Not that proprietary! Tesla and I get our cells from the same place, Panasonic, about a year ago I had to wait for my higher capacity cells because Tesla had bought all the stock. The chemistry can vary quite a lot in the size of cell, also a new breed of 18650 has much higher discharge, more like 8C rather than the 2C of the old. Not singling Tesla out, they are just the most prolific maker of 18650 cars. Sony for example had a lot of laptops catch fire, probably poor battery management programming. I would take your word that Tesla is statistically less likely to catch fire than a normal car, though surprised about diesel cars (actually met a guy 20 years ago who made a third of his income repairing Jag V12 fires). I do believe Tesla owes their customers a greater duty of care to have a better battery management system in their vehicle when it is carrying 7,000 batteries which could go into thermal runaway. There aren't many car fires which need to go into a 24 hour water bath to put them out, but they did need to do that to the Tesla which caught fire earlier this month in Antwerp. Can get an Elise shell into space, but can't produce a safe charging and discharging algorithm? Reminds of the book 'Unsafe at any speed', when people realised it was cheaper to lose a few and make the payouts, than change to more expensive components. I also can imagine it must produce some interesting discussions on charging at Tesla, battery engineers wanting to stick within accepted safety limits, customers wanting as fast as possible. Quite the charging dichotomy. I am probably also old school enough if Tesla believes they can make their car autonomous with half the sensors everyone else believes is needed - they shouldn't really be running into things.
You are right, they always run stories about Tesla catching fire, have never read one about a Prius catching fire.
Above said, the Powerwall was tested by whatever the US fire board is called and found fires won't leave the cabinet. Great news, but again smaller scale than the cars.
Ps I don't blame Tesla for pushing the envelope to get a jump on the competition, I just think now is the time to cross the t and dot the i so their customers are looked after. The test will be when the VW groups arms all release their full electric cars to see if they have issues. Even with their dieselgate record (a tech at end of car life) I would like to think they could and show a safe clean future.
The autocorrect changes 2-C to 'second crack'.
You are right, they always run stories about Tesla catching fire, have never read one about a Prius catching fire.
Above said, the Powerwall was tested by whatever the US fire board is called and found fires won't leave the cabinet. Great news, but again smaller scale than the cars.
Ps I don't blame Tesla for pushing the envelope to get a jump on the competition, I just think now is the time to cross the t and dot the i so their customers are looked after. The test will be when the VW groups arms all release their full electric cars to see if they have issues. Even with their dieselgate record (a tech at end of car life) I would like to think they could and show a safe clean future.
The autocorrect changes 2-C to 'second crack'.


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