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Owner of Battery Fire Tesla Vehicle: Car 'Performed Very Well, Will Buy Again'
cartechboy writes "The Tesla Model S fire that, to date, is either electric car Armageddon or 'no big deal' has been fun Internet theatre combined with a dose of crowd-sourced battery-pack pseudo-expertise. Now the actual car owner (and Tesla investor) weighs in with his take, which is, basically, 'nothing to see here and yes, I can't wait to get back into a Tesla.' Owner Robert Carlson wrote an email in response to contact by Tesla's vice president of sales and service, Jerome Guillen, saying he found the car had 'performed very well under such an extreme test. The batteries went through a controlled burn which the Internet images really exaggerates.' Carlson had no comment on the guy who videoed his car fire, who is now Internet infamous for shooting video in portrait mode." You can read Elon Musk's take, along with Carlson's correspondence.
It's powered by flaming batteries.
For the love of all things holy, can camera software / smartphone software detect if the user has _initiated_ the recording rotated and adapt appropriately?
Alternatively, can we get some simple, easy software which rotates video easily? Pictures are a breeze, video seemingly not. It's 2013 already!
I know this will probably get lost in the comments but, when my mom isn't home I like to go into her garden, cover myself in dirt, and pretend I'm a carrot.
Funny, that's how you were conceived.
Only in vapor form. You can put out a match by dipping it in gasoline. That's part of the reason gasoline is such a good vehicle fuel.
Good luck having a condition where you have spilled liquid gasoline but no gasoline vapor, which is QUITE flammable.
Gasoline was chosen as a vehicle fuel because once upon a time it was a waste product of kerosene production, so it was cheap and plentiful. The advantage it had was being VERY VOLATILE - easily evaporating into the air to form an explosive mixture. A carburetor does not need to "condition" it at all, just deliver a carefully controlled dose. Because of this you could produce an internal combustion engine without the need for a fuel injection system like diesel engines required, and with a lower compression ratio, so the engines would be simpler, lighter and faster. Less efficient, too, but who really cared when the fuel was so cheap?
=Smidge=
My neighbor's truck caught fire shortly after he parked it. Problem was a fuel pump which did not shut down properly, and continued to pump fuel to a hot engine with a leak on the fuel injector rail.
Things went from bad to worse very fast.
He was able to push the thing into the middle of the street while it was in the infancy of the burn stage.
During the height of the burn, all of the neighbors were out with their garden hoses trying to keep the gasoline down, but kinda useless... the tank overheated, ruptured, and sent a small stream of ignited gasoline down the street. Of course, everybody moved their cars pronto. The gasoline went on into the gutter and went underground - what happened to it down there is anyone's guess, but it was well lit and smoked a lot down there.
Point I am trying to make is that when the energy which was intended to move a car and its passengers hundreds of miles is released in the space of a few minutes, the results can be spectacular, and destructive.
The fact the car did not literally explode says a heck of a lot.
You can put out a match by dipping it in gasoline.
....Maybe, if you're very quick. But the gasoline would be giving off vapor upwards, which the match would run into downwards. I've seen the old "dip your hand in water and you can dunk it in liquid lead" trick, but this sounds more like that "heat up a spoon with duck tape around the handle then put it in cold water*" cruel prank.
*do NOT attempt!
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Till they fixed this problem I certainly will stay away from any Nvidia product.
Musk's bottom line is the accident outside Seattle that caused the Model S sedan and its battery pack to go up in smoke would have been far worse had it been a conventional gasoline-powered car. "Had a conventional gasoline car encountered the same object on the highway, the result could have been far worse," Musk, who is also CEO of rocket maker SpaceX, writes on Tesla blog. Just as authorities have reported, he says the Model S struck a "large metal object" as it traveled at highway speeds. It went under the car and struck with a force "on the order of 25 tons." He says the estimate is based on the result: a 3-inch hole through armor plate that compromised the car's battery pack. But from there, he says everything went as it should. The car's "onboard alert system" directed to the driver to stop and get out. The fire was contained by firewalls within the battery pack. Vents in the pack directed the flames down and away from the vehicle. The fire department followed the correct procedure in trying to deal with the fire by puncturing holes in a protective plate and shooting water into the pack. If the same accident had occurred under a conventional car, the thin metal shielding around the gas tank or tubing could have caused gasoline to pool and burn the entire car to the ground. "In contrast, the combustion energy of our battery pack is only about 10% of the energy contained in a gasoline tank and is divided into 16 modules with firewalls in between. As a consequence, the effective combustion potential is only about 1% that of the fuel in a comparable gasoline sedan," Musk writes. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/10/04/elon-musk-tesla-fire/2924423/
Yay uninformed internet conservative!
