Category Archives: Model S

Posts specific to the Model S

Merry Christmas from Rancho Mirage, future home of Barack & Michelle

 

We’re off to Rancho Mirage to visit an old friend of Ellen’s for the weekend.  We’ll charge our Tesla in Temecula and in Indio on the way.  It will be good for Ellen to meet Bonnie again, it’s been years.  I’m told I’ve met her, but….

I’ll write more about Rancho Mirage once we’ve arrived.  It is quite the coincidence that our president is considering a move to Rancho Mirage.  I wonder if there will be security in place while we visit.  Probably not, but you never know.

For me this is a treat.  I’ve never visited either Palm Springs or Palm Desert. Big Fun.  And re-acquainting with Bonnie will be great too.

Today we spent some of our morning with Jen and her new baby, Henry.  He’s a gas.  He’s learning that those funny things are his arms and legs and he’s moving them about with abandon.  He’s a happy child, mimicking facial expressions, smiling, and clutching tight with his little fingers.  He’s making noises that will soon be his first words.

Marty, Henry’s dad & Jen’s husband, started a software company that over the decade has become very successful.  He and Jen moved into a Mansion that needs significant work.   The remodel of the butler & maid quarters that sit over and beside the detached garage is nearly complete.  In a few weeks, they will move in and begin remodeling the main house.  This is an enormous undertaking.  The end result will be spectacular.

Long distance driving with the latest Tesla Navigation Update

We recently drove from San Francisco to Springdale Utah, and again from San Francisco to San Diego in our 2014 Model S.  The automobile is fantastic.  We have a 60 KWH battery which is the low end of Tesla’s offering.  We get around 196 miles on a full charge now.  That’s down from 208.  Some of that is battery wear and some could be changes in the projected distance algorithm.  The car is so comfortable that long distance driving is a breeze.   We hope from supercharger to supercharger on our trips.  Charging at a supercharger is free for life for any Model S owner who takes delivery before January 1, 2017.  After that date Tesla will provide 1000 miles of free charging and charge a fee for supercharger use thereafter. 

It had been over a year since we last drove our “S” long distance and there have been some welcome changes.  First the navigation application can handle a long distance destination.  The application selects optimal superchargers to stop at along your route and even includes an estimated time to charge.  In the past I had done this calculation by hand.  It seems that the nav. app calculates range and charge consumption based on some “standard” speed.  I tend to drive faster than whatever magic speed the app uses which results in less charge when I stop at a supercharger and therefore more charge time.  I would love, love, love having an adaptive app that takes my average speed on the last leg to project time/distance/charge for the next leg.  That would be great.

More startling than the new navigation application is Tesla’s supercharger network build-out.  Where there were five or six superchargers on our route to San Diego, there are now fourteen of them.  There was a dead zone on highway 15 going to Las Vegas.  That is gone now with the addition of a supercharger at Barstow, one at Primm, and one in Las Vegas.  There’s even a supercharger in St. George, Utah making a trip to Zion from SF easily doable.   There was a dead zone going to Eureka from San Francisco and that too is gone with superchargers installed at Ukiah and Eureka!

Thinking about it, this is necessary if the Model 3 is to succeed.  Still there are not sufficient superchargers to service a massive fleet of them.  Tesla has between 373,000 and 400,000 pre-orders for the Model 3.  If 250,000 of them are delivered in the US, Tesla will have to increase their supercharger build-out to avoid long waits at the chargers. 

It is fascinating to wake up one morning and have your car’s features enhanced or changed significantly.  In addition to the navigation function, the map was expanded make use of the icons atop the display and the music application was completely redesigned.  I am still learning how that works.

I only wish that Tesla could retrofit the self driving hardware into the older Model S’s.  That would be cool, but not cool enough to have me trade up or give up life long free supercharging.

Ron

Tesla Model S first service

Wow, I brought my Model S in for service last month. They upgraded the firmware, replaced a pano roof track which had a very slight rip in it, and ran diagnostics on the car.

The Palo Alto service center gave me a P85+ for a loaner. This was the high performance model before the P85D was released. The 85+ is a very fast car. The two times I stomped on it “just to see” I went from surprised, to shocked, to oh crap I’ll get a ticket in this thing. I was quite happy to get back in my 60.

