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Third Tesla Fire Means Feds To Begin Review
cartechboy writes "In early October, a Tesla caught on fire in Washington state — and that created a little bit of a stir. Then just before Halloween a second Tesla caught fire. Yesterday, a third Model S caught fire in Tennessee. With the third fire in the books, all happening in similar fashion, today federal investigators are saying they are going to take a look at the situation more closely. As electric car maker's stock shares continue to tumble, some are saying the fires aren't a big deal."
In the UK there are only 15,000 car fires per year (discounting arson). Obviously gasoline is safer.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919132719/http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/894/FireStatisticsUnitedKingdom2003PDF1724Kb_id1124894.pdf
Model S fires are extremely photogenic, but as far as I can tell, all three of these fires involved debris (or firefighters) puncturing the battery shield and hitting the battery, rather than something spontaneous. I'm not an expert by any means, but I'd hazard a guess that the results would have been similar with a gasoline powered car.
Whats the rate of regular cars catching on fire vs. Teslas?
Anyone have any statistics handy?
Found my own answer: 21,500. From later in the same Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang/2013/11/05/tesla-makes-record-delivery-of-model-s-promises-a-pioneering-approach-to-servicing-its-cars/
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Tesla has made a statement (8:49pm):
“We have been in contact with the driver, who was not injured and believes the car saved his life. Our team is on its way to Tennessee to learn more about what happened. We will provide more information when we’re able to do so.”
Source: http://insideevs.com/third-tesla-model-s-fire-in-past-5-weeks-breaks-out-after-accident/
Maybe he can get the Boeing engineers to help him figure it out.
Each of these accidents have defined causes, and the resulting fires are not unreasonable based on the cause. Puncturing a battery with tons of force might just cause a fire. These are not spontaneously combusting. No one was hurt, even the guy that crashed in Mexico. Investigate away, but there really is nothing to see here. The upside is that I can afford more stock now.
Our great computers fill the hallowed halls
Just ask anyone that races R/C. You must treat them with respect, charge them carefully, and never puncture them. Once you break any of these rules, they catch on fire. In spite of this, you only rarely see a lithium battery fire in R/C racing because most racers know how to maintain them properly and when to dispose of them (properly).
Then again, Tesla, in their drive for performance, built these cars with their batteries mere inches from the surface of the road. No gasoline car has their tank that low and even R/C cars have them higher in the chassis and more protected from the surface.
Listen to fire department radio traffic in any medium to large city and you will undoubtedly hear calls for car fire on a regular basis. Most of those are the result of poorly maintained, older vehicles - fifteen year old cars that have never had any fuel lines inspected, much less replaced. A few accidents spark fires, but that isn't common. Newer vehicles, not so much.
Too early to tell if there is some inherent problem with the Tesla, but it certainly warrants an independent review.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Whenever you store a lot of energy in a small space and have the potential for rapid release then there will always be a fire risk.
Gasoline, electricity, kinetic energy -- it all poses a fire risk in the event of an uncontrolled release of that energy.
If you want 100% safety then walk.
Uh-oh, I forgot about the risk of spontaneous human combustion!
We're stuffed!
Damn, they even confiscated my asbestos underwear!
What are we to do now?
In the U.K., there are 15,000 car fires per year, and ~28.7 million cars on the road. Tesla has had 3 car fires out of 21,500 cars on the road. The fires:car ratio is about 4:1 overall:Model S. That said, most of the Model S's haven't been on the road a full year, but if we assume they've been in service an average of the three months, then the overall rate of combustion is essentially identical.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Recalls due to manufacturing defects that cause car fires have happened many times.
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
100% of internal combustion engines catch fire, somewhere within the car.
signature is pants
The third accident link is nothing more than some incomprehensible Twitter gibberish rather than a real article, but for the first two fires, each one involved a serious, high speed collision, which in most gas cars probably would have resulted in injuries for the driver or worse. In both cases, the driver walked away even though the battery pack caught fire (which did not spread to the passenger compartment).
This is much ado about nothing.
