Tesla knew its Model S battery had a design flaw that could lead to leaks, and ultimately, fires starting in 2012. It sold the car anyway. via lopezlinette
Jason Schug, a Vice President at Ricardo Strategic Consulting who spent part of his engineering career at GM and Ford, told Business Insider that he's done teardowns of Tesla's Model S and X vehicles, which share the same battery, as well as its Model 3. He told Business Insider that if coolant leaked into a battery module it could render the battery useless.
So when it came time for Tesla to design the battery for the Model S it looked to use parts that already existed in order to keep things simple. It settled on the 18-650 battery cell — a cell that it could buy off the shelf because it was already being manufactured for everyday use in things like laptops.
Tesla was keenly aware of these issues with electric battery chemistry, explaining in detail the steps its design was taking to mitigate this risk in a That is why — according to one former senior employee involved with the battery's design and agreed to speak with Business Insider on the condition of anonymity — cell chemistry and battery structure were the company's main design concerns, cost aside.
"When you're launching a new component, there's always going to be difficulties and issues on line during first launch and especially when you're Tesla and you're asking your vendors to launch with a limited R&D," said a former employee, who left in 2014, "We did have problems with it leaking."By the time Tesla started workshopping issues with the Model S's cooling coils, the car's launch was already behind schedule.
Tesla did not respond to Business Insider's questions about its design process or the countermeasures it used to reduce leaks in this part. "Every part of the vehicle [Tesla designed] was breakthrough innovation, so it was almost guaranteed there would be serious production problems," Liker said. "It's a trade-off, Musk could've been more conservative but then what would be his competitive advantage?"To try and understand how the company's production processes had changed since 2012, Business Insider reached out to three former Tesla employees who worked at the automaker at different times.
"Toyota did not rush through things like Tesla did," the employee who left in 2017 said. The same employee also said that though parts were tested rigorously, the workers testing them did not receive the same extensive training they would receive at NUMMI. There simply wasn't time, and Tesla's Silicon Valley engineers didn't want to hear much about how things were done at NUMMI either, the former employee said.
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