Service kept my car overnight because the glue/sealer for the pano channel had to setup. There was no problem with the car, they replaced the windshield wipers, the charcoal filter, went over the car, and there was no charge for service (it is pre-paid for 4 years up-front). I have had nothing done to the car for the past year: no tune ups, no oil changes, nothing. Just plug it in overnight and go. It has over 13K miles on it.

The car is wonderful to drive and will most likely continue to be maintenance free for a decade.

Electric Cars update

We love our Tesla S. We have driven to San Diego and back twice now. The car is so quiet and smooth, it is like taking a trip in a music room.The car can be setup to charge late at night when electric rates are lowest. We find we do not charge the car but a few times a week if that.

After getting the Tesla, we hardly ever drove our Subaru, which was our workhorse. We decided to replace the WRX with another electric car, clearly not a 2nd Tesla (waaaay to expensive), but rather considered a Fiat 600e. They are a cute small car for zipping around town, or so I thought. The test drive was a big disappointment. Coming from solidly built moderately fast cars, the 600e felt like a tin can with a undersided motor attached. It did nothing particularly well. Acceleration, handling, braking were all fair. There happened to be a Nissan dealer just down the street from the Fiat dealer and we test drove a Leaf. What a difference. The leaf is a real car, acceleration and braking are good (though the car’s torque steer on hard acceleration was a surprise), handling is better than average. After crunching the numbers, we found the leaf is actually affordable.

Perhaps many people do not know about the incentives available for electric car purchases. Until California discontinues the program, the state will mail a check for $2,500.00 to anyone who purchases an electric vehicle. The federal government provides a $7,500.00 tax credit for the purchase of an electric car. Being a tax credit favors those who owe over $7,500 in taxes, not the best plan to further electric car adoption nor is it equitable. Still that is $10,000.00 back from the government against the purcahse price of the car. Then the manufacturer provided a $2,500.00 rebate AND the dealer whacked another $4,000.00 off the price of the car. Sooooo, a $34,000.00 new automobile’s price came down to $17,500.00. The 2002 Subaru sold for $7,500.00, which results in a net cost of $10,000.00 for a brand new car. To top it off, the dealerl provided financing at ZERO PERCENT! No cost to borrow the money. And the kicker?? It’s an electric car that can use the HOV lanes in California. There’s nothing quite like zipping past traffic in the HOV lane. As more people car pool and more EVs come on the road, the HOV lane will eventually be just like any other lane, but that’s a good thing for progress/the environment.

The leaf is not a Tesla. It has an 80mi range, which can be extended by driving slowly. It works well for short trips and with the availability of fast chargers, the car can be recharged in less than an hour when necessary. There have been a few instances where the car could not make it home without a charge. Finding chargers in the greater bay area is no problem, though it does require planning ahead to be sure you can actually get to the charger.

I’ve recently put roof racks on the Leaf to carry kayaks for touring local waterways. We’ll see how having limited range and added wind resistance works with kayak trips.

 

Ron

Electric Cars

It’s been a while.

We did purchase our Tesla Model S and took delivery in March. We went everywhere in it, including a trip to San Diego and back. We love the quiet power of this electric car, we never drove our Subaru.

In California electric vehicles can use the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes (was commuter lane) with just the driver in the car. This makes an electric vehicle a great choice for commuting. We thought, why not get an electric car for commuting and jettison the Subaru. Don’t get me wrong, we love our Subaru and drove it everywhere for 12 years. Lately it’s been just sitting there. Last week we sold the Subie and purchased a Nissan Leaf. It’s all electric. It is very different than the Tesla is, but it is the perfect commuter car. Most noteworthy, the state of California provides a $2,500.00 rebate for the purchase of an electric vehicle and the federal government provides a $7,500.00 tax credit for the purchase of one. That’s $10,000.00 off the purchase price of the car and that made a big difference in our thinking.

Now I’m considering the cost of solar. It will. pay for itself, but over an 8-10 year time frame. If you factor in the lost ROI had the cash for the solar array been invested, solar may never pay for itself. However, the issue is not just the bottom line. It has to do with using clean energy, getting off the grid, and not paying PG&E for energy. I’m not yet sure which way I’ll want to go and I’ll have to get approval from my better half.

We are making big steps toward our plan of reducing our monthly cash flow and spending a portion of the year travelling. Until then, I’ll be checking in as “things” change.

