The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.
At that moment, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, but he didn’t pick up. When he still hadn’t returned her call hours later – highly unusual for this devoted father – she attempted to track his car using Tesla’s app. It no longer worked. By the time police officers rang her doorbell late that night, Meier was already bracing for the worst.
By your logic then, capitalism is great, because that means no one would’ve engineered these crazy locks but instead just used the tried and true ones.
Wait. That’s not what happened?
Oh.
I would joke that since they don’t work then I doubt any engineering went into them at all. But I know that isn’t true.
So I wonder if you could elaborate on what you mean by “crazy locks”? I did a lot of work investigating the manufacturing equipment and their use, so I remember a bit about their components, design, and assembly; but I did not work with those directly so I could be missing something entirely. I don’t remember there being anything groundbreaking about the mechanics of the door locks. But the general build always felt… “thinner”. Most manufacturers stay away from minimum standards by at least the standard deviation or two, so if the required gauge was 18 ± 1, a typical mfr would use 20+. Tesla would use 18. On the nose. That was a lot more common in automotive but even hyundai/kia used wide margins for safety. All that to say, I have a hard time believing the door locks were so complex that a sizable investment would be anything other than reinventing the wheel, but even moreso that it was even worth the superfluous cost.
One of the last jobs I had there was a machine that they picked up third hand and cobbled together with some very sketchy safety systems that wildly failed requirements. I was there for days and it was one of the more extensive reports I’ve ever made on a single installation. The control system was designed by the onsite engineers and passed flawlessly. But they had a lot to do to get the equipment usable.
I stopped reading when you suggested 20 gauge was heavier than 18 gauge.
Rookie mistake you can’t come back from.
Lol, I saw that after I sent it, but was absolutely not confident enough to change it. I don’t work in that field any more so that is not the only thing about materials that you probably know better than me. And I’m sorry for the wall of text. My bad.