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Tesla Model S Catches Fire: Is This Tesla's 'Toyota' Moment?
cartechboy writes "A Tesla Model S was involved in an accident in Washington state on Tuesday, and the car's battery pack caught fire (with some of it caught on video). The cause of the accident is pretty clear, and Tesla issued a statement that the vehicle hit 'a large metallic object in the middle of the road.' Whether that collision immediately set off a fire in the Model S's battery pack isn't known, but a report from the Regional Fire Authority of Kent, Washington went into detail on the battery pack fire saying the car's lithium-ion battery was on fire when firefighters arrived, and spraying water on it had little effect. Firefighters switched to a dry chemical extinguisher and had to puncture numerous holes into the battery pack to extinguish it completely. Aside from the details of how the battery fire happened and was handled, the big question is what effect it will have on how people view Teslas in the near and middle-term. Is this Tesla's version of 2010's high profile Prius recall issue where pundits and critics took the opportunity to stir fears of the cars new technology?"
"That's TERRIBLE!" they laughed.
obviously gasoline cars never catch on fire
News at 11.
Gasoline burns too. I don't really see many people avoiding the purchase of gasoline-powered cars since, like FOREVER.
No
Of course a gasoline-powered car has *never* caught on fire after a crash [/sarc]
No matter what mechanism we use for storing large amounts of energy in a small package, there is *always* the risk that it will be subject to an uncontrolled release if it suffers a physical insult.
Call me when a Tesla spontaneously explodes in flames... then it's time to get worried.
No. A single incident without a fatality is rarely a cause for such panic unless this is hyped by those opposed to electric cars.
This is about the same as a large metal object ripping open your fuel tank and having the gasoline igniting save it's far more likely the fuel fire will consume the entire car quickly but on the reverse side it's probably easier to put out. The only real solution would be to not use lithium as a battery component which isn't possible at this time.
With an Canyonero
Tesla Model S Catches Fire: Is This Tesla's 'Toyota' Moment?
Only when you consider Toyota's slogan is "Driving excitement". I can think of nothing more exciting than OH GOD OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Of course water intensified the effect... it's an electrical fire!
Anyways... I didn't see anything in the article about it. Did the battery actually explode? If not, then there's an argument for increased safety over gasoline, isn't it?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I am going to stick with my gasoline fuelled car. It will never catch fire
The company that put a price on per unit of death costs for saving a few bucks by pushing the fuel tank further back against engineers' advice.
Tesla BAD! Gas cars that can also catch fire GOOD!
"spraying water on it"
"puncture numerous holes into the battery pack"
I'm guessing these guys don't even know what a battery is.
There were *194,000* highway vehicle fires between 2008 and 2010. That's over 150 a day. Source
Tesla has thousands of vehicles on the road, some operating since 2008. Like every other gas car on the road, its fuel is flammable.
No matter what precautions or design approaches a manufacturer uses short of windpower, highway fires will happen with any car. Five years in, Tesla has had a single fire, it did not spread rapidly, and the driver was unharmed. Unless this becomes a trend, there's nothing to see here.
Not only is there a lot of rain, it's Kent. Coulda been Bellevue, where people in Bentleys would drive by snickering.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Tesla has been very brilliant thus far in their product strategy.
They have made expensive, high end products that are tailored to affluent enthusiasts. They have been working their way down from "least practical" to "most practical".
Enthusiasts and early adopters are much more willing to put up with teething problems in new technologies.
These are not disposable cars that you will see filled with McDonalds wrappers.
So the typical tesla customer isn't stupid white trash looking to cash in on a lawsuit with the help of an ambulance chasing lawyer (yet).
Furthermore, consider the competition: If you believe the party line, A Mercedes Benz can randomly eject its drivetrain and burn itself to a crisp, killing the occupants.
Everyone (including the test data and real-world data) agrees that MB makes exceptionally survivable vehicles. So freak things may happen.
What we saw in this case was that the Tesla hit something, nobody was hurt, the vehicle didn't lose control, and after the driver safely stopped and exited the car, the firefighters had to deal with a slightly new type of fire situation then they are used to.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Most Pontiac Fieros caught fire on the SIDE of the road without an accidents.
Vehicles catch on fire! Wow!
