Tesla owners fuming as they get £17,000 bill to fix car after 'driving in rain'

DeadNinja@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 240 points –
Tesla owners fuming as they get £17,000 bill to fix car after 'driving in rain'
mirror.co.uk
77

A source that's not the daily mirror: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-owners-bill-battery-damaged-ev-scotland-weather-2023-10

Daily mirror was already a low quality source, now they even use "ai" to "embellish" the story (read: add fake details).

They added this to the bottom:

An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story

Thank you, my eyes are still twitching 5 minutes after closing the page 😵‍💫

Thank god there are so many better quality EV choices out there these days.

Even better, look into non-BEV choices. Hydrogen cars are now a thing. But people are just weirdly desiring of a BEV monopoly, with themselves as the ultimate loser.

Why would you want a hydrogen car and still be dependent on gas stations? I'd rather just charge at home using solar panels.

Perhaps people who only have on street parking, and therefore find it difficult/impossible to charge at home.

Have no direct experience but from what I saw on YouTube videos, filling an hydrogen tank seems to take a similar amount of time to charge from 30 to 80% a car at a fast 150kw station

Except that you're forced to fill always at 100% and because it requires an operator for security it's not available 24/7

Maybe it's better for a freight truck as it would require the electricity of a small town to recharge with those megawatt charger connectors

Maybe it depends on where you live, but plenty of city street parking with a charger here, not as cheap as using your own solar energy, but still pretty cheap compared to gasoline.

I live in East London. There’s are quite a few chargers. There certainly aren’t ‘plenty’ in the context of a large-scale switch from petrol/diesel.

Certainly not entire me to get a plug-in yet

Hydrogen is made from water. It too can be made from solar panels. Though probably from some kind of more centralized system than everyone with their own solar panels.

yeah the reason you're getting these downvotes:

water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. it can be split through electrolysis into it's components through the addition of electricity.

if baseband solar had the capacity you could power electrolysis production of hydrogen and it's been proposed in a few places where solar is cheap and land is available.

Science!

yeah science bitches! I honestly had a whole rant fucking raving about how stupid someone could possibly be to think that 'hydrogen is made from water' but walked the dog before replying and let it just go.

I do weep for our future though, because goddamn, I'm a fucking moron. So if I'm the one dishing science to the chuds... we're all fucked

Perhaps you should have considered they don't speak English. Consider these phrases. "Hydrogen is made from water." "Hydrogen can be produced from water." "It too can be made using solar panels." "It can also be produced using solar panels." Syntactically, both sets are very similar, but have very different meanings.

Sometimes we need to take a step back and see if there's a legitimate reason people say or do certain things instead of assuming everyone is hopelessly stupid.

*I don't know if they speak English as a first language, a second, or at all. But just given the odd phrasing, I suspect it was fed through a translator. And Lemmy is more diverse than some other social platforms.

perhaps! I can be a judgemental asshole. But I also figured after the first dozen other people downvoted them I'd at least mention it.

edit: no, looking at their post history, I think they have a fine grasp on english, just not basic physics or chemistry.

I didn't check their history, could be the case.

so you jumped to assume I was the asshole because you lacked complete data.

I see there's lots of that going around so I'll try to treat you with the kindness and respect you deserve.

UNLIKE MR "Hydrogen is made from water. It too can be made from solar panels."

tsk tsk tsk :D

I don't see anywhere that I assumed you were an asshole. I merely pointed out one possibility why something so clearly wrong could have been said that way. And you yourself acknowledged that you hadn't checked to see if that made sense. And now you're jumping to conclusions about the motivations of others again, rather than asking them if that's their motivation. If there's a pattern, I'd say it's that one. And even there, jumping to conclusions doesn't make you an asshole, but your response after doing so might.

...and all of that was written while I ignored the emoticon at the end, so reading more into context is maybe something I should do. ;)

Applesauce is made from apples in the same way hydrogen is made from water.

I appreciate your advocacy for a generous interpretation but I see nothing wrong with the claim hydrogen is made from water.

Wait til they find out about dihydrogen monoxide AKA the drink that 100% of people have and eventually die

I like the idea of EVs because I (and a lot of other people here in California) have a solar system that produces more electricity than what I need day-to-day, so charging the car is effectively free. I don't have an EV yet but will probably buy one next year.

I really like like the Ioniq 5 and 6, but it's kinda ugly at the front and back. I just want an EV that looks like a car, not some futuristic-looking thing.

Don’t you get paid for that extra electricity?

I do but the rate is very low.

The cost of electricity in summer is around $0.45/kWh in peak times and $0.37/kWh in off-peak times. I get 1:1 credits for excess generation, so any overproduction during the day can offset usage at night or on cloudy days.

However, if I have credits left at the yearly true-up, they're only cashed out at around $0.04/kWh. There's more value in using the credits rather than cashing them out.

