Do you know that you must keep your battery charged?

[smoothoperator]

Not sure if this was posted:

http://jalopnik.com/5888100/tesla-documents/gallery/1


By the way, Anyone ever heard the 24/7 alarm? Is it inside the car? Outside horn? A bing or bong? A custom obnoxious anxious sound or is it "pretty"?

not from direct experience but I know that once the Roadster hits this threshold it is impossible to charge the Roadster by merely plugging it in. Tesla must be contacted to "wake up" the system to allow a recharge.

[VolkerP]

not from direct experience but I know that once the Roadster hits this threshold it is impossible to charge the Roadster by merely plugging it in. Tesla must be contacted to "wake up" the system to allow a recharge.

Exactly. If a vehicle needs to be "waked up" by Tesla, many people from the general public will find that very inconvenient - even if the battery pack is *not* bricked and will *not* require a costly replacement not covered by warranty. They will take little comfort in the fact that their vehicle went DEAD in order to prevent it from becoming a BRICK.

Other posts in this thread suggested that the vehicle activates some emergency procedure when running dangerously low on SOC (like SMS alert). They ignore that constant supervision of SOC and active measures when reaching alert condition consume additional energy.

I a perfect world, we'd have a cell that has zero self discharge when disconnected from any parasitic loads and doesn't suffer from extreme temperatures in a low SOC. And the car would predict the point in time when it is re-plugged again, along with the temperatures to endure until then, and manage its pack accordingly.

I think the Tesla engineers gave these considerations a fair thought and constantly refined the solution from the first roadster until today.

Edit: what does the general public expect when reading "not covered by warranty"? To me that means, getting involved with my money.

[JRod0802]

Exactly. If a vehicle needs to be "waked up" by Tesla, many people from the general public will find that very inconvenient - even if the battery pack is *not* bricked and will *not* require a costly replacement not covered by warranty. They will take little comfort in the fact that their vehicle went DEAD in order to prevent it from becoming a BRICK.

Personally, I would take great comfort in the fact that my vehicle went temporally DEAD in order to prevent it from becoming a BRICK.

[smoothoperator]

Personally, I would take great comfort in the fact that my vehicle went temporally DEAD in order to prevent it from becoming a BRICK.

Doesn't work like that...when the car becomes dead its a crap shoot with regards to if the car can be revived or if the battery is bricked.

[strider]

Doesn't work like that...when the car becomes dead its a crap shoot with regards to if the car can be revived or if the battery is bricked.

Sounds to me that w/ Model S and future that the car will enter a kind of hibernation and while it will need to be "woken up" by Tesla it should take a very long time to brick in this state.

[TEG]

Solar panels on cars are a bit of a gimmick as they don't add meaningful range in any reasonable amount of time.
...But... how many would you need to just maintain pack charge? If your car is parked outside perhaps panels could be added that "trickle charge" the pack to keep it from slowly running down...?

[JRP3]

Depending on location and vehicle surface area I think you could put enough solar on a vehicle for between 2-5 miles of range, which really should be plenty to keep your pack healthy, if you are parked outside.

[dsm363]

It sounds like some of these cases are people sticking a car in storage somewhere. In those cases at least a solar panel wouldn't help of course but it's an interesting idea for people leaving their cars out in airport parking lots for 2 months on vacation. I'd really love to know what percentage of the population takes two month vacations and leaves their car at the airport at $10+ per day for long term parking though.

[roblab]

Solar panels on cars are a bit of a gimmick as they don't add meaningful range in any reasonable amount of time.
...But... how many would you need to just maintain pack charge? If your car is parked outside perhaps panels could be added that "trickle charge" the pack to keep it from slowly running down...?

And then some guy would park it in his garage for 2 months.

Is there enough power to run into a battery pack? I understood that they can't even keep the battery topped up. 100 amp 12 volt to run a vent fan. On a bright and sunny day.

[JRP3]

100 amps at 12V to run a fan? That can't be right. I've got a pretty powerful radiator fan in my EV to cool my controller and it draws about 5 amps at 12V.