But Tesla is just like everyone else in the auto industry, and if there is something to make safer they should do it.
This is restricted to the motor area. A gasoline fire engulfs the whole car and can kill everybody pretty fast. Looks like there would be plenty of time to get people out safely from a Tesla in comparison.
Face it: There is no really safe way of energy storage. But a well-made lithium battery is orders of magnitude more desirable than highly volatile and very toxic gasoline.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Long story short (large PDF) it's actually the plastic around the batteries that need fire protection, because once the battery starts burning you're screwed.
First, this was a direct puncture by a piece of large metal debris. Not a design failure. The metal object likely caused a short and the resultant fire.
Second, from a number of articles and reports, Tesla's safety designs worked as planned. Numerous articles noted that the fire was contained in the front section of the vehicle where the impact occurred, and did not shift into the passenger compartment. This = GOOD!!!!
The firefighters pouring of water on a chemical fire likely exasperated the situation.
What Tesla should lean from this...
a) evaluate design to see if the front underguard can be further strengthened for greater resistance to impact and puncture with minimal affect on price and performance.
b) recognize the benefit of better trained fire departments, sell off some those stocks to found a non-profit with an endowment to help train nationally all fire departments in the handling of electric drive vehicle systems. Namely to utilize chemical extinguishers rather than water.
c) perhaps evaluate whether a small extinguishing system could be incorporated into the design. (BONUS POINTS)
a)
Tesla Model S = See Dolt Slam
There is no reason to assume the battery exploded. In fact it would be very hard to make it do that while with gasoline that is relatively easy and the fire is going to spread fast to the while car. Here, the fire seems to be entirely restricted to the motor compartment, no flames in the passenger area at all.
Also, it is not an electrical fire, but a lithium fire. You cannot put those out, you just put sand on it and wait. Water is at worst going to cause a steam explosion. These firefighters do not know their job.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
At least according to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who just this last August gave it a 5-star (highest) crash test rating.
Yeah, and there's lithium batteries. Lithium + Water = Big Explosions. The only useful information here is that fire crews need to be better trained to deal with electric cars.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Since they had to poke holes in the pack to enable them to get the retardant into it; it sounds like it was intact, and was just burning; which you would think a professional Fire Dept would know not to mix Li-Ion battery fires and water.
In a battery-powered situation, I suspect the fact that it's a lithium fire was more relevant. Neither electrical nor light metal fires are a good idea to fight with water; but the efficiency of the battery pack probably didn't improve as it burned, so the fire became increasingly non-electrical and just moved on to burning through all that zesty lithium.
They might catch on fire too.
There are lots of large metallic objects in the middle of the road. They're called CARS!
I drove down the freeway and I hit bump
But it only burns the stuff in the trunk
I spent 90 grand to look really cool
now all I have left is a bubbling pool
Thought I'd get laid with my gull wing doors
now all its good for is roastin some smores
My biggest worry was finding charging stations
Now all I can think of is self immolation
Never payin for gas yeah it sounded real nice
turns out all I got was an incendiary device
I can hear them now making their jokes
Turns out the model S really stands for smoke....
Yes, Tesla stock dropped after this story came out. And millions of people are happily driving the Prius and will be driving the Tesla. And the news industry (is it really journalism?) will find another story with more victims and gorier details.
The driver hit something in the road; the vehicle detected the damage, realized it was going to catch on fire, and politely asked the driver to pull over and exit the vehicle. Once the driver had exited, the battery compartment started merrily burning, but the design kept the fire contained within the front compartment. At no point did the fire enter the passenger compartment, which would have been perfectly safe for the driver. Frankly, I can only dream of owning such a safe vehicle.
c) perhaps evaluate whether a small extinguishing system could be incorporated into the design. (BONUS POINTS)
Have to be careful with things like that. It would be VERY easy for competitors to spin that as "Tesla's are so dangerous they need a fire extinguishing system". Stupid argument under the light of day but stupid people and lawmakers (but I repeat myself) are influenced by stupid arguments.
As usual, the answer to the question posed in the headline is, "No."
If this turns out to happen every time they take a bang, it may be their "Pinto Moment." That doesn't seem to happening though.
At some point in the (hopefully) near future, better batteries with several times the energy content of Lithium-Ion will be commonplace. Then, one day, one of those batteries is going to spontaneously burst into a white hot fire inside an integral garage right underneath the four kids living upstairs.
