Tesla Model 3

As of April, nearly a quarter of Tesla's Model 3 deposits in the U.S. had been refunded, according to Second Measure credit card analysis.
8 percent led to a purchase (of any Tesla model)
https://www.recode.net/2018/6/4/17414496/nearly-a-quarter-of-teslas-model-3-reservation-deposits-in-the-u-s-have-supposedly-been-refunded
https://twitter.com/ranimolla/status/1003623789324890112

It seems the number of reservations is still growing or at least holding strong at over 450k. Tesla hasent even tried to sell the model 3 yet. But there is always people who second guess their order and cancel as well there is a few afraid of loosing the us Tax credit.

So Tesla delivered 9,220 EVs for May. Tesla was over one third of all plug-in sales alone! The next six combined are only 8,975, and only 2,701 of those are straight EV. All the rest don't amount to dog droppings.

https://insideevs.com/may-2018-plug-in-electric-vehicle-sales-report-card/

[youtube]VZ4IHfUqGVU[/youtube]

Tesla goes up in flames out of the blue, driver only knew about it after others flagged his attention and told him to pull over..
So there ya go, I think we all wondered about this, in that it goes off just like a giant lipo pack.
https://youtu.be/aCEsq44kDTw

[youtube]aCEsq44kDTw[/youtube]

Nasty!
Are you sure its not one of those gas fuelled "Anti Hijacking". systems some south african dudes install

Seems tesla has removed the two fuses normally found in 18650 cells ( cid fuse and the other one I forget the name of), the only protection at the cell level is the thin fuseable link. Seems the 2170 cells also dont have the internal fuses either ( one is pressure based the other one is temperature based).
Having some sort of fuse that is temperature dependent I think might be a good idea.
Ideally knowing exact temp and voltage of each cell at all times would be nice but is technically very difficult .

You know that wasn't a model 3? No 2170 cells at all.

whatever said:

Seems tesla has removed the two fuses normally found in 18650 cells ( cid fuse and the other one I forget the name of), the only protection at the cell level is the thin fuseable link. Seems the 2170 cells also dont have the internal fuses either ( one is pressure based the other one is temperature based).
Having some sort of fuse that is temperature dependent I think might be a good idea.
Ideally knowing exact temp and voltage of each cell at all times would be nice but is technically very difficult .

Click to expand...

Yeah also they did not remove anything from the 18650 cells Tesla/Panasonic designed their own cells. 18650 just determines the size. It does not tell you anything about whats inside. The official story is not in on that car yet. But I have seen ICE cars catch fire for no appearant reason as well and its about 10x more common per Miles driven!

The points to consider are .....
1) Tesla cells can ignite and fuel a serious fire... (there have been doubt that they are flammable)
2) What is the recommended way of dealing with a pack fire such as that one in the video ?
The difference between a battery pack fire and a conventional ICE fire is ..
....the ICE fire can be controlled and extinguished using conventional methods and materials (water, foam, powder, sand etc)...
.....but extinguishing a fire inside a battery pack is practically impossible due to its chemical nature and restricted access to the seat of the fire.

Hillhater said:

The points to consider are .....
1) Tesla cells can ignite and fuel a serious fire... (there have been doubt that they are flammable)
2) What is the recommended way of dealing with a pack fire such as that one in the video ?
The difference between a battery pack fire and a conventional ICE fire is ..
....the ICE fire can be controlled and extinguished using conventional methods and materials (water, foam, powder, sand etc)...
.....but extinguishing a fire inside a battery pack is practically impossible due to its chemical nature and restricted access to the seat of the fire.

Click to expand...

The model S is designed to Vent the fire in the location it did in the video.
If you can remove the heat from a cell you can usually stop it from catching fire. The best trick is usually lots of water.
Maybe a C02 extinguisher built into the pack would help.

The new 21700 cells have less cobalt in the cathode and its replaced with nickel, From what I gather it raises the energy density of the cell but has less reliability, so you can say theres a cost vs safety factor and the higher capacity cells look more attractive on paper but in real life not so much.

It makes sense on a budget car to use budget techniques, All types of car catch fire no biggie but let's face it the spot light is on electric big time with the media hype we see I hate current day news it's everywhere and full of shit, take me back 20 years with no mobile phones or emails just letters and a phone box up the road simple times.

The problem is there been a lot of stupid claims over the years about electric such as less moving parts so less service intervals when the truth is these things are in and out of the service centre like a fat man at McDonald's same as the ice car.

