Tesla Cover Up?

[ToraToraTora]

https://news.sky.com/story/police-to-search-tesla-after-vehicle-crash-that-killed-two-people-12280825
Plod to search their buildings.........

[davebro]

History tell us all such innovations come with casualties. Progress.

[davebro]

planes/trains/automobiles - yes?

[jno]

hard to say what they'll find in Tesla's buildings since Musk seems to have told them already. If Texans buy a non-self-driving Tesla and don't sit in the driver's seat, they'll get the same result as if they did it with a Fiat 500.

[Sunk]

// Mark Herman, Harris County Constable Precinct 4, said this was the first officials had heard from the company, telling Reuters news agency: "If he is tweeting that out, if he has already pulled the data, he hasn't told us that. //

Police are suppose to investigate an accident, not sit around doing nothing until the incident solves itself.
When a Ford or a Toyota crashes, do they wait for the manufacturer to get in touch?
Telsler are not hiding anything, they have revealed a great deal. The crash wasn’t a defect or malfunction, it was caused by idiots doing something idiotic.

[youngmafbog]

Agree with sunk

[DTCwordfan]

well I am anti Tesla to begin with - electric cars are not yet viable in this country as (i) 65% of UK tricity is still generated by oil and gas (ii) electricity is not an efficient fuel and, never mind the energy loss and emissions in generating it, there are substantial losses on transmissions life (tied to their diameter and distance to travel). Then add in other factors like the charge distance and speed to recharge.

[youngmafbog]

DTC, and the explosive nature of the batteries and the conditions in which people have to work to extract the lithium, nickel and cobalt .

[Sunk]

Mining Cobalt and Lithium is dirty and dangerous, but it probably won’t hamper the adoption of Electric vehicles.
Thousands dying in coal mines didn’t halt steam trains, and hundreds of thousands dying in the Middle East to safeguard oil supplies didn’t see off the motor car.

[youngmafbog]

You are correct it wont.

But when mining for coal no one was being pretentious and all high minded like they are with EV's.

I for one would love to have an electric car - when they resolve the charging and distance problems. Which they will eventually,

The big problem at the moment is that Hydrogen is still in the game so this could all end up like video tapes and one could end up buying the betamax if not careful.

[davebro]

"When a Ford or a Toyota crashes, do they wait for the manufacturer to get in touch?"

There were a multitude of (design fault) fatal car accidents where manufactures & the regulators were far too late to act. Sometimes it takes people to make the first move.

[Togo]

Some reports I read earlier said that the firemen, after numerous attempts, had to ring Tesla asking how to put out the battery fire because it kept reigniting itself after they though they had extinguished it. Multi pileups will be something else then. All a bit "Terminator" isn't it.

[DTCwordfan]

talking to my sister this evening, her OH is in the market for a high-end Porsche or Ferrari....the Porsche contact in Exeter was suggesting that where Porsche is standing, they believe that the future is hydrogen and that's where they are putting in a lot of investment dosh, not electricity, for the reasons stated above inc. the batteries and including overall CO2 balance o.ver the life of the car

[237SJ]

Lithium battery fires can't be extinguished by conventional means. When they are damaged, they suffer from thermal runaway. BCF (for example, used in some industries) won't put out the fire. The only way to do that is to rapidly cool the battery. I don't know how that is going to happen at the roadside in the future.

[Togo]

The thermal runaway mentioned by 237SJ is caused when the battery is physically damaged ... say in a crash, and the laminates and cells are able to bleed power from the charge in ways that should not happen. The resulting local overheating caused then damages, initially undamaged, surrounding structure that does the same. The new electric driverless cars look to have the potential to not only kill you, but cremate you on the spot saving everybody else the trouble.

[Hopkirk]

I would put my money on hydrogen power eventually being the future for motoring. Toyota are pushing ahead with it.

[jno]

it's only a short step from there to running on air, Hopkirk. You know it's going to happen.

[Canary42]

/// the same result as if they did it with a Fiat 500.///

Interesting your choice of car. The original Fiat 500 (which was 499.5cc, not the 1000+cc of the "modern version") way back when I was young and it was all I could afford, had a hand throttle which would hold the engine speed at whatever setting was chosen (an early crude form of cruise control). On occasion I would get into top gear, set the hand throttle, and then stand up on the drivers seat with my upper body out of the sun roof - of course only on traffic free private land ;-)

[ToraToraTora]

sunk: "Telsler are not hiding anything, they have revealed a great deal. The crash wasn’t a defect or malfunction, it was caused by idiots doing something idiotic." - yes, I largely agree it is the nut behind the wheel. I do however think that the industry needs to make it clear that these are not self driving cars. Part of the problem is that they call it things like "self drive" and thick people think means just that. I think it may come to legislation that they have to call it something that does not imply it drives itself. Cruise Plus for example.

[ToraToraTora]

DD:"electricity is not an efficient fuel and, never mind the energy loss and emissions in generating it, there are substantial losses on transmissions life (tied to their diameter and distance to travel). Then add in other factors like the charge distance and speed to recharge." - yes it is a much less efficient use of fossil fuels to generate electricity and use that to run a car than it is to use the fuel directly. The main benefit of electric cars is that it takes the pollution off the roads but it's NOT an efficient use of energy.

[ToraToraTora]

DD: "they believe that the future is hydrogen and that's where they are putting in a lot of investment dosh, not electricity" - the problem there is getting the hydrogen, which is usually stuck to something else, mostly oxygen. To separate the hydrogen takes electricity so that makes hydrogen even worse than electricity, see above. If someone knows a way that hydrogen can be obtained without massive energy input then great (Jim??) but at the moment I fear Hydrogen may not be the answer.