They will burn to death and the world will know it. Downplaying things like this Tesla incident today will not work. It does not matter that gasoline powered cars burn people to death every day.
The argument must be that these things are not without risk, fires will happen, people will get killed in them and that this is the price of mobility.
Keep that in mind when your training has you outraged when someone uses exactly the same argument to rationalize something you oppose. Nuclear power, for example.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Please let me know when we know more.
"The application of water seemed to intensify the fire activity...then applied dry chemical extinguisher.."
and later
"...had to puncture multiple holes into the pack to apply water to the burning material in the battery."
That seems like a questionable decision unless all they had left was water. Did I read the timeline wrong?
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Seems to me that Elon Musk may have some egg on his face since he so boldly offered to help out Boeing redesign their battery system on the 787 not to long ago
There is a huge difference between catching fire due to (apparently) catastrophic damage from flying debris and catching fire due under expected use conditions. So the answer is no, he does not have any egg on his face.
It seems that Tesla's Li-ion batteries are just as likely to catch on fire!
Any Li-ion battery can become flammable under the right conditions.
I don't recall Lee Iacocca or Henry Ford ever taking the blame for a traffic accident a flaw in the car wasn't responsible for.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Way to go! The story went completely over your head. "Just as likely" apparently means to you that spontaneous combustion is the same thing as collision damage.
We need to give remedial training to the idiot video photographer holding his phone vertical while filming the burning Tesla. Yeah, I know he got the image, but it is a pet peeve of mine to hold the thing properly horizontally while shooting video or pictures.
Is this Tesla's version of 2010's high profile Prius recall issue where pundits and critics took the opportunity to stir fears of the cars new technology?
One thing is clear: Meta-pundits will use this opportunity to stir fears about what pundits will do.
Since they had to poke holes in the pack to enable them to get the retardant into it; it sounds like it was intact, and was just burning; which you would think a professional Fire Dept would know not to mix Li-Ion battery fires and water.
To be fair, it's not like cars usually carry large Li-Ion batteries. Needing to handle electric cars differently from a "regular" car in event of an engine fire while obvious in hindsight is probably not something I'd have thought of on-sight (absent specialized training).
I'm just surprised they would have used water at all... it would have been just as problematic with gasoline, since water can't put out a gas fire either.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
this is news? this falls right up there with what color the Ipod will be next. a millionaires' toy car hits a "large metallic object" and damage occurs? Really? come on. anyone thinking of buying one won't give a ...t, and the rest of us wouldn't be buying one if it had rolled over the object without a scratch.
Except that in TF video, they're just staring at the fire, not putting water on it. They have hoses out but they always do. Besides, there are things OTHER than lithium in the car.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
admittedly it took a head-on collision to do that while the Boeing aircraft was just sitting there, but it seems that the Tesla has the same Achilles heal!
Heel. And, no.
Look, I dislike Elon Musk more than the next guy (this is Slashdot, so the next guy is probably a fanboi sycophant), but yeah, no. Metal debris impacting an absurdly powerful battery is not the same as, "plane caught on fire again for no reason, cap'n, lol".
Q: What?
A: A problem!! With a new technology!!! That's really expensive!!!!! And that prominent hippie pinko environmentalists like!!!!!!!
Q: How Big?
A: Big. More energy than burning a complete hardbound printing of the US federal tax code!
Q: How Fast?
A: Very fast, in fact TSLA shares dropped 7% over the course of a day. That's almost half of the speed of the great 1929 stock market crash!
Some school districts have provisions in their transportation contracts which forbid gasoline powered buses. Diesel fumes may be toxic, but it's actually quite hard to make it burn. (Natural gas buses - when they were common - were oddly accepted sometimes and not others.)
I completely agree with the other posters, gasoline cars never catch fire and burn their occupants to death. I'm shocked, shocked that an electric car would burn. Obviously it's a death trap.
By extension, I'm also horrified by those who suggest we revive zeppelins to manage flight. Don't they know hydrogen burns? Also, jumbo jets never burn. Aviation fuel, I've read, is safe to drink and could never harm anyone. 13 people died awful agonizing deaths on the Hindenburg. Think of the humanity! What's that? 137 people died in a PanAm crash... *yawn* what's on Must-See TV tonight?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Clearly, having a single instance of an electric vehicle catching fire after an accident is proof that the whole idea of electric vehicles is faulty.
