Elon Musk is obsessive about the design of his supercars, right down to the disappearing door handles. But a series of shocking incidents – from drivers trapped in burning vehicles to dramatic stops on the highway – have led to questions about the safety of the brand. Why won’t Tesla give any answers?
I didn’t yet read the article, but Tesla are in my view the simplest cars around. Electric vehicles generally, are much simpler than ICEs. The whole thing about cells is just plain wrong… all batteries bigger than 20Wh (a big smartphone) are made up of multiple cells. And the batteries are very well protected from external crashes. Thermal runaway is still something that’s being improved on them, but mainly to increase energy density and reduce the other necessary failsafes.
(Just some napkin math: 1 lithium ion cell has around 4V of voltage, most vehicles have a 400V or 800V architecture, so you need at least 100 cells in series to reach that.)
Edit: checked the article: a good summary of the many shady crashes Tesla is covering up, but it looks like assistive driving features and criminal handle design are the main culprits. Generally EV batteries - Tesla’s included - are really safe. But when they do burn, it’s challenging to stop it. It’s such a huge pity that the huge potential of Tesla is being run to the ground this way…
Smaller cells have less energy to expend if something goes wrong, making it easier to control thermal runaway.
Part of the problem with other OEM vehicles is they are using large pouch cells which are prone to being damaged by their very nature, and if something goes wrong there’s significantly more energy per cell to deal with.
People don’t really care about the cells in their car, but they should.
I’ll never own a pouch cell vehicle. Prismatic or cylindrical only.
Edit: and the only reason people were using them years ago was there was no other options with enough supply. It wasn’t because it was the right choice. Many OEMs are now moving away from them.