This article shows that the author has little knowledge of freeway safety and thus presumably not a ton of knowledge about cars in general. When stopped on a freeway or on ramp and not in the shoulder, one should never exit the vehicle. Especially if one is in the safest car ever tested by NHTSA.<p>Secondly calling tesla roadside is great but the first call should be to 911 for a cruiser to come and at least add some safety with their lights. A stalled car on a freeway on ramp is an emergency situation and by not calling 911 the author was endangering the lives of himself, his son, and anyone else using the on ramp.<p><i>edit</i> my first point was a bit off. If you can exit the vehicle and exit the road without crossing active traffic that can be safe too. Second point still holds.
Some technical background: in addition to the propulsion electrical system, the Tesla has a conventional 12V electrical system for running lights, radio, door locks, computers, etc. This system is always on, unlike the propulsion power which is disconnected by a relay when the car is off.<p>The 12V system has a conventional lead-acid battery which is kept charged when the vehicle is running by an inverter running off the propulsion battery.<p>Presumably, the 12v inverter failed in this story so the lead-acid battery ran down. You'd get results similar in a conventional car where the alternator failed: gradually dimming lights, then suddenly no engine power.
I think the real lesson here is never get in a Tesla driven by an automotive journalist. You have a median time of about two hours until it runs out of power or spontaneously explodes.
This isn't a Tesla-specific point but this article does highlight some of the downsides of cars (both ICE and electric) becoming more high-tech.<p>In an older car, even if there's an engine failure, it should be possible to get the car into neutral and either let it roll or propel it with the starter motor to the side of the road. Similarly the brakes will still work, although they'll be very heavy once the assisted-braking is depleted.<p>Once everything is electronic and drive-by-wire you lose this redundancy - I've heard of new Range Rovers, as one example, being very difficult to tow because if the electrics fail then it's impossible to take it out of gear and to remove the parking brake.
There are few topics on HN in which the reader response will be so predictable. A Tesla didn't work right? The driver is a liar, an idiot, an asshole, or all of them.<p>All cars have issues. Tesla is new-ish tech, so I'd expect a these things to happen for a bit. Furthermore, I think given the cool-factor and price tag, we're just more likely to hear about a greater proportion of the issues than with other cars.
> If the tow truck didn't arrive at exactly when it did, the stalled Tesla would have been nearly invisible to traffic getting on the freeway.<p>It goes to show, even with advanced technology, low-tech items like road flares can be life savers.
My family and I are on a road trip (to northern Wisconsin) to attend a funeral of my wife's aunt, who died suddenly last week. We're driving an old Rav 4, and I'm acutely aware of the danger you can be in if your car suffers some kind of basic problem.<p>Ideally speaking, an electric car should be simpler and less prone to failure than a gasoline vehicle (after all, a gasoline vehicle needs a battery and a starter motor), but it seems that the Tesla has many single points of failure. It probably needs to have at least two completely independent battery systems so that if one fails you at least have half power. The idea that the car could go from drivable to being unable to power its hazard lights in half an hour is truly scary.<p>It seems to me that Tesla needs to incorporate some of the ideas from Space-X (in terms of redundancy) into its cars.
Sounds like this guy is incompetent as a driver, independent of his skill as a car reviewer.<p>Your car breaks down in the highway in California? Call CHP (911 should go there)?<p>Leaving your car visible only from 4-way hazards is...questionable. Flares and/or LED flares and/or marker triangle placed behind the vehicle would allow drivers to notice your disabled vehicle before being a threat. Emplacing flares can be dangerous, though, if traffic isn't already stopped. CHP will do this for you, and is the safest/default option. In civilized parts of the country, commercial truckers or good samaritans may stop to help you if you pull over and have your hood open (I'd personally definitely stop for a Tesla driver, even in LA, just to see what the problem was, and my trunk has emergency stuff like flares, hi-viz jacket, etc..)<p>Getting out of your disabled car stopped in the roadway or on the shoulder is often unsafe, too, although it depends on where exactly this was; if you could walk off the roadway entirely, sure. Otherwise, getting rear-ended while sitting in a car is far better than being run over outside it.
How good are these vehicles at knowing the amount of juice left in the battery? I'm completely ignorant when it comes to electric car battery technology but I can't help but think about experiences with mobile phones and laptop computers where I have been using them and suddenly lost a large amount of juice for no apparent reason. Either something drained the battery very quickly or the system was miscalculating the amount of energy left.<p>Anyway, it's one thing for that to happen when I'm browsing reddit, it's another thing when you're cruising down the highway at 70mph.