Tesla firms hot bottoms: TITANIUM armor now bolted to Model S e-cars Tesla is adding a three-level shield of aluminum and titanium to the underside of its Model S e-car to eliminate the possibility of battery blazes and placate US safety authorities. In separate accidents, two of the electric rides burst into flames shortly after running over debris in the road: in each case, whatever they hit …
With a track record of zero deaths or serious, permanent injuries since our vehicles went into production six years ago, there is no safer car on the road than a Tesla.
Am I the only one that instantly thinks of the claims made about Concorde prior to 2000? Concorde always proudly boasted a perfect safety record too, again if you overlook not-so-minor issues - fires for Tesla, rudders falling off for Concorde.
Of course in both cases the "record" is a statistical quirk of relatively small sample sizes and easily moved dramatically by a small number of events - in the case of Concorde of course a single crash was enough to revoke the airworthiness certificates of the entire fleet. Similarly it doesn't take a lot for Tesla's record even on those narrow criteria to go down the toilet.
It probably still is - per flight hours. It is once again a function of lies, lies and damn statistics.
The accident probability in aircraft is proportional to take off/landings, not flight hours. So when you apply "per flight hour" statistics to something that is used only on 8h+ routes you get a very glowing rosy safety picture.
Same as with the Tesla - for the time being it does not see shoddy maintenance by "approved franchises". So compared to the rest of the industry it is a statistical anomaly. I do not see how will Elon manage to maintain this when (and if) it stops being an anomaly and becomes a mass production vehicle which uses the mass production vehicle mainenance infrastructure.
"what sort of freeway were the two affected cars traveling on that had obstructions large enough to puncture a battery compartment from underneath the car?"
I take it that you've never been on I-95 south of Halendale Beach in Florida. If you had, you would not be asking that question. I-75 south of the I-595 interchange in Broward County has similar problems. And, week before last Friday, I-95 at the Sawgrass Express exit had (briefly) all the obstructions you could want. There was a five-care pileup, with two of the vehicles leaving behind all the glass in their rear windows, plus their bumpers, plus their rear light assemblies, plus assorted other parts. Four lanes blocked. This did not prevent one bright young lad on a motorcycle from attempting to blow through the mess at roughly 80 MPH. Notice the magic word 'attempt'. Said motorbike became the sixth vehicle. Great fun was had by all. The authorities _did_ have that section of I-95 cleaned up again in a few hours. From Hallendale Beach south is a permanent mess, though.
Is that normal now-a-days (for software to control the space between the road and the underside of the vehicle)? And if so, could it (or is it) adaptive so that it might, for instance, increase the distance automatically based on how smooth the road is?
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