to criticism with misdirection.)
Well actually, I don't see how. I assume you have some statistics which show that?
You countered the debris-hitting-Tesla scenario with a bus-sucking-up-mattress scenario. If you really believe that large vehicles sucking up large spongy objects is significant in a discussion about cars running over random debris, YOU need to show this.
To be clear: mounting a fuel tank with large surface area flush against the road is a generic road vehicle manufacturing fubar. Protecting the fuel tank, and protecting the humans from the fuel tank, are (obviously) old problems.
Yes, yes you do. Cars are expected not to behave nicely if you abuse them. They are only expected to function if you do not run them into anything, or over anything inappropriate.
Disagree. Modern cars are expected to fail gracefully during an accident, whether that's with seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, side impact panels, whatever. They may no longer "function" AFTER the accident, but their final duty is to behave as nicely as possible in preventing people from being seriously injured/killed.
As someone who enjoys older cars, I am acutely aware of this, because the main sacrifice I make is with safety features in the event of a crash. (And, to reiterate, I do think EVs are the future - I just think Musk is a dick.)
Tesla has issued a firmware update [teslamotorsclub.com] which mitigates the issue, stopping the vehicle from decreasing its ride height automatically. This underscores the fact that it is the driver's responsibility to drive the car.
What does that last sentence mean? It's the manufacturer's problem to fix an unsafe car. Automatic (or even easily manually configurable) unsafe ride height is a manufacturing fault. By issuing the firmware update, they've implicitly acknowledged a hazard, but merely appeared to decrease the associated risk rather than actually tackled the hazard.
For getting around regularly, I prefer public transport anyway. And I understand that it's harder to have your batteries mounted higher up in an EV. I don't think we have enough evidence that a Tesla is safer than a comparably built ICE car with similar usage profiles. The Tesla doesn't strike me as "unsafe", to be clear, just immature - and it is rather held back by an egomaniacal spokesperson with a penchant for misleading propaganda and control freakery. In particular, nobody should want a car to dominate where everything from manufacturing through dealership through servicing is monopolised.
BTW, ta for the civil discussion. Lots of angry car nuts here on both sides, lol. It's just a car and this is just Slashdot.