Here is the answer I was scrolling for. I worked in wireless back in the days of detachable batteries. At Nextel, we sold a model that was able to be certified as “Intrinsically Safe” because it was tested to prove that it would never produce a spark, even if dropped in a way that separated the battery from the…

The cellphone thing comes from back when batteries were a separate component that clipped onto the back of the phone. It was possible to generate a spark between the contacts on the battery and the phone if the fitting was loose, say if you’re one of those people who compulsively unclip/clip things with clips on them…

I stop for gas about a block from my place. The car’s never warmed up yet so I let it run so they get warmer faster.

I have joined forums for every vehicle I’ve owned... even the boring ones.  Good place to get questions answered or put a question out to the hive mind.  

You might need Gorila Glue for those signs...

I can’t get past the fact that there’s a Facebook Camry Owners group.

He’s not wrong. Had the cig fallen into the diesel nothing would have happened.

The idea behind the warnings is liability.

Kids of a certain age wake up when the engine turns off. A more likely reason. 

PEs everywhere just felt a disturbance in the force prestige. Better hide; the iron ring bridage is coming for you now. I suggest hiding out amongst software engineers. The PEs won’t know where to swing first.

Sure, I acknowledge that different rates of thermal expansion and contraction with different materials is a real phenomenon. So I guess what Musk is saying is that BMW has succeeded in solving this problem, whereas Tesla has not succeeded, or has chosen not to attempt to solve it.

This is why I’m 100% confident that Twitter brings out the worst in ANYONE. If it’s your sweet Aunty spouting pseudo-science anti-vaxer rage lines at some poor stranger or just your humble neighbor saying whatever you wish you didn’t know about him, what goes on in the brain often sounds strange when exposed to the…

Even more impressive when a physicist-CEO design a car.

Think of a carbon fiber arch connected to a flat steel base. The carbon fiber doesn’t expand noticeably but the steel does, so when temperature fluctuates the carbon arch would raise and lower as the steel base became longer and shorter. Imagine the issues you could have when your steel door frame shrinks around your…

I realize he doesn’t have an engineering degree, but the man is an engineer in my eyes. As I understand, he helps solve technical problems by offering his insight, just as an engineering manager does. 

No, he’s saying that in different thermal environments, the two materials will expand at different rates, yielding gaps where there should be none.

This is the Elon I like to see. Less drama, more science, and ....humble?

Mary Barra doesn’t come across as someone who’s been involved in engineering design for a long while. She got an EE in Kettering in 1985, then an MBA from stanford in 1990. She held a variety of engineering and “administrative” positions until she got promoted to VP of manufacturing engineering in 2008, and then VP of…

Other than maybe Christian von Koenigsegg, yeah. Agreed.

This is impressive. I’m not the world’s biggest Musk fan, but very few C-suite executives have anywhere that level of knowledge about their product. Credit where credit is due, good for him.