You Can’t Sell a Car That Looks Like Crap 181
mean, Microsoft just conspired to make sure that your
laptop is obsolete in five years and so if the battery pack
poops out in five years that’s okay, that’s fine,” Eberhard
said.^200
In a car it’s possible to optimize the battery’s life-
length. One of the aspects affecting a battery’s life-length is
the temperature around the battery. While the battery in a
laptop is exposed to heat from the rest of the computer, the
battery in a car will be cooled to an optimal temperature.^200
Another aspect affecting the life-length of a battery
is how you charge it. The optimal way is not to charge
the battery to 100 percent, as is often done with a laptop
battery because the cord is always plugged in. To improve
the life-length, Tesla developed algorithms to optimize the
charging and discharging of the battery.^200
The risk of a failure in one of these batteries is low.
Sony has made about eight billion lithium-ion cells so far,
and only eight of those have caught fire.^355 “You have them
in smartphones and no one is worried about having those
near sensitive parts,” Elon said. “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.”
To be on the safe side, a Tesla battery consists of
several cells. Tesla catastrophe tested the battery by heating
individual cells until they burst into flames. If one cell over-
heats, it will not start a chain reaction explosion. Several
sensors detects acceleration, deceleration, tilt, temperature,
and smoke. If one sensor detects an abnormal event, like
if the Roadster is involved in an accident, it immedi-