Your computer power supply has a ~400 volt rail in it. Are you unwilling to ever open a desktop computer?
The Tesla battery has contactors inside of it, so you'll only have 400V live when the car is on. Additionally, assuming the HV is floating relative to the chassis, you need to touch two spots at different potentials to actually get shocked.
That said, it looks like this is an attempt to prevent service of a lot of non-powertrain components, considering that the Tesla owner in the article got a letter for connecting just to the ethernet port.
> Your computer power supply has a ~400 volt rail in it. Are you unwilling to ever open a desktop computer?
If it's plugged in and turned on - yeah, sure, I don't want to muck around in there. The thing is, my computer power supply:
* Can be completely physically disconnected from the rest of the computer
* Doesn't have a battery in it
If I pull the plug on my desktop, disconnect the power supply, and maybe if I'm being really paranoid touch a lamp to it just to be sure there isn't anything trapped in a cap or inductor, I know that that 400 volt rail is actually at zero volts relative to anything near me. Batteries? Especially power batteries that I can't guarantee are physically disconnected, and that can't really be grounded because they're inside an insulated mobile platform? It's more like looking inside a microwave oven or a CRT, and you're damn right that I don't open those up.
Any work done on a car w/ airbags (the last 20 years) has had a risk of airbag explosion with any localized short.
The Takata airbag recall means that many of these may shoot shrapnel at you. And the original airbags were known for occasionally flinging phosphorous at you.
Beyond that, Lead Acid batteries can be dangerous when the battery or the alternator fails - that's not steam, that's sulphuric acid steam.
I don't know why airbags aren't opto-isolated digital devices activated by simple challenge and response over canbus (read a single byte off address 0, write the same byte back to address 1 to trigger). I'd have expected pyrotechnics to have been first on the list for conversion to digital.
Actually, it's other way around - amps matter a great deal.
400 volts with low amps feels like a sting. I've touched 25K volt contact once (by mistake), while unpleasant (and some damaged skin), managed just fine - cause very low amps.
I think what you're after is that the impedance matters a great deal - a high voltage but high impedance source will drop in voltage a lot and not deliver a large current into the body.
In both examples I gave, the PSU DC bus and the car, both are much lower impedance than the human body and the difference is likely negligible.
1. Small amount of cars on the road so there's limited incentive for aftermarket parts.
2. People already do brakes/tires/suspension/etc. It's a car after all.
3. I wouldn't want to get near the powertrain. 425kw(~400V @ 1,000 Amps) will kill you if you touch something that you shouldn't.
I think it'll be a bigger issue once we see the Model 3 on the road.