Because cars with internal combustion engines have never, ever caught fire.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Looks to me like the fire is contained to the "engine" compartment AND the driver/passengers were able to get out without being engulfed in flames. That's pretty damn good engineering. Also consider Toyota Prius batteries appear to be under the passenger compartment.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Incorrect, unless you powder the lithium. Otherwise you just make a slightly bigger fire. If you use enough water you can actually put out lithium by cooling it so much. Remember the fire triangle.
Boeing 787: Multiple fires out of 83 deployed vehicles. All fires happened without collision, one happened while vehicle was parked.
Tesla Model S: One fire out of ~14,000 deployed vehicles. The fire happened due to a collision.
Yeah, I think Tesla's doing pretty well relative to Boeing here...
The real safety concern here is the moron shooting video over his shoulder while DRIVING a pickup truck.
Cars catch on fire after accidents all the time. Cars (Electric or Gas) are hauling around a lot of stored energy, and an accident can cause that energy to be released in a rather sudden and violent way (fire). Until there is some more info on this fire (and what caused it), I don't see what the big fuss is.
The accident you are mentioning was most likely caused by the car bottoming out on the intersection just before it drove over a fire hydrant (skid marks and hydrant evident on pictures), lost it's drive line because that hooked on said hydrant and then ended frontally into a big tree (or was it a lamp post?) at an impact speed of over 60 mph. I
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Reading the article, it appears that they did spray water on it first - makes sense, it's not like it's all that easy to ID a burning car. Then they noticed odd behavior, the fire got worse - OK, we know how to deal with that - stop the water, grab the dry chemical extinguisher.
Then they had to puzzle through how to put the fire out completely given they were out in the middle of the road. Seems like they did a pretty good job. A few motorists were inconvenienced, no one was hurt. People learned things. Probably will be the talk of the department for weeks.
I'll bet it was the highlight of their day (the FD folks, perhaps the owner, but in a different sense).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Didn't that turn out to just be a bunch of people trying to commit insurance fraud?
white trash
I'd imagine people would be less inclined to mod you up if you used the word nigger, but the intent is the same.
Tesla disagrees with you.
http://www.teslamotors.com/firstresponders
Lots of water is a good way to cool the battery and end the fire. The fire triangle exists in battery fires as well.
Since they had to poke holes in the pack to enable them to get the retardant into it; it sounds like it was intact, and was just burning; which you would think a professional Fire Dept would know not to mix Li-Ion battery fires and water.
Gasoline and water aren't known to mix very well either, especially when it's on fire. I continue to wonder why they would have used that as their first option.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Well, I'd call that a very good thing. I would have expected "spraying water on a lithium fire" to have had a spectacular effect. Kudos to Tesla for managing to protect the firefighters from blowing themselves up!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Studied these in Nuc Pwr School. I imagined some engineers saying to themselves "It's completely crazy, but they aren't paying us to warn them about that."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
If there are only, say, 50-100 of these things on the road, that's a serious percentage bursting into flames.
If there's at least a few thousand out there, then it's not a notable percentage, and I don't care.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Not a Tesla issue, it's a lithium battery issue, ANY vehicle (or electronic device) with lithium batteries will have this concern, Volt, Prius, etc.
When the Prius came out all the local FD's went to training on how to safely put out a fire in them and more importantly how to extract a passenger in the event of a crash.
There was quite a bit of concern around using the jaws of life and cutting into a live wire.
And so the FD's will get more training on Tesla's as well.
It's not only an electrical fire, it's also a fire containing Lithium. Free Lithium (assuming the heat was high enough to break the salt), upon exposure to moisture, can produce Hydrogen Gas. In other words, you make the fire worse.
Porsche has used magnesium engine blocks for a long time. Firefighters should know by now that putting water on a burning automobile is risky. Check youtube for Magnesium+engine+block+fire+water for fun videos.
