Hacker News Reader

I disagree, even modern cars have a lot of unsolved problems with thermal expansion and cracking causing failures of cylinder heads, gaskets, exhaust manifolds, turbochargers, etc.

It may be solved in principle, but certainly not in practice.

View on HN

There are problems that are game stoppers and there are problems that are unavoidable. Cars work. Yes, if you drive 1 million miles you will have cracks in the engine due to thermal expansion, but who cares? Make a new engine and get over it.

Now consider a space elevator. Material problems are a game stopper.

These problems are already solved for very high end aftermarket exhaust systems, which use Inconel.

"Modern" cars run on electricity and don't have any of those parts or their corresponding problems.

Your "modern" cars have cooling loops for their battery, therefore cyclic thermal fatigue.

Plus the bearings, heat from (regenerative) braking, and I'm sure a few other parts.

I haven't looked it up, but I'm sure the magnitude of thermal cycling in a battery is way less than in a combustion engine.

I think the important bit is that this isnt 'a lot' of systems, it is comparatively few.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com