On cold-testing cars... I grew up in Michigan, at a time when the US auto industry was king. Friends of mine worked for various automakers. They each had huge environmental test chambers that could be adjusted for anything from -40 deg.F deep freezes to 140 deg.F deserts, howling winds, blizzards, driving rain, and altitudes from Death Valley to Pike's Peak. That way, they could find out how their cars would fare with weather in the real world.
This headed off many problems, at least when the cars were new. But as you might expect, there were cases where the environmental chambers were over-booked, or someone changed a part without re-testing, or testing one car didn't reveal that 50% of that model would have problems. A friend related one incident where there was a blizzard and -40 deg.F temperatures forecast for Houghton MI. GM had engineers drive a few cars up there for testing. They stayed at a motel, and the next morning, none of the cars would start. Not from a battery problem; but because the emission control computers were dead. My friend opened up the emission control computer, placed his hand on the chips to warm them up, and the car started. It turned out that a one hour at -40 deg.F wasn't long enough to cool everything down; but overnight was. Big companies only tend to learn from their own mistakes (not others). The traditional automakers have learned their lessons over a very long time. The engineers would complain about stupid tests that only held things up, but that were mandated to prevent past mistakes. Tesla is a young company. Perhaps they don't yet see the reasons to do much environmental testing. So it's going to take them time to make their own mistakes, and learn from them. Excellence does not require perfection. -- Henry James -- Lee A. Hart https://www.sunrise-ev.com _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