Tesla S update

Ellen received an email from Caitlin @ Tesla Motors this morning. An option is being added to the wood trim on interior. Earlier the wood grain went vertically. Tesla is optionally installing the interion wood in a horizontal wood grain. We went with the horizontal. It looks like it will emphasize the width of the dashboard and of the automobile.

I do not see this as a big difference, but was surprised that Tesla emailed to give us the option.

Also today, I dropped a pair of old tires off at Custom Alignment in Mountain View for recycling. Some time ago I had wanted to replace my front “extreme contact” tires on my Subaru WRX and keep the rears, but the tires were not available. I replaced all 4 tires with michelines and kept the continentals for later use. Well the continentals were discontinued. Sometime in the past four or five years I discovered that old tires are unsafe, the rubber disintegrates over time and can suddenly delaminate. Today I took the old tires to Custom Alignment to be recycled. These guys are great and do exceptional alignment work. In passing I asked if they had ever seen a Tesla in for tire replacement. Tesla had done all tire work in their service centers (SC), but recently changed their policy.

The custom alignment guy (Dave was not there) said they had replaced rear tires on an S with just 6000 miles on it and there was a problem with the Tesla S rear alignment that could have to do with raising the car’s height programmatically via satellite (cell phone/wi-fi actually). This is plausable as the S automatically lowered at highway speed for better mileage, but with the recent colision and fire issue they could actually be raising the car at speed). I “googled” Tesla S rear tire wear and there is a thread on Tesla’s website about excessive tire wear on the 21″ high performance tires. It does not appear to have to do with raising/lowering the car (at least not yet). It looks like read camber on some of the S models from the factory is set too negative. Some people stated that they are seeing the tire cord on the inside 20% of the tire with little wear on the outside. This is an issue, for sure.

I am getting the 19″ wheels/tires, but I’ll be looking for tire wear in the first 10-20K miles.

Here’s an article about the Tesla S suspension, geekie to be sure. It shows that serious thought went into the design of the suspension system for the sedan. This is not just a car with a bolt-on electric drive train.

http://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/track-tests/2012-tesla-model-s-signature-performance-suspension-walkaround.html

 

Ron

Texas and Tesla

While reviewing information about Tesla on-line, I came across this article:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/23/why-did-texas-put-the-brakes-on-tesla-motors/ which is amazing to me. It amazing not because it presents new information about Tesla, but because it demonstrates how political the issue of electric cars and government has become in the U.S.

The article is pretty straight forward. The video was stripped, but it can be viewed here: http://www.boykotx.org/why-texas-banned-tesla-motors-spoiler-because-we-dont-have-campaign-finance-reform/ (along with a similar, but slanted article).

What I find most facinating is the commentary. It includes detractors who spew outright lies. Libertarians who want no government intervention in anything. Anti-electric folks. 10th ammendment folks. The full gambit of political opinion.

Some anti-arguments seem to make sense until you think about it. Like the fellow who states the car is environmentally unfriendly because the battery can only be charged 1000 times. That’s 1000 full cycle charges (or many more short cycle charges). It translates into 300,000 miles. Yes at 300,000 miles the battery may have to be replaced. Seems reasonable to me. Also the batteries are fully recycleable. The lithium will be recovered.

Or there’s the guy who called Tesla a “government welfare case”. There is some truth there: Tesla took a government loan, made all the milestones for the loan, and repaid the loan. Yes it was repaid in part with monies garnered from the sales of energy credits. That however is not “welfare”, it is making use of a government program and providing other companies with energy credits that they need. The fellow implied that the entire $500M loan was repaid with energy credits, which is absurd.

One fellow stated “The government should not be giving money or benefits to any corporation, company, or business”. Sounds reasonable, but GM would have gone out of business but for government intervention. And the government had a hand in both the railroad expansion in the 1800s and the interstate freeway system in the 1940’s and 50’s. The government exists to provide for its people and from time to time that requires aiding business sectors.

One bozo stated the car costs $300,000.00, right! Another stated “Tesla Motors is a pet project of Obama’s” ??? Another suggests “this (Tesla not selling through dealers) is COMMUNISM-100%”

All this vitriol over a new U.S. automobile company that is producing last year’s car of the year.

How can people be so badly misinformed, or self delusional? The comments are a facinating read and a statement about American political polarization.