FCEVs basically mean the same thing, and it will be viable for everyone and not just the rich.

Batteries are only getting cheaper and I have never seen a hydrogen station or even vehicle in my entire life.

You probably didn't see a BEV until the last several years. FCEVs will plunge in cost until they are no more expensive than ICE cars. That will be the real revolution.

How come you know this?

We've seen pushes for hydrogen, hard ones. And yet ultimately they had to concede that the inherent downsides of hydrogen make them only useful in a select few situations, compared to BEVs that are far better fits especially in the small/commute personal car market where their already short charging duration is irrelevant due to the briefness of the trip.

Not everyone is a professional truck or long distance bus driver where hydrogen can play to its strengths. Even with busses, my city has fully electrified busses with gasoline ones only being used as a backup now. The way they do it is by having a slightly larger spare fleet than normal, so busses can charge while others are running, and then swapping them as a bus nears the end of its lap where everyone has to exit anyways. Intra-city busses benefit massively from regenerative braking, after all.

I mean, do humor me, because I thought hydrogen was a fantastic idea, until I actually read up on it and it turns out it's not actually a very good tech, as cool scifi as it sounds at first.

We had pushes for electric cars too and after decades all we had was a few overpriced, underperforming examples that took forever to charge. Electric cars were a non-market-viable novelty for a long time.

I do my homework. It's all about following the evidence.

Toyota has already come out and say that a fuel cell car costs the same as an ICE car to build, at least in theory. But it has very small resource requirements, so it seems self-evident that it is the case.

You don't have to make a compromise. If there's a way to power a car just like a conventional gasoline car, while also being a zero emissions electric car, then there's no reason to oppose the idea.

Most engineers in the car industry actually believe the hydrogen car is the future. And they still do. What you're hearing on social media is just a lot of marketing BS coming from BEV companies. Most of these accounts are Tesla drivers or investors. None of them are being honest.

Toyota has already come out and say that a fuel cell car costs the same as an ICE car to build, at least in theory. But it has very small resource requirements, so it seems self-evident that it is the case.

Isn't one of the big downsides of hydrogen fuel cells the required platinum, even after the improvement of not bonding them to carbon?

You don’t have to make a compromise. If there’s a way to power a car just like a conventional gasoline car, while also being a zero emissions electric car, then there’s no reason to oppose the idea.

Hydrogen is not a zero-emissions thing, and I hope that you didn't pick that up from "sources", because you speak about others going by social media information while - apparently - believing that hydrogen is a zero-emissions system. (neither is BEV, at least not in a well-to-wheel-comparative scenario, mind you)

Most engineers in the car industry actually believe the hydrogen car is the future. And they still do. What you’re hearing on social media is just a lot of marketing BS coming from BEV companies. Most of these accounts are Tesla drivers or investors. None of them are being honest.

What about all the other car companies then, that should have a vested interesent in marketing-wise opposing Tesla, yet even after initial pushes to hydrogen, Toyota and Honda quickly swapped to a near-100% BEV fleet? Wouldn't your logic dictate that if hydrogen was a valid alternative as-is, then companies would lean hard on that as their USP compared to Tesla? Especialy in North America where Tesla is so dominant, but which is also just about the only place where hydrogen vehicles have any existence and hence usable network at all?

Last stats I've seen still had hydrogen at 50%-100% more pollution than gasoline cards while also costing ~2x as much per kilometer for the owner. Of course, in theory all hydrogen can be produced from solar/wind/etc, but:

  • The losses during production and shipping are so big that the amount of energy is absurd.
  • The extra storage and shipping problems are entirely unsolved at the scale personal vehicles would require. Nevermind the further reduction in final efficiency they incur.
  • Right now >90% of hydrogen is produced from methane, as electrolysis is just not a valid source. Without serious technological advancements, switching to hydrogen would actually make things worse.
  • Speaking of making things worse: We worry about batteries in crashes and fires. We mind the pollution from their materials in such cases. Both issues are, at present, worse for hydrogen.

Sure, maybe in 40-100 years, people might scoff at the idea that hydrogen was ever not a valid way of powering a personal vehicle. But at our present technology, all it has going for it is that it sounds quite cool. Hydrogen powered!! 🤘

Wait do you spent all this time denying that hydrogen is going anywhere then in your last sentence admit that in 40 years it might be a default mode of transport?

What time frame did you think we were discussing?

You need grams of platinum. It is not a big deal. And not all fuel cells need platinum.

All EVs are as green as their energy source.

Toyota and Honda have not swapped to a 100% BEV fleet. It is currently what is in vogue, and everyone invest in it. But like the diesel car, that does not imply it is the future. In reality, BEVs are still a niche product and current demand is entirely created via subsidies. The current wave of BEV excitement will not last beyond the end of those huge subsidies.