It's stupid to say there's less maintenence required everything that has great responsibility with life in its hands should go through regular inspections i wouldn't jump on a race track for long with that attitude.

Bit of info on the chemistry.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/06/19/how-battery-chemistry-assumptions-distort-nickel-and-cobalt-demand-forecasts/amp/

Ianhill said:

The problem is there been a lot of stupid claims over the years about electric such as less moving parts so less service intervals when the truth is these things are in and out of the service centre like a fat man at McDonald's same as the ice car.

It's stupid to say there's less maintenence required everything that has great responsibility with life in its hands should go through regular inspections i wouldn't jump on a race track for long with that attitude.

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What exactly are you going to take it in for to get inspected?

Are you going to open up the main pack and pull every 2170 cell apart and xray them? Look at them under a microscope?

Truth is there is far less maintenance required for these cars. I know many who have both leafs and Tesla's and have never had to take them in for anything. The things you hear about is the people who complain you don't here about those who don't. People are used to the BS with a ICE. But when something like a Model S door handle sticks its the end of the world.

As for keeping an eye on the battery that is what the computer onboard is for. You will never get it to be any safer by taking it in to be inspected.

Ianhill said:

The new 21700 cells have less cobalt in the cathode and its replaced with nickel, From what I gather it raises the energy density of the cell but has less reliability, so you can say theres a cost vs safety factor and the higher capacity cells look more attractive on paper but in real life not so much.

Click to expand...

Do you have some legit specs on 21700 Tesla cell you can share? What is the energy density of 21700 cell?

Ianhill said:

The problem is there been a lot of stupid claims over the years about electric such as less moving parts so less service intervals when the truth is these things are in and out of the service centre like a fat man at McDonald's same as the ice car.

It's stupid to say there's less maintenence required everything that has great responsibility with life in its hands should go through regular inspections i wouldn't jump on a race track for long with that attitude.

Click to expand...

So far I have owned two EV's and two hybrids. Zero maintenance on the EV's. Hybrids required only oil changes.

Overall, EV's do indeed require less maintenance.

The new 21700 cells have less cobalt in the cathode and its replaced with nickel, From what I gather it raises the energy density of the cell but has less reliability, so you can say theres a cost vs safety factor and the higher capacity cells look more attractive on paper but in real life not so much.

Click to expand...

The video posted was of a Tesla Model S fire which uses the older (18650 LiCo) cells.

The inspection will happen for the same reasons every other car in the uk does after its three years of age, corrosion and metal fatigue, general aging of rubber suspension components and alignment the list goes on, granted this is of concern to both ice and electric cars.

I'm no hater of the tech that's why I belong to an electric forum but I do have concern for safety of myself and others around me that's why I check my car regularly as the computer does not have sensor input for every occuramce or ability to think outside it's box that's why accidents do and will continue to happen even if it's at a reduced rate comparable to human nothing is perfect !

So when sabotage occurs in Film/TV it's about someone trying to move ahead by making someone or something fail. I wonder what this is really about. But I'd say the statement that it PROVES the guy shouldn't be promoted is quite right:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/19/technology/tesla-fire-musk-note/index.html

Who knows how the guy drove the car or his regular habits, He may like to run the battery dead flat regularly and then enter ludicrous mode hot straight off the super charger.
Admitted the cars gonna analyse it's data and limit power according and also cool as needed but these cars do get a lot of abuse showing the old 0-60 trick.

Dauntless said:

So when sabotage occurs in Film/TV it's about someone trying to move ahead by making someone or something fail. I wonder what this is really about. But I'd say the statement that it PROVES the guy shouldn't be promoted is quite right:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/19/technology/tesla-fire-musk-note/index.html

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Its a great article and video that one.. Here it is, embeddable on YT

As a lot of articles have pointed out, Elon spent around a billion dollars to robotify the other half of the factor where car makers have long tried and failed. He was told it wouldn't work but he just had to try to see for himself, hurting production.

I think he knew the attempt to ridiculously robotify would probably fail but he had to see it for himself and he knows he can get away with it because of the insane valuation of the Tesla stock.

Normally when companies spend huge amounts of money trying to make folks unemployed they are disliked (maybe the motive of the saboteur) but this is not the case for Tesla, its the bias that comes when people like something, it triggers the tribal part of the brain and lets it take over.