Ron

Tesla once again

There have been three fires in Tesla S model electric automobiles. All three were caused by high speed colisions with debris on the highway. I intend to purchase an S model early next year as my plans this past year have come to fruition.

Here is Elon Musk’s latest comment on Tesla, the S model, and the future.

Ron

________________________________________________________

 

November 18, 2013
The Mission of Tesla
By Elon Musk, Chairman, Product Architect & CEO

Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible. If we could have done that with our first product, we would have, but that was simply impossible to achieve for a startup company that had never built a car and that had one technology iteration and no economies of scale. Our first product was going to be expensive no matter what it looked like, so we decided to build a sports car, as that seemed like it had the best chance of being competitive with its gasoline alternatives.

I suspected that this could be misinterpreted as Tesla believing that there was a shortage of sports cars for rich people, so I described the three step “master plan” for getting to compelling and affordable electric vehicles in my first blog piece about our company. This was unfortunately almost entirely ignored.

In order to get to that end goal, big leaps in technology are required, which naturally invites a high level of scrutiny. That is fair, as new technology should be held to a higher standard than what has come before. However, there should also be some reasonable limit to how high such a standard should be, and we believe that this has been vastly exceeded in recent media coverage.

How Does the Tesla Model S Fire Risk Compare to Gasoline Cars?

Since the Model S went into production last year, there have been more than a quarter million gasoline car fires in the United States alone, resulting in over 400 deaths and approximately 1,200 serious injuries (extrapolating 2012 NFPA data). However, the three Model S fires, which only occurred after very high-speed collisions and caused no serious injuries or deaths, received more national headlines than all 250,000+ gasoline fires combined. The media coverage of Model S fires vs. gasoline car fires is disproportionate by several orders of magnitude, despite the latter actually being far more deadly.

Reading the headlines, it is therefore easy to assume that the Tesla Model S and perhaps electric cars in general have a greater propensity to catch fire than gasoline cars when nothing could be further from the truth.

Journalists with a deep knowledge of the car industry, such as the news editor of Automotive News, understand and attempt to rebut this notion, but they have been drowned out by an onslaught of popular and financial media seeking to make a sensation out of something that a simple Google search would reveal to be false. I would also like to express appreciation for the investigative journalists who took the time to research and write an accurate article.

The degree to which this is outrageous is described well in the above-mentioned Automotive News article. There are now substantially more than the 19,000 Model S vehicles on the road that were reported in our Q3 shareholder letter for an average of one fire per at least 6,333 cars, compared to the rate for gasoline vehicles of one fire per 1,350 cars. By this metric, you are more than four and a half times more likely to experience a fire in a gasoline car than a Model S! Considering the odds in the absolute, you are more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime than experience even a non-injurious fire in a Tesla.

Those metrics tell only part of the story. The far more deadly nature of a gasoline car fire deserves to be re-emphasized. Since the Model S went into production mid last year, there have been over 400 deaths and 1,200 serious injuries in the United States alone due to gasoline car fires, compared to zero deaths and zero injuries due to Tesla fires anywhere in the world.

There is a real, physical reason for this: a gasoline tank has 10 times more combustion energy than our battery pack. Moreover, the Model S battery pack also has internal firewalls between the 16 modules and a firewall between the battery pack and passenger compartment. This effectively limits the fire energy to a few percent that of a gasoline car and is the reason why Dr. Shibayama was able to retrieve his pens and papers from the glove compartment completely untouched after the recent fire (caused by a high speed impact with a tow hitch). It is also why arsonists tend to favor gasoline. Trying to set the side of a building on fire with a battery pack is far less effective.

What About Safety Overall?

Our primary concern is not for the safety of the vehicle, which can easily be replaced, but for the safety of our customers and the families they entrust to our cars. Based on the Model S track record so far, you have a zero percent chance of being hurt in an accident resulting in a battery fire, but what about other types of accidents? Despite multiple high-speed accidents, there have been no deaths or serious injuries in a Model S of any kind ever. Of course, at some point, the law of large numbers dictates that this, too, will change, but the record is long enough already for us to be extremely proud of this achievement. This is why the Model S achieved the lowest probability of injury of any car ever tested by the US government. The probability of injury is the most accurate statistical figure of merit, showing clearly that the Model S is safer in an accident than any other vehicle without exception. It is literally impossible for another car to have a better safety track record, as it would have to possess mystical powers of healing.