"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
From the pictures I've seen so far on Jalopnik, the fire was all in the front end of the car, and the FD had to rip open the front end of the car to access the area that was on fire. The lithium batteries are in the bottom center of the car. What's in the front? The 12 volt accessory battery. Either way, pouring water on an electrical fire with either battery chemistry involved is genius. (Flooding it with a LOT of water apparently does work though.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Just consider everything about the above sentence to be wrong, and let's never speak of it again. Please.
tl;dr version - it's a wash, as far as I can tell.
Neither gasoline nor lithium battery paste really wants to explode. However, both very rapidly generate gas pressure, so if they are contained the container can possibly explode. In the case of batteries, this means the plastic cell splits open, allowing more oxygen to reach the fire, which may cause a chain reaction of other nearby cells igniting. In the case of gasoline, the steel cell can violently rupture, and flaming liquid may be released all over the place.
Once the fire is going, the lithium smoke is more hazardous than the gasoline smoke, but the liquid gasoline is more hazardous than the relatively immobile lithium paste. Both are highly visible and therefore easily avoided - unless you're trapped in a burning car, in which case either one can kill you.
Really, the dangers are different, but roughly equivalent. You could argue that gasoline is slightly more dangerous because of the vapor issue (a near empty tank is vastly more dangerous than a full one) or you could argue that the batteries are more dangerous due to the possibility of electric shock or UV damage to the eyes from arcing, but at that point the argument has devolved to movie-theater plot ridiculousness.
Both technologies are dangerous if abused and should be treated with respect. If you are intelligent and exercise your common sense, though, there's nothing to be afraid of.
Pure lithium reacts quite exothermically to water:
2 Li + H2O -> Li2O + H2 + heat
Which leads to:
2 H2 + O2 + heat -> 2 H2O + MORE heat (aka: a fireball)
Li-ion batteries contain no pure lithium, Li-ion doesn't react with water. Only reasons not to use water is because of potential voltages. The water could either conduct back to fire fighters, or as it gets contaminated cause more shorting internal and external to the battery.
This seems to say what most of you are saying. Crashed cars catch fire. It's not a bid deal! www.motorauthority.com/news/1087408_surprise-cars-sometimes-catch-fire-when-crashed-why-everyone-needs-to-take-a-breath-on-tesla
There was no doubt Toyota would recover. They were simply too big a company with lots of resources. As evidenced by the Tsunami that hit a few months later.
A big problem with the model S could put Tesla under.
They could have easily extinguished it quickly with CO2. as it removes two components. Oxygen and Heat.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Tesla has the same Achilles heal!
wow, a self-repairing battery
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
But only the exposed lithium can do that. Also we are not dealing with pure lithium nor pure water.
Read this:
http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/downloads/20130214_ModelS_Emergency_Response_Guide.pdf
BMW, too. My old BMW doesn't have a magnesium block, but does have a magnesium valve cover.
And the front grill supports of a Ford Excursion that I worked on a few years ago: I didn't burn any chunks of it to verify, but that stuff acted very, very strange when drilling.
There's lots of different metals used in cars. Believe it or not, firefighters already know this.
Kid-proof tablet..
The water could either conduct back to fire fighters
You're full of shit.
One of the big unknowns regarding the Tesla S was how the battery would do if things went badly in an accident and it caught fire. Now we have much more of an idea. The fire was kept out of the cabin and it was relatively undramatic. Parts of the car might even still be usable.
I am feeling more confident about the fire safety of the model S now.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
They have been waiting for this...now it will be played up ad nauseum
Diesel burns FUCKING GREAT. In fact, it burns so well it's what is used to heat your home (presuming you have oil heat). But it doesn't explode well.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The Prius recall issue would have been a minor thing, but Toyota's response was to first deny, then accept but cover up, etc. It made them look guilty and trying to hide something.
I think consumers are willing to accept that new technology is always going to have it's quirks, and Tesla customers are absolutely in the first adopter consumer mindset; willing to accept hiccups in the process. All Tesla has to do is say that there was clearly an issue, they will investigate it rigorously, adapt any technology to increase safety standards, and ensure fire fighters across the country are provided some instructions on how to quickly douse any fire caused by the pack. It'd be expensive, but the goodwill you buy from the market would increase 10 fold.
In good old Blighty we used to make a "nice sportscar"
that was prone to spontaneous combustion.
A classic design, still highly sought-after the world over. I believe Larry Ellison has half a dozen in bright red with the Confederate naval jack painted on the roof.
