The original blog isn't exactly sussed out either. We have an anonymous source giving vague anecdotes about 5 cars whose owners haven't been contacted to verify details.
The oil analogy Tesla and others are using just doesn't work. A normal car doesn't total itself after sitting idle for a few weeks to few months depending on whose side you believe.
Imagine your new car of choice having a 5 gallon gas tank, and if it goes empty, your car burns to the ground. Oh, and the gas evaporates at rate of half a gallon a week.
I don't know about you, but that fear would keep me from enjoying the vehicle. I think the stress of always making sure it's charging would beat me down.
Actually as a former car owner (city dweller now), my biggest concern was making sure the car was still there when I came back later.
Really the biggest responsibility this car has is for the owner to keep batteris charged up, not check the oil, not check the coolant, nor check the break fluid or transmission fluid. When did spending a lot of money on a car mean you could also switch your brain off.
When you talk about tire deformation, this is rare and would not happen before many years of disuse. And engine seizure? Again, unlikely to happen even if left to sit for a decade. You're more likely to have issues with rust in the gas tank and bad, coagulated gas, than a seized engine.
The point is that it is relatively safe to leave a vehicle unattended in a garage for long periods of time. The vast majority of its value will remain undamaged. Contrast to the Tesla, where if left for a year with a low charge it is alleged that it's likely to lose fully half of the car's value ($40,000).
This is a big deal.
My Ford owner's manual says otherwise. According to it, the tires will be damaged at a prolonged period, if the car sits at the same spot. Maybe not deformed per se, but damaged. It's recommended that the car should be placed on supports if long-term (say, more than a month) storage is required.
My personal experience says otherwise.
Now, add further that all of the rubber hosing, if your car was built in the last two decades, will likely have dry-rot, and the vehicle is unlikely to run again without replacement on all of them. Should a rear main, or other important seal have been damaged, you'll be looking at around $1,000 in labor alone to disassemble the engine. How much was that car worth again?
I've had lifters separate on me while driving taking out the engine block, radiator, and several other components along the way - the cost to replace with a -new- engine and radiator exceeded 40% of what I paid for the vehicle. (Don't be confused by the pricing on a used, junk-yard engine, and a new crate engine. Gets even worse with a V8 - have you seen the price on a 6.1L crate Hemi?)
I still don't see what the big deal is - if I leave -any- electronic device with an li-ion battery in it discharged for a long period of time, that battery is toast. You think it's absurd that the battery in the car costs $40k? I'm sure mac laptop batteries would be even more expensive once you chained enough of them together to get to that level of sustained discharge capability.
If Adama had to plan for an FTL jump ever 33 days instead of 33 minutes, the Galactica crew wouldn't have been nearly as frazzled.
It's not the fact that maintenance is required, it's the short timeframe in which a mistake can cause you to have a 3k pound immovable object and/or a 40k bill. (I have no idea what it weighs, just made that up)
If a car is left to sit for a year the gas will be bad, but there will likely be no further repair necessary other than flushing the fuel system. This is relatively cheap. Even if one mistakenly tries to start it and gets water in the engine, the repairs are far less costly than the $40,000 battery price tag on the tesla.
I had mentioned a decade specifically in regard to engine seizure -- you will not have this problem over a shorter time period such as one year. Nor will you have dry-rot of your hosing or any other major mechanical malfunction. Ruined gas and a dead battery are about the limits of damage in the one year period -- possibly a tire may go flat.
The big deal is that if I leave my $80k gasoline car in a garage for a year it will take very little to get it running again. Probably a few hundred bucks. Perhaps up to several thousand dollars if I foolishly try to start it and get very unlucky. But you can't reasonably construct a scenario where a garaged gasoline car is likely to sustain $40,000 in damages just from safely sitting out of the elements. It's just not possible, period.
Your statements about seized engine and deformed tires are not valid in the timeframe we are talking about here. It's unlikely even for the battery to go, and if it does that's a trip to the store and $100, not a $40k service plus getting an UNTOWABLE vehicle to California.
Oh, and those abandoned university cars are normally beaters that barely made it to the campus after many years of neglect, not a brand new premium vehicle.
It's interesting that they did not refute this untowable claim in their rebuttal.
I can empathize with why they wouldn't though, as this seems like a (ahem) charged and highly public issue.