My family and I are on a road trip (to northern Wisconsin) to attend a funeral of my wife's aunt, who died suddenly last week. We're driving an old Rav 4, and I'm acutely aware of the danger you can be in if your car suffers some kind of basic problem.
Ideally speaking, an electric car should be simpler and less prone to failure than a gasoline vehicle (after all, a gasoline vehicle needs a battery and a starter motor), but it seems that the Tesla has many single points of failure. It probably needs to have at least two completely independent battery systems so that if one fails you at least have half power. The idea that the car could go from drivable to being unable to power its hazard lights in half an hour is truly scary.
It seems to me that Tesla needs to incorporate some of the ideas from Space-X (in terms of redundancy) into its cars.
With that said, I see Tesla replacing the 12V battery with a Lithium pack at some point (vs a lead acid battery), not just for capacity but also for deep discharge durability.
Your car has the same single point of failure. If your 12V battery goes, you can't drive (it powers the car's ECU and throttle) and your hazard lights won't work. This isn't anything Model S specific.
Oh, a gasoline-powered car has lots of single points of failure, no question. But it's also a very well-proven technology, and pretty easily fixed even in very out-of-the-way places.
Ideally speaking, an electric car should be simpler and less prone to failure than a gasoline vehicle (after all, a gasoline vehicle needs a battery and a starter motor), but it seems that the Tesla has many single points of failure. It probably needs to have at least two completely independent battery systems so that if one fails you at least have half power. The idea that the car could go from drivable to being unable to power its hazard lights in half an hour is truly scary.
It seems to me that Tesla needs to incorporate some of the ideas from Space-X (in terms of redundancy) into its cars.