Most criticisms of hydrogen cars are just marketing from competing technologies. You shouldn't believe them. In reality, hydrogen cars will be the cheaper type of EV, and the fuel will plunge in cost. It is the same story as what happened to wind and solar.

Okay, but why should I believe you? When any source other than you disagrees?

And kind you, like I said, maybe in a few decades hydrogen will be a cool tech. But even ignoring the inherent downsides like greenhouse gas, losses during conversion, issues with storage and handling, we are probably decades away from a usable solution for production, too.

At present, a hydrogen vehicle comes out slightly to moderately worse than a petrol car for the environment while also costing the user significantly more. Can that change? Sure! Will it? Dunno, do you? Mind you, meanwhile BEVs provide a solution that is mildly cheaper to run and moderately to significantly better for the environment. We have a solution, we should use it. If in 40 years or whatever things look different, well, then that will be the case.

How did you react to all green tech in the past? With wind, solar, and even the BEV to some extent, you listen to the supporters and not the detractors. Only after the technology got widely deployed could you listen to real criticisms, mostly from real-world studies or analyses. None of the imagined problems from the detractors ever came true. Hydrogen cars will be the same.

And every green tech got accused of being a secretly dirty technology. It's total BS. Why do you even believe the story that hydrogen vehicles are worse than petrol cars? It is utter gibberish and was the same story as BEVs being accused of being worse than petrol cars.

FCEVs are happening now. People should not fall for the marketing BS that its still far off in the future.

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Battery vehicles were made the hot item over a decade ago by Tesla... The real evolution would be to get rid of car dependency altogether

Not sure if that would be an evolution. That would be like a sea sponge saying “the real evolution would be getting rid of multicellular structures”.

Car dependency is a new thing, and it’s also called “using cars because we vastly prefer that to not using cars”.

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A monopoly is not when a technology is more popular than another technology.

They are aiming to ban all alternatives, or create subsidies in such way that only one idea can exist. That is consistently with a monopoly.

No, it's not. A monopoly is a market situation in which a single entity controls the supply of a product or service. A government can be a monopolist. For instance in many countries the government owns the railway company.

You're describing regulation. That's a whole different topic.

Then you may prefer something like oligopoly. The goal is to have just a few companies that only make one type of car with no other options. Cost of transportation will go much higher. The conclusion is still the same: very little or no consumer choices.

I'm not arguing what the market ought to be like. I just don't agree with your definitions.

It's still something pretty close to a government mandated monopoly. Hell, most Tesla fanboys want literally just Tesla owning the entire car industry. And the Chinese car companies are all being controlled by the Chinese government. It's closer to being one company than you think.

This is confidently incorrect.

The real answer you were looking for was PHEV.

ahh yes, hydrogen. They are standing all around at the dealers waiting to be bought. hm? what? you mean Mercedes did still not manage to fulfill the promise of like 2003 of hydrogen car series in 2023?

I know what you are saying and I also like the idea, but BEV are much less complicated and way more adult yet.

Why not both though? and add phev in the mix?

In the short-term, all types of cars will exist including PHEVs. It is the BEV fanatic that is trying to eliminate all alternatives.

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Designed in California. Reminds me of the missing rain gutter around the boot of the model 3. When you open(ed) it while it was raining, all the water would pour right into your boot, onto your stuff.

Because cars clearly do not need to stand up to rain, like that ever happens anywhere...

Do people read this headline and believe that this is a design flaw? That of all Teslas sold and driven anywhere in the entire world since they were first sold, none have ever been in rain?

There was major flooding around where this Tesla was. Idiots obviously drove it in flood water or it got submerged while parked. This is an insurance problem, not a click bait "herrrr derrrr Elon so stupid" problem.

And if they are stupid enough to not have had insurance on a brand new car, this is a "point and laugh at the idiot crying to the press" problem

There are Teslas fucking everywhere in and near Seattle. If rain was a problem for the cars then there would be zero here, instead they're like every tenth car.

While probably true, Teslas build quality is very questionable. It was probably a little of column A, a bit of column B.

I expect it didn't stand up to three feet of "rain".

This seems a bit fishy to me, I don't buy it.

I reckon the couple had done something stupid in the car like drive it through a fjord ford that was deeper than they thought, or through a flooded section of road and actually did submerge the battery. Multiple times.

Then went to dinner. And the car had enough.

They get the scary quote, then decide to omit the majority of the day's activities when complaining to the local newspaper in order to shame Tesla/Elon to pay up.

A fjord?? Or a ford?

A Tesla could definitely drive through either. lol

Go ahead and drive a Tesla through a fjord and tell me how that goes buddy

meanwhile with a bike the most egregious surprise cost you can get is if your e-bike gets totalled and you have to buy a new one, which would cost like $1000