Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
I'm not saying the design should protect an individual cell, I'm saying that a single cell failure shouldn't result in failure of all the rest and the car and any structures immediately around it.
A good design would allow for the energy of a single cell failure to be dissipated in a way that doesn't run away. If it doesn't achieve that, it's a bad design.
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The designers may have submitted a proposal for a 'safer' design, only to have it scuttled by bean-counters willing to play quarterly profits against the statistical odds of catastrophic failure, like Morton-Thiokol did with the Challenger disaster.
It's an ultimately-more-expensive way to design. But sometimes it takes the loss of human life and the risk of corporate bankruptcy in order for committees to finally allow for product specifications which include higher-cost fail-safes.