When's the last time you heard of a gas powered car catching fire because it ran over something without crashing.
Quite a handful of cars just lit up seemingly at random in regular traffic. I think last time I saw picture of one in the news was last month.
A town of 20,000 people isn't likely to have 3 high speed crashes in 2 years either. This isn't a good way to look at statistics.
They were good enough to put a man on the Moon (the single most important achievement ever according to most slashers), but they can't review an electrical problem?
This is the very same government project where the crew compartment had a flammable 100% oxygen environment and the hatch had to be pulled inward against internal pressure, a pressure that increases during a fire. Where three astronauts were trapped and killed during testing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
Also in more modern times where the government agency involved was more concerned with politics than flight crew safety. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster
I remember back around 1991 or so a friend of mine was looking out at the parking lot from our building at a burning car. It was over a half mile away and he said "some poor son of a bitch is going to have a bad day." About 30 minutes later the security police turned up looking for him, he was the poor son of a bitch. The electrical system on his Ford Bronco had caught fire and it burned to scrap in a few minutes. It turns out it wasn't an uncommon thing either, a lot of them did that. We had fun telling him his Bronco was really a Blazer.
I have personally seen 5 cars on fire that were not in crashes. Seems common enough to me.
Learn to love Alaska
Hell I had a Chevy catch fire going up a hill in reverse. No debris required.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUuWiOc0j7E
Mazda CX 7s were first produced in 2007.
The bad wiring, the large amount of flammable materials, and 100% O2 environment was obviously an exercise in bad judgement. But the inward hatch design itself, though dangerous in hindsight, was to originally used improve safety for modules landing in the ocean. IIRC an outward opening door design almost got one of the gemini pilots killed.
But that's besides the point. The government didn't build the Apollo 1 command module, that was contracted out.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Considering the bizarre timeline (3 in a couple months, all of a sudden?), the tolerances and safety features surrounding the batteries, and the publicity that all of the victims milked with copious amounts of photos and interviews, could this be an illicit attempt to get Tesla banned?
The fire rate is basically identical to that of gasoline car fires according to the previous post by ShadowRangerRIT (15k files/year in the UK out of 28.7M cars vs. Tesla's 21,500 cars with 3 fires, but many of those Teslas haven't been on the road a full year).
And at least two of the "victims" have publicly said they want new Teslas to replace their crashed ones.
I've seen relatively new cars catch fire while parked. It happens more often than most people think. A quick google image search for "car fire" will show a bunch of cars either parked or sitting on the side of the road without any visible damage (aside from the fire of course). My fire dept has gotten called out a few times for a "car fire extending to the house" because a parked car burst into flames for whatever reason.
However, my experience doesn't mean that there isn't something wrong with the Tesla, just that I wouldn't be surprised if an investigation didn't find anything.
Also, Tesla does have an emergency response guide and Fire Dept's need to start reading up on these cars. It even has a nice little note at the bottom of the pages reminding us to wear our goddamned SCBA at a car fire.
The other auto manufacturers did much to interfere and even sabotage the Tucker. While the Tucker had enough of its own problems, some were suspect and other problems came from the outside when it came to resources for materials and a bit of bad press.
I acknowledge that the fires could very well be from an actual problem in this car, but with as much other crap Tesla has gone through, I wouldn't entirely rule out various forms of sabotage. We've already seen what Texas Auto Dealers Association can do.
How many people have been injured in a Tesla? Would a fellow that runs a successful rocket company not know a little something about hydrogen? You have done nothing to invalidate Elon's claims.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I had a minivan that burned a year after I sold it. My brother bought it, and his roommate wanted it--my brother advised against, but eventually sold it. His roommate was taking a church group to a ski resort, and the vehicle leaked oil and caught fire. They put it out, but it reignited. The ski lodge called the fire department and used up several of their fire extinguisher-- after each one, it reignited. The fire truck used up its fire extincuishers-- and it reignited, then burned.
My brother ran into such a fire on the interstatee; a young woman was near the car. He didn't have a fire extinguisher, but he did have a soda cup and there was a muddy puddle near by. So he started scooping water on the fire--it reignited repeatedly, but each time, the mud baked on and sealed the oil leak more. In the end, the car was saved.