Duck brand tape is the original tape, capable of being used under water. Originally made for the military. Duct tape is the name given to knockoffs to avoid trademark problems. It's not well suited for use on duct work. So, the previous poster specified duck tape because that's the original, and more correct term.
Here is some interesting information on car fires from the US Fire Administration (USFA->FEMA->DHS) and the National Fire Protection Association.
From 2008-2010 "Approximately one in seven fires responded to by fire departments across the nation is a highway vehicle fire. This does not include the tens of thousands of fire department responses to highway vehicle accident sites.". The leading factors in ignition where "mechanical failure" (44.1%) and "electrical failure" (22.3%). 1
The actual number of highway car fires in that period was approximately 582,000, or an average of over 500 car fires every day on American highways.2
In this accident which involved an electric car a large piece of sparking metal debris was run over by the car and thrown up with enough force to slice through the cars stored energy compartment, in this case one of the batteries. The driver was alerted via the display to a problem and instructed to pull over immediately due to the fact that one of the batteries was now leaking and smoldering. A short time later the burning ember reached critical temperature and was able to ignite the softer materials in the adjoining 'frunk', the carpeted front side trunk located where most cars have an engine. The other 15 battery compartments, having not been skewered by a giant metal spike, remained unharmed due to the firewalls and other protection, as did the passenger compartment.
If the owner had been driving a gas powered car and that metal spike had instead been driven up into the gas tank, ripping it open and showering the fuel with sparks as it was dragged along the highway, would the driver have had any warning other than a loud bump and then the passenger compartment being consumed by flames?
This is not the first Tesla fire, there was another involving the Roadster resulting in a recall of 439 vehicles. The source of the fire in that instance was not the advanced battery at all, it was one of the old style 12V lines (Tesla vehicles still include a regular 12V battery for lights/instruments and 'ignition') being in a bad position near a headlight and susceptible to damage that could spark a fire. Going back to the statistics above we have over 100 car fires each day (22.3% of 500) caused by those 12V wires and components being damaged and shorting out. For example Honda recalled over 140,000 (non-hybrid) Fits in the US this year because the wiring in a 12V door switch could get wet, short out and start a fire. GM had the same problem last year and had to recall almost half a million vehicles.
Well, you can run an ICE just fine by pouring gas down the intake manifold. When I was younger and stupider, I did that with my ancient Oldsmobile. Yes, it required a bit of subtlety, but not as much as you'd expect.
Carburetors got quite complex because people expected perfect engine response, at all throttle settings, at environmental conditions ranging from startup at 10,000 feet in the winter to running below sea level at 120 degrees F in the summer, and the government expected minimal emissions in all those situations. But, basic though inefficient operation can be accomplished with a straw and a gas reservoir.
And the worms ate into his brain.
If you're planning on putting matches out by throwing them into the gas tank, gasoline is just the BEST vehicle fuel. Plus, it's so cheap and easily obtainable. You can just back your car up to those gasoline lakes and fill 'er up.
But it's good to know I can throw a match into the gas tank and be perfectly safe. That's probably why internal combustion cars never catch fire.
Clearly, this Tesla fire is proof that electric cars can never work.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well considering that he has a degree in Physics, specifically material physics, and was planning to earn his PhD in Applied Physics (with a focus on advanced batteries), and he probably has a better understanding of how the batteries on the Model S are designed, I'll take his word on what the correct procedure is for extinguishing his batteries
Not really. Duck tape was actually a generic term from early in the 20th century coming from duck cloth to a variety of strip products using duck cloth backing, some with adhesive, some not.. It fell out of use and was trademarked first in the 1970s, after ductape in fact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape