Tesla responds to "bricking" issue
Here's one of the problems that I have with this whole thing:<p>My iPod goes dead all the time, so does my phone, so does my laptop, my camera, my remote, my everything.<p>I think that every single battery-powered device I've ever owned has, at some point, gone "dead" (as in it won't power on).<p><i></i>NONE<i></i> of these things have ever been completely incapacitated because of this.  I've never had to replace my laptop because I let it go flat.<p>I'm sure some of the 5 owners who have had this happened knew that the car would go dead, but I'm sure that <i>all</i> of them figured that that just meant that they would have to charge it.<p>Tesla: here is how to fix this, and I'm asking that you do this on behalf of <i>all</i> electronic vehicle manufacturers (to keep people from being scared off the things by blogs like this).<p>Release a statement that follows the standard 3-step press release of oops:<p>---<p>1) "Own it". -- We fucked up here.  This was our bad.  We were stupid to believe that the general public would understand that letting the battery on their car go dead would cost them $40,000.  This was incredibly stupid of us, and is 100% our fault.  We take responsibility for this.<p>2) "How we're fixing it" -- The 5 people who have had this happen have all been contacted by Tesla motors.  We're shipping a tech and a battery to all of them, and all of their cars will be back on the road by next week.<p>3) "Why this won't happen again" -- From now on, we're including a physical battery disconnect.  A device will attach to the battery terminals that is normally off, and requires that the battery be at 5%[1] charge to close.  If the battery drops below this, it <i>physically</i> disconnects the battery from the rest of the system, and doesn't allow for any parasitic electronics to drain it further.<p>[1]: 5% is a made up number.<p>---<p>Of course this won't happen, but a PR-spectator can dream.<p>Tesla: you bungled this one.  Badly.  You're hurting the entire EV industry.  Suck it up and admit you were wrong.