Plays Dixie when you toot the horn too.
Stick Men
This will continue to happen, at least with the Model S. The Prius' battery pack is tiny in comparison, and far better protected. Gas tanks can of course catch fire and explode, but they too are much smaller and better protected. The Model S battery pack contains over 7000 lithium-ion cells, any one of which can catch fire if damaged as in this case. The Model S batteries are located underneath the floor of the car, occupying almost the entire exposed underside. This location is desirable for the car's low center of gravity and potentially for replacing the battery pack, but is also the most likely to suffer damage from road debris.
Nucular.
By one means or another, someone buying a Tesla has had some significant level of success that puts them in the top percent or two of earners in the US -- or inherited it. Odds are the majority of those are not dim enough to get all panicked and manipulated the way people were with the Firestone thing or the Toyota thing. Even when their "cheaper" models come out, they'll still be at the upper end of what would be considered a "middle class" car. Mouth-breathers who get freaked out by the media are generally not upper-middle-class.
Will it have some impact? Sure. But I doubt this qualifies as their "Toyota" moment.
Except that they shouldn't be trying to put out a gasoline fire with water either.... since gasoline will just float on top of the water, and continue burning merrily.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm no fan of Teslas (or any electric cars) but I really can't criticize the car itself for this. Anything with enough energy to power an automobile -- be it gasoline, diesel, hydrogen or electricity stored in a battery -- has the potential to explode or catch fire in the wrong set of circumstances. If this vehicle hadn't been involved in an accident, that would be a problem. Considering that it was, a fire isn't that shocking. There's a reason the fire department shows up at the scene of any large accident, whether there's an immediate fire or not.
Unless it's like the Pinto where getting rear-ended could cause the thing to burst into flames, I don't think Tesla owners have any real cause for concern.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Firefighters often use water in fire where they cannot directly put out the fire by dousing the burning material with water. This is because the water cools things down. This helps prevent adjacent materials from igniting, and can help to extinguish the fire by pulling heat out of it.
Although not easily, gasoline cars will catch fire. It's just a product of hauling so much concentrated energy around.
The big issue is how hard it was for the fire crew to put it out. They can just douse a gasoline-fueled car, and it's out. But they shouldn't have to pierce the battery pack to put out a Tesla.
Maybe if they put temperature-sensitive dry chemical packs in the battery pack. If it gets too hot (as in the batteries are burning), the packs burst, forcing the chemical everywhere.
Yeah, and there's lithium batteries. Lithium + Water = Big Explosions. The only useful information here is that fire crews need to be better trained to deal with electric cars.
Just as well they don't make LiPo batteries from pure lithium then.
I use LiPo batteries for RC planes a lot, and one recommended way of safely discharging batteries for disposal is to drop them in a bucket of water for a day or so. This prevents thermal runaway, which is the big danger when you get internal shorts in a LiPo cell, and is probably what happened to the crashed Tesla.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
It burns, but usually doesn't explode unlike gasoline.
Plus, how quickly does lithium react with air normally? I remember the surface will oxidize, so if you have a chunk of it you want to react, you have to cut it or something.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I wonder how hard it is to clean that stuff up afterwards?
Trashes the car. Not a huge deal in a stripped out racing car presuming the fire doesn't do any major damage. In a carpeted passenger vehicle you'll basically ruin the interior and quite possibly parts of the engine depending on the system. While it is possible to clean it it would cost a bleeding fortune to do so.
The Prius is still wildly popular - I don't see this one incident causing any problems for Tesla.
I'm almost surprised that they didn't go to this first thing - water isn't good for gasoline fires either, though the sheer amount a fire engine can put out will often put out fires that water would not otherwise be recommended for.
I don't read AC A human right
... and also ignore all the toxic chemicals used to make the batteries
The Tesla uses a Lithium Ion battery for its energy storage (one of the variants that's almost impossible to get to burn - to the point that I hope the investigators look really close at the "burning Tesla"'s remains, to see if somebody dumped gasoline on it).
There are a number of variants on LiIon chemistry, but (unlike most other battery technologies) ALL of them use only materials that are considered non-toxic enough that the batteries can just be dumped in landfills without post-processing.
The most toxic material I've heard of in ANY LiIon variant is aluminum.