Further Actions

While we believe the evidence is clear that there is no safer car on the road than the Model S, we are taking three specific actions.

First, we have rolled out an over-the-air update to the air suspension that will result in greater ground clearance at highway speeds. To be clear, this is about reducing the chances of underbody impact damage, not improving safety. The theoretical probability of a fire injury is already vanishingly small and the actual number to date is zero. Another software update expected in January will give the driver direct control of the air suspension ride height transitions.

Second, we have requested that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conduct a full investigation as soon as possible into the fire incidents. While we think it is highly unlikely, if something is discovered that would result in a material improvement in occupant fire safety, we will immediately apply that change to new cars and offer it as a free retrofit to all existing cars. Given that the incidence of fires in the Model S is far lower than combustion cars and that there have been no resulting injuries, this did not at first seem like a good use of NHTSA’s time compared to the hundreds of gasoline fire deaths per year that warrant their attention. However, there is a larger issue at stake: if a false perception about the safety of electric cars is allowed to linger, it will delay the advent of sustainable transport and increase the risk of global climate change, with potentially disastrous consequences worldwide. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Third, to reinforce how strongly we feel about the low risk of fire in our cars, we will be amending our warranty policy to cover damage due to a fire, even if due to driver error. Unless a Model S owner actively tries to destroy the car, they are covered. Our goal here is to eliminate any concern about the cost of such an event and ensure that over time the Model S has the lowest insurance cost of any car at our price point. Either our belief in the safety of our car is correct and this is a minor cost or we are wrong, in which case the right thing is for Tesla to bear the cost rather than the car buyer.

All of these actions are taken in order to make clear the confidence we have in our product and to eliminate any misperceptions regarding the integrity of our technology and the safety of our cars.

Tesla Motors | 3500 Deer Creek Road | Palo Alto, CA 94304

Tesla S update: details of the 3rd fire

November 9, 2013
From a Model S owner in Tennessee
By Juris Shibayama, MD
I was driving home from work on the interstate in the right lane at approximately 70 miles per hour, following a truck. In the middle of the lane, there was a rusty three-pronged trailer hitch that was sticking up with the ball up in the air. The truck in front of me cleared the object. I did not have enough time to swerve to avoid the hitch, and it went below my car. I felt a firm “thud” as the hitch struck the bottom of the car, and it felt as though it even lifted the car up in the air. My assistant later found a gouge in the tarmac where the item scraped into the road. Somewhat shaken, I continued to drive.

About 30-45 seconds later, there was a warning on the dashboard display saying, “Car needs service. Car may not restart.” I continued to drive, hoping to get home. About one minute later, the message on the dashboard display read, “Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.” I was able to fully control the car the entire time and safely pulled off the left shoulder on the side of the road. I got out of the car, and started to get all my belongings out. About 5-10 seconds after getting out of the car, smoke started to come from the front underbody of the car. I walked away from the vehicle to a distance of about 100 yards. More smoke started to come out of the bottom of the car, and about two minutes after I walked away, the front of the car caught on fire.

I am thankful to God that I was totally uninjured in any way from this impact. Had I not been in a Tesla, that object could have punched through the floor and caused me serious harm. From the time of impact of the object until the time the car caught fire was about five minutes. During this time, the car warned me that it was damaged and instructed me to pull over. I never felt as though I was in any imminent danger. While driving after I hit the object until I pulled over, the car performed perfectly, and it was a totally controlled situation. There was never a point at which I was anywhere even close to any flames.

The firemen arrived promptly and applied water to the flames. They were about to pry open the doors, so I pressed my key button and the handles presented and everything worked even though the front of the car was on fire. No flames ever reached the cabin, and nothing inside was damaged. I was even able to get my papers and pens out of the glove compartment.

This experience does not in any way make me think that the Tesla Model S is an unsafe car. I would buy another one in a heartbeat.

Juris Shibayama, MD

a letter from Elon Musk regarding the recent Tesla that caught on fire.

October 4, 2013
About the Model S fire
By Elon Musk, Chairman, Product Architect & CEO
Earlier this week, a Model S traveling at highway speed struck a large metal object, causing significant damage to the vehicle. A curved section that fell off a semi-trailer was recovered from the roadway near where the accident occurred and, according to the road crew that was on the scene, appears to be the culprit. The geometry of the object caused a powerful lever action as it went under the car, punching upward and impaling the Model S with a peak force on the order of 25 tons. Only a force of this magnitude would be strong enough to punch a 3 inch diameter hole through the quarter inch armor plate protecting the base of the vehicle.

