Tesla Roadster

I've posted about my interest in a Tesla Roadster.  As discussed, it is an all electric sports car run by lithium-ion batteries.  Earlier I expressed concern that the batteries might not last for 100k miles.  There's another concern:  Lithium is a very reactive metal and under the wrong conditions, a lithium-ion battery can burst into flames or explode.  Dell recalled a bunch of batteries for this reason.  Recently there was a case where a laptop burst into flames.   And the Tesla Roadster is going to have 100 times as many cells as a laptop! 

You can imaging that during an accident, cells can be broken open, mangled and crushed.  Other cells may have be shorted out.  Difficult to protect against these problems.  Being an engineer, I'm sure these problems can be overcome, but at what cost?

Comments

[Ken Guru]

Any battery that doesn't require air is best compared to a rocket in that sense that both fuel and oxidizer are on board, and awfully close to each other.
If you mean to drive a rocket - don't be surprised if there are similarities to the real thing!

[Zobeid]

According to Tesla Motors, each battery cell is contained in steel, so that if one ruptures or burns it should not set off any kind of "chain reaction". They claim to have put a great deal of engineering work into making the battery packs safe. They also have a liquid cooling system. . . But that is not so much for safety as to maintain the battery's life span. Apparently high temperatures are bad for them.

Popular Mechanics is now reporting that full battery replacement will cost $10,000. Assuming they didn't get this factoid garbled somehow, it appears to be very good news -- I expected the figure to be much higher!

[Scott]

I attended an event today at Stanford where the CEO of Tesla motors, Martin Eberhard, spoke (VLAB, sponsored by MIT/Stanford). Martin explained the issue of battery safety. Each cell is designed such that if it explodes or catches on fire, it won't be able to affect surrounding cells.

What's more, from a redundancy perspective, 1 or more of the 7,000 cells could fail and the entire array will continue to function. Tesla also warranties the battery pack for 100,000 miles.