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?"

Comments

vs gasoline cars

[KernelMuncher]

obviously gasoline cars never catch on fire

Re:vs gasoline cars

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Big Astrology has covered this up; but it turns out that your safety is almost entirely determined by who was appointed as the director for your life story.

If it's a documentary type, the risk is nonzero; but quite modest. If it's a moody psychological thriller, you should avoid flashbacks but are utterly safe. If it's an action shlock-slinger, colliding with a pothole, shopping cart, or just about anything else at more than a few miles an hour will produce a massive fireball. Be sure to practice jumping improbably to safety. In this last case, the safest way to navigate the roads is actually to either be chasing or chased by armed criminals/terrorists/secret agents at all times. While cars not involved in high-speed chases routinely explode at the slightest stimulus, being involved in a high speed chase improves performance and fuel economy by at least 50%, provides an immunity to most bodywork damage(except bullet holes through inessential pieces of glass, be sure that your insurance covers windshield replacements), and makes explosions virtually impossible.

Re:vs gasoline cars

[CaptainLard]

Actually despite what hollywood would have you believe, modern cars are very good at not catching fire in a crash. As is the Tesla in most cases I'm sure. As more of them get out there, more unforeseen circumstances will occur but I'm assuming no one got hurt (else that would have been the headline) so its a great data point to make a safe car even safer. And Prius sales are doing just fine....

Re:vs gasoline cars

[interkin3tic]

Hopefully tesla will point that out, but the story here is public relations. The public is illogical. They can easily come to believe that Teslas are much less safe than the competition, even if that isn't really the case. Car companies and the oil industry obviously have an interest in spreading FUD to foster that effect, and would have absolutely no qualms about doing so. They've played dirty so far.

The name Tesla is fitting, since Nikolai Tesla faced a similar situation in life with Edison.

Re:vs gasoline cars

[omnichad]

Funny story. On the way back from Thanksgiving during college, I was driving a couple classmates from my area with me. We hit a deer. I got out of the car to check the damage, and one of the girls in the car started running down the highway. In her adrenaline rush from the crash, she must have had a movie PTSD flashback and thought the car was going to explode.

Re:vs gasoline cars

[The Grim Reefer]

obviously gasoline cars never catch on fire

Gasoline vehicles burn ALL the TIME. You see it in every movie you watch nowadays.

Which is much safer than the gasoline vehicles in movies from the 70's and 80's. They had a nasty habit of going over cliffs and exploding in tremendous pyrotechnic displays(after coming to a complete stop). The fireball could easily reach 50 feet. Often times they transformed from an expensive Ferrari into a Pinto before going over the cliff.

Re:vs gasoline cars

[MachDelta]

Judging by the username, I'm going to go with shrooms.

Re:vs gasoline cars

[mellon]

Ha! Yes, this is true. But they also burn in real life. I've seen it happen twice. The heat that comes off of a burning gasoline car is intense even from a couple of lanes away. It's nothing like what's shown in this video. I think the Tesla engineers can pat themselves on the back—it looks like the battery of this car was severely compromised, and still did not dump all its energy at once.

Hitting stuff @ speed with your car can damage it!

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11.

Gasoline burns too. I don't really see many people avoiding the purchase of gasoline-powered cars since, like FOREVER.

So?

[NewtonsLaw]

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.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines

[ScottCooperDotNet]

No. A single incident without a fatality is rarely a cause for such panic unless this is hyped by those opposed to electric cars.

heh.

[girlintraining]

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.

Water intensified the effect? Duh

[mark-t]

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?

My car will never catch fire

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to stick with my gasoline fuelled car. It will never catch fire

Re:Big Oil is Dancing

[Spy Handler]

I told you so!

Signed,
Edison

No.

[bmajik]

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.

Looks much less dangerous than a gasoline fire

[gweihir]

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.

Thoughts and Insights...

[PortHaven]

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)

Of course not.

[rainwalker]

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.

Re:Just gonna make it worse

[Sarten-X]

Tesla's battery packs are large multiple-battery units, with a crunchy plastic shell. If the fire is on the wiring in the shell, the proper way to extinguish it is to puncture the shell and apply a chemical extinguisher. That seems to be exactly what they did.

No he does not

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Careful

[Todd Knarr]

Or Tesla spins it as "We're incorporating a built-in fire-suppression system, the same as all race cars have had for the last 20 years or so. Why our competitors haven't done so by now,... you'll have to ask them, they're the ones who've been fielding the racing teams using this technology.".

Re:Big Oil is Dancing

[TWiTfan]

Fuck oil and electricity. I want a *nuclear* powered engine. Now THAT will be an accident!

Re:I doubt its a major issue

[ColdWetDog]

Firefighters get constant updates on all sorts of technologies. Two months ago, the monthly VFD meeting was all about LiOn batteries - from camcorders to cars. There was a slick video with all sorts of cool GoPro shots. Next month it's carbon composite airplanes like the 787. Those are supposed to be quite entertaining.

You will notice, in the brief FA video, the firefighter standing there and looking at the scene. They're not rushing around with hoses. It looks like they understand what they're dealing with and acting accordingly.

And some of us remember the magnesium transmission cases in Volkswagen bugs. Now, those were a PITA to extinguish. The world is full of all sorts of potentially dangerous things, emergency personnel get frequent instruction on how to safely deal with them.

Meta-Pundits

[Jahava]

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.

Re:Does Musk has egg on his face now?

[Guspaz]

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...

Re:Water intensified the effect? Duh

[ColdWetDog]

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).

Re:Big Oil is Dancing

[OakDragon]

Fuck oil and electricity. I want a *nuclear* powered engine. Now THAT will be an accident!

I'm sure that in 2043, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 2013, it's a little hard to come by.

Re:Big Oil is Dancing

[Anonymous Coward]

More insightful than funny. Edison did electrocute elephants with electricity in public to "prove" that Tesla's AC current was more dangerous than his DC current. Tesla won that round - AC is easier to transmit over long distances because of the ease of using transformers to step it up or down.

Re:Water intensified the effect? Duh

[Dare nMc]

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.

Re:Big Oil is Dancing

[Anonymous Coward]

Because gasoline/diesel powered cars never ever ever catch fire after an accident.

Re:Big Oil is Dancing

[ShanghaiBill]

AC is easier to transmit over long distances because of the ease of using transformers to step it up or down.

Actually, AC used to be more efficient. With modern technology, high voltage DC is usually more efficient, especially for longer distances.