It's the same with green energy, even though when you go digging into it and find none of it is green at all, as long as on the surface its likable then its accepted. Despite everything from radioactive sludge lakes 10km2 wide for the rare earth elements like Neodymium, or the African kids in DRC digging up cobalt, its been pretty well and truly proven people do not really care if it doesn't affect them or their favored political powers.
https://youtu.be/w87LBiXwwdE
[youtube]w87LBiXwwdE[/youtube]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design#Gearless_wind_turbine
"turbines require 600 kg of permanent magnet material per megawatt", most windturbines are 3MW with the biggest being 8MW
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/#3a24affb121c
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/17/if-renewables-are-so-great-for-the-environment-why-do-they-keep-destroying-it/#6174cf7e3a1c

I think I have become more fascinated by renewable energy more because its a window into how selfish and stupid humans are than anything else. And of course how MSM just play with our minds and attitudes with this stuff, like stringable puppets as equally effectively than the North Korean regime can.

There is enough momentum via retail investors and excitement in EV buyers that he knows someone could nuke bomb the Tesla factory and just keep going, lets just built two factories in its place, yay!

There is enough exuberant valuation in the Tesla sharemarket stock and lined up retail investors that capital raisings and dilution of creating more stock could give Tesla at least another $100 billion over time before investors have truly had enough, so that's 15 years at least worth of money to try out new things as long as Tesla remains exciting enough to investors.
The momentum is huge so I don't expect to see Tesla fail any time soon, but I most certainly wouldn't be a shareholder either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFeuPh9eAQ
[youtube]kYFeuPh9eAQ[/youtube]

TheBeastie said:

Its a great article and video that one.. Here it is, embeddable on YT

As a lot of articles have pointed out, Elon spent around a billion dollars to robotify the other half of the factor where car makers have long tried and failed. He was told it wouldn't work but he just had to try to see for himself, hurting production.

I think he knew the attempt to ridiculously robotify would probably fail but he had to see it for himself and he knows he can get away with it because of the insane valuation of the Tesla stock.

Normally when companies spend huge amounts of money trying to make folks unemployed they are disliked (maybe the motive of the saboteur) but this is not the case for Tesla, its the bias that comes when people like something, it triggers the tribal part of the brain and lets it take over.

It's the same with green energy, even though when you go digging into it and find none of it is green at all, as long as on the surface its likable then its accepted. Despite everything from radioactive sludge lakes 10km2 wide for the rare earth elements like Neodymium, or the African kids in DRC digging up cobalt, its been pretty well and truly proven people do not really care if it doesn't affect them or their favored political powers.

Click to expand...

Lots of fallacies with all of this like many of your statements.

#1 how would other car manufactures even understand how to put something so different together let alone give advice on how to do it.
#2 Tesla does not use Neodymium
#3 They are down to 3% cobalt and will be at 0% with the next gen batteries.

TheBeastie said:

It's the same with green energy, even though when you go digging into it and find none of it is green at all, as long as on the surface its likable then its accepted. Despite everything from radioactive sludge lakes 10km2 wide for the rare earth elements like Neodymium,

Click to expand...

You know, coal fly ash is radioactive in the same way that rare earth metal mine tailings are. Only there are many more tons of fly ash being produced, both in total and per GWh.

I think that most people who favor green energy also favor energy conservation, and practice it to one degree or another. Most of the folks I see openly promoting fossil energy over renewables are the same ones driving huge trucks to work and complaining about efficient light bulbs.

No technology is absolutely clean. The goal is to reduce our negative impact on the earth, and green energy is just shorthand for the forms of energy that are best at doing that. I don't see what your legitimate beef could be with it, given that today's green energy technologies are already better than the alternatives and improving continuously.

The most destructive gluttony and overreach that people do for selfish reasons is having multiple children. If we can get over that, everything else will be okay.

Two articles that touch on both efficient transportation, and population.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/talking-about-overpopulation-is-still-taboo-that-has-to-change/2018/06/18/ca7c1838-6e6f-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html?utm_term=.610e69dc33af

TheBeastie said:

Normally when companies spend huge amounts of money trying to make folks unemployed they are disliked . . . .

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Every company in the US has done this. Every one. Singling out Tesla because you don't like them is pretty silly.

It's the same with green energy, even though when you go digging into it and find none of it is green at all, as long as on the surface its likable then its accepted. Despite everything from radioactive sludge lakes 10km2 wide for the rare earth elements like Neodymium, or the African kids in DRC digging up cobalt . . .