An entire Tesla automobile is not even in the same league, pollution-wise, as a power-tool NiCad pack, the starter battery in a gasoline automobile, or even the traces of lead from its posts on the battery clamps if the starter battery is properly pulled and recycled.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
1 new car that someone probably done something wrong to problem. Jeeps explode and they did not even recall them did stock drop. I find it a buying opportunity. Thanks Jim.
A perfect opportunity wasted because nobody brought old coat hangers and marshmallows. I think ever Tesla and Prius owner should have a bag in the glove compartment just in case.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You claim he's full of shit, so I'll claim you're not an electrician. NO one needs to be standing in water when there is a short to ground anywhere near it. People always say "Electricity takes the path of least resistance" but that saying is a dumbed down layman's version. The saying is actually 'Electricity takes ALL paths to ground with the amount of current passing through each path proportional to its resistance" Now whether the battery pack in a Tesla can put out the current at a high enough voltage to shock everyone within a close proximity can be argued, and I off the top of my head think not, that is no reason to throw caution to the wind. Keep people back away from it, and always use a powder or foam extinguisher. Water is just stupid anyway. It'll short out other electronics what worked perfectly well and will pretty much make any successful attempt at repairing the burnt item highly improbable. This is why older communications facilities, server farms, etc used a halon fire system. They didn't want to soak the good racks and ruin them, just suffocate the one on fire and possibly repair it. So go ahead and tell me I'm full of shit too, but I'm afraid you're gonna have to back your claim up better than a 4 word insult.
i love how page 18 looks like hand-drawn in paint
It burned in front of my house. The truck was one month old, and all she did was park it after driving 40 minutes. The fire popped both front tires, and warped the road. According to the fire department, power steering fluid leaked onto the exhaust.
The Dodge dealer offered a replacement, and she demanded a refund because the design was unfit to transport children. Then they told her that they didn't care about non-customers. Chrysler corporate said the same thing. She had to pay $1000 to break the lease. A report went to the NTSB.
more likely to be killed at the pump (pumping or not), right now...but the hazards will change too, and someone will die from charging their car confusing the plug with the plug up their ass and zap! now electric butt plugs takes the fall!
um...no. any partially discharge lithium-ion battery is going to have lithium in it. and really fun electrolytes.
As an aside, the parked 787 fire actually wasn't Boeing's fault. The energy for that event came from an entirely different battery -- the one which powers the aircraft's emergency locator beacon. ELBs are sealed (as in waterproof) low-maintenance boxes intended to activate in an emergency and send out a homing signal for emergency responders to locate. Boeing selected an off-the-shelf Honeywell ELB for the 787. Since ELBs need to function even if the aircraft is basically destroyed, they must have self-contained power. Honeywell chose non-rechargable lithium primary cells, which allows the ELB to remain in service for years without maintenance (non-rechargable lithium has a 10 year shelf life, so as long as you design the box to use no more than a trickle of current before it activates, it can go a very long time between needing fresh batteries installed).
Last I saw, the tentative conclusion is that a Honeywell tech may have accidentally pinched a wire while assembling the ELB, damaging its insulation and eventually causing a short, which in turn released enough energy stored in the ELB's battery to cause a fire. A bit unfortunate for Boeing that the first time this problem occurred across ~6000 (IIRC) ELBs of this design, it happened on the 787...
"Is this Tesla's version of 2010's high profile Prius recall issue where pundits and critics took the opportunity to stir fears of the cars new technology?"
One fire where no one was injured? Any pundits or critics claiming this is an indication of anything is, quite frankly, retarded. There have already been terrible crashes with both the Tesla Roadster and the Model S. No one has ever died in a Tesla vehicle. Others have died in collisions with Tesla vehicles where the Tesla driver got out with little to no injury.
That people will feign (or worse, actually experience) fear of a potential battery fire in a car is truly absurd in light of the fact that the typical car is utilizing explosions to provide power and hauling a large container of explosive fuel. They're driving a rolling bomb and talking about how dangerous batteries are.
There's just so much dumb.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Because aside from the obvious sensational, "OMG a Tesla caught on fire" reactions, the reality of the situation is the car actually warned the driver that something was wrong and they should pull over immediately and get out, BEFORE the fire started.