The Model S owner was nonetheless able to exit the highway as instructed by the onboard alert system, bring the car to a stop and depart the vehicle without injury. A fire caused by the impact began in the front battery module – the battery pack has a total of 16 modules – but was contained to the front section of the car by internal firewalls within the pack. Vents built into the battery pack directed the flames down towards the road and away from the vehicle.

When the fire department arrived, they observed standard procedure, which was to gain access to the source of the fire by puncturing holes in the top of the battery’s protective metal plate and applying water. For the Model S lithium-ion battery, it was correct to apply water (vs. dry chemical extinguisher), but not to puncture the metal firewall, as the newly created holes allowed the flames to then vent upwards into the front trunk section of the Model S. Nonetheless, a combination of water followed by dry chemical extinguisher quickly brought the fire to an end.

It is important to note that the fire in the battery was contained to a small section near the front by the internal firewalls built into the pack structure. At no point did fire enter the passenger compartment.

Had a conventional gasoline car encountered the same object on the highway, the result could have been far worse. A typical gasoline car only has a thin metal sheet protecting the underbody, leaving it vulnerable to destruction of the fuel supply lines or fuel tank, which causes a pool of gasoline to form and often burn the entire car to the ground. In contrast, the combustion energy of our battery pack is only about 10% of the energy contained in a gasoline tank and is divided into 16 modules with firewalls in between. As a consequence, the effective combustion potential is only about 1% that of the fuel in a comparable gasoline sedan.

The nationwide driving statistics make this very clear: there are 150,000 car fires per year according to the National Fire Protection Association, and Americans drive about 3 trillion miles per year according to the Department of Transportation. That equates to 1 vehicle fire for every 20 million miles driven, compared to 1 fire in over 100 million miles for Tesla. This means you are 5 times more likely to experience a fire in a conventional gasoline car than a Tesla!

For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid.

– Elon
Below is our email correspondence with the Model S owner that experienced the fire, reprinted with his permission:

From: robert Carlson
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 12:53 PM
To: Jerome Guillen
Subject: carlson 0389

Mr. Guillen,

Thanks for the support. I completely agree with the assessment to date. I guess you can test for everything, but some other celestial bullet comes along and challenges your design. I agree that the car performed very well under such an extreme test. The batteries went through a controlled burn which the internet images really exaggerates. Anyway, I am still a big fan of your car and look forward to getting back into one. Justin offered a white loaner–thanks. I am also an investor and have to say that the response I am observing is really supportive of the future for electric vehicles. I was thinking this was bound to happen, just not to me. But now it is out there and probably gets a sigh of relief as a test and risk issue-this “doomsday” event has now been tested, and the design and engineering works.

rob carlson
On Oct 3, 2013, at 12:29 PM, Jerome Guillen wrote:

Dear Mr. Carlson:

I am the VP of sales and service for Tesla, reporting directly to Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO.

I am sorry to hear that you experienced a collision in your Model S 2 days ago. We are happy that the Model S performed in such a way that you were not injured in the accident and that nobody else was hurt.

I believe you have been in contact with Justin Samson, our service manager, since the accident. We are following this case extremely closely and we have sent a team of experts to review your vehicle. All indications are that your Model S drove over large, oddly-shaped metal object which impacted the leading edge of the vehicle’s undercarriage and rotated into the underside of the vehicle (“pole vault” effect). This is a highly uncommon occurrence.

Based on our review thus far, we believe that the Model S performed as designed by limiting the resulting fire to the affected zones only. Given the significant intensity of the impact, which managed to pierce the 1/4 inch bottom plate (something that is extremely hard to do), the Model S energy containment functions operated correctly. In particular, the top cover of the battery provided a strong barrier and there was no apparent propagation of the fire into the cabin. This ensured cabin integrity and occupant safety, which remains our most important goal.

We very much appreciate your support, patience and understanding while we proceed with the investigation. Justin keeps me closely informed. Please feel free to contact me directly, if you have any question or concern.

Best regards,
Jerome Guillen I VP, WW sales and service