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. . . it's still better than the alternatives (like coal.) Coal kills at least 8000 people a year from pollution alone in the US, and thousands of people die, many children, die mining coal throughout the world.

I think I have become more fascinated by renewable energy more because its a window into how selfish and stupid humans are than anything else. And of course how MSM just play with our minds and attitudes with this stuff, like stringable puppets as equally effectively than the North Korean regime can.

Click to expand...

I think support for coal power is an excellent example of why Trump loves uneducated voters.

There is enough momentum via retail investors and excitement in EV buyers that he knows someone could nuke bomb the Tesla factory and just keep going, lets just built two factories in its place, yay!

Click to expand...

That's going to happen without any nukes, no matter what sort of fantasies you harbor. EVs are growing in popularity, and manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand.

The momentum is huge so I don't expect to see Tesla fail any time soon, but I most certainly wouldn't be a shareholder either.

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Good for you! I've tripled my money so far with Tesla stock. But you keep yours in coal stocks; someone has to.

Chalo said:

You know, coal fly ash is radioactive in the same way that rare earth metal mine tailings are. Only there are many more tons of fly ash being produced, both in total and per GWh.

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Ah, coal fly ash. Also called "Top Ash." They catch "Most" of that with filters. How much is most? That's one of those wonderful arguments that arguers love so much because what the other guy says can't be proved anymore than what the arguer says, but the arguer demands his be considered "Right."

So Top Ash is often used to reduce the amount of cement used in making concrete. Instead of a full (94 pounds per cubic foot) of Portland Cement, they'll use (63 pounds per cubic foot) 1 part Top Ash to 2 parts cement. Saves 10 pounds, but also the Top Ash somehow behaves like cement and reduces the lime reaction that releases a pollutant. You can buy that Top Ash the filters are collecting for this and other purposes. Depending on the uses you use more or less of the Top Ash and more or less than the usual aggregate, but there are uses where the concrete with Top Ash is better.

Do you have a similar pollution reducing use for the mining tailings? There are whole stories/rest of the stories to EVERYTHING that people refuse to recognize. Unless it's convenient to them at the moment.

Chalo said:

The most destructive gluttony and overreach that people do for selfish reasons is having multiple children. If we can get over that, everything else will be okay.

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Don't go there. You're also saying that it's destructive gluttony and overreach to save these kids at the border. Which I expect will be said directly now that the President has issued an executive order to reunite them with their families. And we all know who the anti's are that will need to say it.

You'll make much better progress if you stop trying to pretend your way is perfect while the other way is perfectly evil. Learn to handle it humorously. What do Tesla's and Spinal Tap's drummers have in common? Spontaneous Combustion.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/06/18/mary-mccormack-tesla-fire-twitter-cnnmoney-orig.cnnmoney

Dauntless said:

So Top Ash is often used to reduce the amount of cement used in making concrete. Instead of a full (94 pounds per square foot) of Portland Cement, they'll use (63 pounds per square foot) 1 part Top Ash to 2 parts cement. Saves 10 pounds, but also the Top Ash somehow behaves like cement and reduces the lime reaction that releases a pollutant. You can buy that Top Ash the filters are collecting for this and other purposes. Depending on the uses you use more or less of the Top Ash and more or less than the usual aggregate, but there are uses where the concrete with Top Ash is better.

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Yep. And they make cinderblocks with it, which often go to making schools.

Coal - making American schools just a little more radioactive.

Don't go there. You're also saying that it's destructive gluttony and overreach to save these kids at the border. Which I expect will be said directly now that the President has issued an executive order to reunite them with their families.

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Yeah, that was pretty funny. He changed US policy to a zero tolerance policy; no common sense or flexibility allowed. By doing this, by separating families, his administration claimed that would scare away people from trying to cross the border. Then when people realized what Trump had done he claimed that he didn't do it, and then that he couldn't change it; that only Congress could change the law and it was the Democrat's fault. And then he changed it.

And I bet you still believe everything he says.

Gotta start thinking for yourself, and not just swallow everything the right wing media tells you.

But that's getting away from the topic at hand, which is the Model 3. No fires of Model 3's that I know of yet. About 150,000 regular (gas) cars catch on fire every year. (Including my college roommate's car, in a rather dramatic fashion while he was driving it one day.) It will be interesting to see which has a lower rate of spontaneous combustion.