Well it is not like they have an any electrical/electronic engineers on their staff. LMAO.
Anything with a battery suffers this issue to some extent. Most every vehicle should be capable of being towed with a dead battery, its just usual this one happens to be entirely reliant on its high capacity pack. Traditional vehicles understand the battery isn’t high enough capacity to rely on it always being useful, so there is a way to mechanically unlock doors, disengage the shift interlock, and wheel lock…
It’s absolutely a poor design that lead to this issue being fairly serious. If they claim best case, fully charged, a Roadster can sit for 11, weeks, thats quite bad. The charger they are using appears to lack the insight to decrease charge power when the input line voltage drops. 100 ft of cheap extension cord will absolutely be a severe limitation, you can’t draw 1,500W through 100ft of 16 AWG. Being ‘plugged in’ in no way indicates its charging, thats simply user error. I’m guessing future electric vehicles will be much more ‘user friendly’ in this sense.
The issue is lithium batteries tend to have very low internal resistance, and the useable voltage ‘window’ is narrow. Typical LiPo chemistries consider 3.0V to be 0% SOC, and 4.2V to be 100% SOC. A little capacity still remains in a cell at 0% SOC, and the voltage is still high enough for most low power devices to run no problem, discharging the cell well below its intended operating voltage. The issue being, that the cell has relatively very little capacity below 3.0V or so, meaning the voltage can drop quite readily below this threshold. Below 2.0V or so, the cell starts to reach the danger zone of where it should not be attempted to charge. If it reaches 1.0V or lower, its basically considered dead. Given what Tesla claims, I would assume these cells are capable of being drained to near 0V. If this happens, its unsafe to recharge the battery.
Typical lead acid batteries in cars loose a SUBSTANTIAL amount of capacity from a single deep discharge, it’s just that they are a very ‘safe’ chemistry and can be recharged even after sitting at 0V. It probably will have very little capacity, but most users are ignorant of these things and assume the battery was junk if it ‘died’ after a short period.
All batteries, of any chemistry, have some rate of self discharge. Even with absolutely no external load, any battery will slowly discharge. While a contractor to electrically disconnect the battery might be a good idea, it would not help if the vehicle was sitting for a long time at very low SOC. The Leaf will suffer similar issues. Since it was designed by a large company for the masses, it should be much more ‘bulletproof’. However, if the thing is at 1% charge, and you shove it into a garage for a year… It won’t work out that well.
Here is what Telsa responded to autoblog:
All automobiles require some level of owner care. For example, combustion vehicles require regular oil changes or the engine will be destroyed. Electric vehicles should be plugged in and charging when not in use for maximum performance. All batteries are subject to damage if the charge is kept at zero for long periods of time. However, Tesla avoids this problem in virtually all instances with numerous counter-measures. Tesla batteries can remain unplugged for weeks (even months), without reaching zero state of charge. Owners of Roadster 2.0 and all subsequent Tesla products can request that their vehicle alert Tesla if SOC falls to a low level. All Tesla vehicles emit various visual and audible warnings if the battery pack falls below 5 percent SOC. Tesla provides extensive maintenance recommendations as part of the customer experience.
I still just don’t get this whole full electric thing…
Starting to get interesting: Who Is Trying To Smear The Tesla Battery Problem Whistleblower?
Now Tesla Motors, or a pro-Tesla individual close to the company, appears to be trying to smear Max Drucker, the owner who spoke out about the problem, by leaking confidential documents and insinuating that he’s doing a “shakedown” despite the fact that Drucker doesn’t appear to be asking for any money.
lol… good to see the high levels of customer service Elon Musk demanded at his other big venture (PayPal) continue into his more recent businesses. AKA… fuck the customer, it’s their fault.
Based on what I see in these various publications, its absolutely the customers negligence that resulted in these issues.
Still, Tesla could have been a little nicer about the replacement costs. For how infrequently this should be happening, its not a big deal to eat most of the cost.