[mellifluousmind]

No, if you pay good money for something, you expect the product has good feature to pamper its user. It is more true with a car where if you pay good money for a car, the car should take care of you more than the other way around. If not, it is not worth the money to buy in the first place.

Your way of reasoning is pretty much the same as when iPhone 4 first came out. You pay good money for something that shatters easily. At least, in iPhone case, Apple came out, admitted faults and tried to make its user happy.

[jrockway]

This problem is due to the laws of physics rather than bad product design, however. There is no battery technology that would scale to a car and not self-discharge. Yes, the thing discharges to keep some systems online, but even if it didn't, the battery would still brick itself over time.

The iPhone is a mass market product with millions of users. Tesla's cars are experimental products for early adopters, with a few thousand users. Completely different situations.