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Comment by ScottFree | Hacker News Reader

I'd really like to see a write-up like this on one of the model S's from northern europe. The biggest longevity concern for me is rust and corrosion of the frame due to winter road salt.

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Allow me to ask a stupid question: isn't there a simple cleaning routine to do to ensure long term corrosion free ?

If you are referring to a car wash, well the problem there is that car washes recycle their water. They filter out the dirt, but not the salt. So the salt water gets pressure fed into crack and crevices making things worse.

I was more thinking about a dedicated procedure, optimized for salt removal.

In aviation, the recommendation is to wash the outside frequently with clean water.

However, cars are in contact with salt water, so there's an extra concern there.

No. Not if you’re using a car normally. Water and salt will both cause corrosion and the longer salty water is in contact with the underbody of the car the faster corrosion will work. Even if you washed the underside of your car every evening after returning from work there would still be the corrosion from the eight or so hours since you left for work in the morning and that would accumulate.

What about treatments like Dinitrol? These were quite popular decades ago in the Nordic countries.

They aren't popular at all in North America, even in the cold and salty parts like Canada. I've never encountered a car that had it, new or used. I don't know why. My perception of them is that they don't work well enough to justify the cost, but I don't know if that's true or not.

Not really, the best thing you can do is not expose the car to salt in the first place.

I once worked on an enthusiast's classic car back in the midwest which was exceptionally clean. The owner said every time he drove it in the winter or rain, which was rarely, he would put it in the air on the lift in his garage, and spray the car from below with WD-40 he purchased by the drum.

That seemed to have helped, but it's no panacea, and there's definitely rubber stuff which will be unhappy about getting WD-40 soaked regularly.

Most of the Model S and X chassis is aluminum, and will experience longer longevity than traditional steel frame vehicles.

It might not rust but it can corrode.

Ford had hood issues:

http://www.fordproblems.com/hood-rust/

Aluminum boats:

https://goneoutdoors.com/effects-saltwater-aluminum-boats-85...

anybody with experience regarding protective coatings ?

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=steel+coating+salt+corrosio...

The first link about hoods is talking about aluminum/iron interfaces, not salt.

During my DIY days I had a 10+ year old BMW in a winter climate with an aluminum heat shield on the exhaust. When I swapped out the muffler, the heat shield was barely even recognizable as aluminum and basically crumbled to dust in places.

Was that because of road salt, or steel parts nearby? Steel parts nearby are usually the actual issue.

> Most of the Model S and X chassis is aluminum, and will experience longer longevity than traditional steel frame vehicles.

maybe with regards to weather/corrosion resistance, but no where in the automotive world does aluminum offer greater 'longevity' than steel mechanically.

aluminum is brittle, and gets more brittle. it's trickier to weld, and most fasteners that interface with it are supposed to do so with a compatible metal insert rather than a threaded surface, creating even more issues and higher part counts.

elastic modulus is hugely beneficial to the longevity of metal parts on a constantly torqued structure.

aluminum vintage race cars are generally subject to more comprehensive frame and suspension inspection pre-sale and pre-race for this reason, it doesn't fail gracefully like a similar steel part.

All that said, I get why Tesla likes aluminum. It's great. I love it, too. But I think that selling it with the idea of longevity isn't entirely honest in any regards besides corrosion/road salt resistance; and aluminum isn't even that great at that.

The benefit is that aluminum is lighter than steel. Any longevity beyond that of steel is gravy. Sure, aluminum is harder to work with and is more complicated for manufacturing; that’s why the Model 3 uses an aluminum steel alloy instead.

Nothing lasts forever.

Aluminum gets pretty gnarly where in contact with steel, especially when you add salt water. I'd be surprised if Tesla's fasteners and sub-assemblies were all aluminum.

Source: In a former life I worked as a mechanic in the rust belt.

This isn't strictly true. Aluminum and steel certainly do corrode very differently, especially due to the protective properties of aluminum oxide layers, but it's definitely much more complicated in terms of overall longevity. One of the main factors for this sort of the things is the mechanical fatigue that cars experience. Whereas steel and other ferrous alloys have something called a 'fatigue limit' [1], where for a given stress, they'll maintain integrity indefinitely (at least for practical purposes). Aluminum, on the other hand, will continue to experience an increased likelihood of failure under small and smaller cyclic loading.

Estimating mechanical longevity from a small number of first principles concepts like materials is extremely difficult, and usually is only be conclusively determined through statistically relevant groups undergoing destructive testing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit

How does this differ from an ICE car?

I'd assume the question is more about whether Tesla's are designed to hold up in those conditions, not so much about EV vs ICE.

I think the meme is "Designed in California, for California."

There are plenty of parts of California that are cold in the winter, and use a lot of road salt.

Perhaps you're confusing California with Florida?

lol, it's just a meme, we can skip the lesson on California climate :)

Ah. So what you're asking is if Teslas are designed to hold up to the conditions in Tahoe, where all of the engineers at Tesla vacation during the winter?

Memes are great. In this case, great at misinformation.

You can't compare the effects of the occasional weekend in Tahoe to that of a decade of winters in Toronto.

I'm not. I'm saying that California has cold parts, like the north of the state, and that many Californians visit the cold parts.

Nobody said otherwise. Why so defensive?

I'm not being defensive. Also, if you want to have a productive discussion, please don't say things like this.

We passed productive conversation 5 comments ago. The context of this subthread is the longevity of Tesla vehicles in a prolonged winter environment, such as northern europe or Toronto. You, yourself, agreed you can't compare the occasional weekend in Tahoe to those environments.

I agree that we passed productive conversation a while ago. And no, I don't agree about the context; that's the whole point. If you want to have a productive discussion, you'd stop acting like this.

> There are plenty of parts of California that are cold in the winter, and use a lot of road salt.

Let’s be real. Those parts of California are hardly a blip on the state census (ie actual, full-time residents).

I'm claiming that many people in California visit those places, and it's during ski season.

Are you claiming that only full-time residents of those areas can understand winter weather? I'm not sure you meant that, but I'd recommend against thinking that.

I’m saying you can take any car for a day trip in snowy climate a few days a year and it will be fine (tires matter more than car in that case). Driving through salted roads every day to work for 3-6 months of the year is a different story.

Here in the Midwest, used cars coming from fair-weather states command a premium over the local options for those reasons.

Like many people who currently live in the warm parts of California, I moved here from the Northeast. You might want to broaden your definition of people who might possibly get the point you're making.

By the way, people who visit Tahoe in the winter, even for a few days, are critically aware of the tire issue, thanks to the frequent "winter tire or chains" requirements.

Literally, people who only occasionally visit Tahoe during the winter own "Tahoe cars" that don't have to use chains, thanks to a combination of all-wheel-drive and winter tires.

This is a thing! For example, the Apple Watch doesn't have built-in workouts for Skiing or Cross-Country skiing, presumably because it's not something that, beyond a handful, Apple employees typically do.

I don't work at Apple but Tahoe trips do seem to be fairly popular in the bay area -- maybe the watches can't handle that much cold and snow?

Apple employees probably go skiing more often than most Americans, since it’s pretty easy to drive to Tahoe from Cupertino.

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