Batteries again!
“I told 'em, Oldham.”
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It’s honestly a bit suprising because EV battery packs are already pretty heavily built and sealed in multiple places because of the need to pack hundreds of individual cells together and either cool or heat them depending on conditions. They certainly aren’t outright designed for submersion; but cells in sealed metal cases, aluminum coolant channels, some sort of awful looking potting compound all over the place, and a plastic enclosure; plus whatever parts of the vehicle enclose the battery module.
Here is the best teardown I could find on short notice, for reference.
I wouldn’t want to fight with the pitiless agents of insurance about it; but it sure looks like a structure where water damage indicates either fairly heroic abuse or some sort of manufacturing defect: not for amphibious landing purposes, sure; but if that structure is picking up water and gradually corroding because of rain or spray from wet roads it’s not put together correctly; or someone chose a potting compound with extremely poor moisture resistance or something.
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That seems entirely possible at Tesla.
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I think that may be the London Oldham. Up here, we are “The home of the Tubular Bandage”!
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It’s recommended that if it’s other than yellow, you should have a doctor check it out.
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especially because the couple haven’t had access to their car. telsa has been accused of doing things like turning off “autopilot” right before a collision occurs, to lower the numbers of reported autopilot caused collisions. any evidence about an improperly sealed battery has likely already vanished
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Rain in Scotland? Inconceivable! 
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Porque no los dos? Personal vehicles aren’t going anywhere any time soon. There are well-engineered EVs out there, and removing petrol-burning vehicles from the road is a good thing. As long as you’re not replacing them with Teslas, that is.
Given what I’ve learned over the years about their shockingly bad engineering and design, I’m not surprised in the least that hard rain was enough to brick the whole car. I’m also not surprised in the least that they prefer to blame customers instead of admitting fault. This is Musk we’re talking about.
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I had to check as I had a vague notion that I’d seen the factory whilst motor cycling about the North West (I took part 1 of the test in Rochdale) during the early 80’s when I was a training in Liverpool. The original company was in Oldham. The name is now used by a distributor.
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California engineers: “Rain, what is this thing called ‘rain’? You mean to tell me that water just falls from the sky, in quantity? And people want to drive while this is happening? Sounds pretty unlikely to me.”
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Just driving through the endless pouring rain here (same storm as Scotland) and saw a pickup truck. Made me think that if they ever sell one here, pickups aren’t really mainstream - you want a van or a trailer in general but I guess people are starting now as it’s cool but useless - but if they ever sell that thing here, it will function, briefly, as a swimming pool for the kids.
The fucking point of this shit?
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When I lived down in the south of England, one of my neighbours had what amounted to a pickup truck. In fact he had a couple of methods of changing the back end of the vehicle. There was a sliding door affair which covered it for inclement weather, and preventing unwanted swimming pools. There was also a canopy which covered the whole back end and made it into a regular truck. I’m not a petrol-head so I don’t know the details, but I’m sure these options are available in the U.S.A. When I was in Rhiyadh in Saudi, Toyota pickups were everywhere, often with a dozen Philippino or Yemeni labourers riding in the back, and sometimes just burnt-out wrecks at the side of the road…
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Because you did not tick the box for that software option to be switched on? I’m sure they’ll work if you pay Tesla for the upgrade. 
(WHAT? - That’s the entire rationale behind their long-term business model, isn’t it?)
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Here’s a video of the original Nissan Leaf showing how it’s designed to be safely driven through deep standing water (in Japanese, unfortunately). Not all electric cars are sensitive to water.
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There is a red rain warning tomorrow. I hope it is just beetroot.
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