Consider how many gas powered cars explode and kill passengers every year, I still think EV vehicles are a little safer, especially when the car is monitoring the battery and is kind enough to let you know you should get the fuck out.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Has there never been an example of a gasoline powered car catching fire?
Is this a video of a Tesla burning rubber? (Seems to me that a temperature-release dry chemical fire retardant packed at the top each cell is the next step for Tesla.)
Didn't the Firestone thing turn out to be an SUV thing? Manufacturers recommending too-low pressures for their vehicles to do better on rollover tests with top-heavy vehicles. Low pressures -> lots of sidewall flexing as the tire rolls -> heat -> delamination and bursting.
Ironically, you have a much lower chance of a blowout if your tires are at the max rated sidewall pressure (least flex, least chance of a bottoming-out incident) than running at or below the car manufacturer's recommended pressure. It also reduces hydroplaning but increases wet braking distance, so YMMV.
Sam
Pure water is a decent insulator. Contaminated water can conduct AC pretty good, but batteries are DC. In 2002 on the show "Junkyard Wars" they built a DC-powered submarine with exposed uninsulated wiring and nobody got shocked and nothing shorted out.
Even if we ignore the above little-known facts, it's pretty hard to conceive of a situation where electrically energized water would send any significant current through a gloved and rubber-booted fireman instead of just going directly to the ground through the puddle, or up the hose to the incredibly well grounded hydrant. Current's going to be distributed according to resistance, and there are certain to be so many less resistive paths that's it's incredibly unlikely that any measurable current whatsoever would "conduct back to firefighters".
In the movies, of course you'd be electrocuted, but in the movies, a gas car would have exploded into a 30 foot fireball.
Ac vs dc has nothing to do with it. Voltage is key. The tesla batteries are 375 volts. What was that sub? Also the tesla motors are AC and probably higher than 375 volts. All of that said, all but that one batery was turned off and sealed from water, so water was the right thing to spray. Probably saved the other batteries from getting hot enough to fail.
As I understand it, the amount of juice needed to drive electricity through a crappy conductor (like water) is fantastically higher using DC than when using AC. I'll be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, especially if you propose a reasonable experiment that'll empirically prove it one way or another.
When I was an electrician's mate I was taught that current (amps, not volts) and whether the electricity passes through nervous tissue (such as brain or heart pacemaker) determines the lethality of a shock. That was a long time ago.
That being said, I've taken 120vac through my body while soaking wet and standing in water and suffered no more harm than if I'd been stuck with a sharp pin, and decades ago I was hit with 30,000 volts high frequency from three separate flybacks (pretty much simultaneously) and survived... although that last incident really hurt, left three big red spots on my arm, and wiped every thought out of my head for a minute or two. I was dry and wearing rubber soled shoes when that happened.
Oh, sorry, I skipped your question. I seem to remember the submarine ran off one or more car batteries, so some small multiple of 12 volts DC.
Anyway, this idea that water has magically bad effects on electricity needs to die; the reality (that nanopure water insulates, and salty water conducts) is more interesting and useful.
Lots of urban legends around electricity, I worked as a electrician in a plant while getting my EE, and heard all of those same stories. Fact is it takes very little current 30 ma I believe, to stop your heart. But normal body resistance requires 200 volts to produce that. If you ever get 200+ volts through your body your close to deadly. Lucky for you almost none of that went through your body or you would be missing parts. Problem with water, is it is the best solvent, it picks up most things it touches. So how conductive widly depends on the purity. And at higher voltages you'll reach the point where any electrolytes will line up and make it a excelent conductor. If you still have access to a megger you can see this easily. Put each electrode in water that's not pure, and a dozen volts, you'll get a open circuit. At 500 volts you could easily get under 1 ohm. I very briefly got ahold of 1 leg of 440 v while standing in storm water wearing rubber boots in a light rain. That 260 volts to ground from the back of my hand (jumped about 1") me only grounded via that storm water had me such that every muscle was so sore I could barely walk for days. Entire body sore for 2 weeks after. I couldn't imagine how bad you had to feal after your incident. Heck I got a nasty bite from 24 vdc, it was raining I was sweating, I touched my forearm to the chasis while disconecting a battery (done hundreds of times dry) it felt like a bee sting wet.