I have to say that I'm very skeptical that tesla would put out a battery that could be bricked in this way although anything is possible. Degusta is not necessarily someone I'd be willing to believe on a story like this without double checking.
I'll be very curious to see what my friend +John Voelcker learns from tesla and owners. If this is true it will severely damage +Tesla Motors reputation
Update Voelker has an update, Tesla acknowledges the need to keep the Roadster plugged in, although they have not acknowledged if customers have had to pony up for new batteries. http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073289_tesla-battery-bricking-the-real-story-behind-the-post
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Brace yourself for a $#!tstorm: Bricking A Tesla Roadster Battery: Today's Electric Car Meme
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Bricking A Tesla Roadster Battery: Today's Electric Car Meme
Heard of "bricking" yet? No? You will shortly. It's the phenomenon in which the lithium-ion battery pack of an electric car that's left unplugged for a long period goes completely, utterly dead–to th…
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Just install ICS on it. Bricking mission accomplished.
I am sure mr. Ford had problems at first too.
Considering Ford had not invented the car nor the productipn line, it may be different…
+Stelios Kalogreades Think of an inventor… now think if they had done it perfect the first time… get my point?
+John Zimm Tesla didn't invent the electric car or the lithium ion battery. They took a basic vehicle and battery pack architecture developed by AC Propulsion and mated with a chassis derived from the Lotus Elise to create the Roadster. If there was a possibility of "destroying" the pack by letting it completely discharge, they should have incorporated a circuit breaker mechanism that disabled all the power drain when the state of charge got to a minimum point to preserve the battery.
With nothing drawing on a litium ion battery it will actually retain power for a surprisingly long time without self-discharge.
Having said all that, it's also remarkably difficult to estimate state of charge for a lithium battery. See this 2007 interview I did with Denise Grey from GM http://green.autoblog.com/2007/11/16/autobloggreen-qanda-denise-gray-talks-batteries-state-of-charge/.
That's one of the reasons most automakers try to leave a reserve that never gets discharged or charged. They are trying to maximize the life of the battery. Tesla has always tried to use all of the available capacity in its battery and only has a 3 year/36,000 mile warranty on the pack. GM and Nissan are doing 8-year/100,000 mile warranties and the enh-ATPZEV version of the Volt that is now available in California is covered for 10-years/150,000 miles.
+John Zimm If that was your point, as oddly phrased as it was, it does not apply here. Tesla did not invent new battery technology. They applied preexisting technology (with all its known advantages and disadvantages) to a different platform that may very well be unsuited. I cannot imagine that the Tesla Roadster I had seen a few times at the FIR track in Chandler fares well in the almost year-round heat of the Phoenix area considering that high temperatures increase capacity loss.
In any event, it is still obvious that like with any piece of technology that relies on batteries to this day, capacity, parasitic losses and other issues related to the specifically employed technology remain as problems.
Edit:
That is what I get for typing slowly, overtaken by +Sam Abuelsamid!
Good news: It won't happen in a Volt or LEAF. Probably not in a Ford or BMW either.