There's a lesson there.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Car manuals will warn you not to park over dry leaves or grass because the catalytic converter can become very hot. You don't have to hit anything at all to burn up a gas powered car.
So now feds are the experts on high-tech cars?
Someone is sure an expert on electric car fires, gas car competitors?
Those competitors are also offering all electric vehicles:
General Motors: Spark
Ford: Focus
Fiat (Chrysler): 500e
Toyota: RAV 4
Honda: Fit
Nissan: Leaf
Would a fellow that runs a successful rocket company not know a little something about hydrogen?
What does running a company have to do with technical knowledge? I'm sure a CEO of a "rocket" company would have to have some knowledge about hydrogen, but I would not quote them as an expert on the subject.
I believe it's actually aluminum, but they've also designed the battery compartment to point any fire forward away from the passenger compartment. If a gas tank ruptures you're in a very dangerous situation and have very good odds of not living let along walking away unharmed. In the case of a Tesla, 3 for 3 have been able to walk out unscathed. The Mexico fire was from a Model S that had blasted through a concrete barricade while exceeding 100MPH and coming to rest smashed against some trees. I challenge you to find any car of any year, any make, gas, electric, etc. perform as well. No one thinks twice about these very common incidents in gas autos.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Go to Youtube and watch the video of him taking a camera crew on a tour of SpaceX. He litterally walks through saying what components are and what their function is in the big picture. I doubt any other CEO or the head of NASA could do that. Best part is none of it is patented. So yeah, he probably knows more than you about hydrogen. Besides, you'd still have to get around the problem of hydrogen making steel brittle.
The difference here is that the Tesla's didn't crash, they ran over something.
"This was a significant accident where the car was travelling at such a high speed that it smashed through a concrete wall and then hit a large tree, yet the driver walked away from the car with no permanent injury.”
Slashdot - "We don' need no stinking facts"
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
To be fair, they did test the flammability of the materials. They just didn't do it right... in a pressurized O2 environment. After the fire, they did the tests correctly, and to their horror, found several things to be "highly flammable". (the glue on the back of the massive amount of Velcro for one)
The inward opening hatch was to improve safety in space, where, under no circumstances do you want that door to have any way of accidentally opening.
As opposed to a country without a government agency to review poor product designs and force recalls in the interest of public safety?
You want small, decentralized government? History already shows us what a shit show that was.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
From my understanding they used 100% O2 because that's what the used when the thing actually went into space. They used 100% O2 in space because that meant they could use less pressure which means they could make the capsule lighter. (Since the heavier it is the more fuel you need which makes the whole thing more difficult.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Happened to a neighbor and a friend, both with similar models. Neighbor's brand new garage and hundred-year-old tree got toasted too (luckily it was detached and the house survived); friend had his transcript put on hold because he failed to obey campus police order to move his vehicle (which was entirely melted {the whole vehicle, not just the tires} and the wheels locked, and the insurance company told him to leave it there until their scraping crew arrived). Insurance agent told my neighbor that that model was well known for having the power door locks short out and burn down the car.
sPh
But I thought fuel cells were what was unsafe not Tesla cars? Isn't that what Musk wanted us all to believe?
Fuel cell cars are extremely safe -- since nobody can afford to buy one, nobody can get hurt in one.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
...in her Nissan years ago. It shot through the floor and barely missed her, she's lucky she wasn't killed. In a Tesla, the skidplate and battery will protect you. Sure, the car will catch on fire, but you can escape. So a Tesla is actually safer than a conventional car, it will sacrifice itself to protect you. Better have good insurance.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I had a friend lose a car to parking it on grass, and the exhaust system set the grass on fire. I watched two cars burst into flame (separate incidents) from overheated brakes. One was a little sticky, and managed to overheat driving in a straight line until the brake fluid boiled and bad stuff happened (brakes still worked because the overheating was only on one line) - left rear wheel. The other was lack of engine braking descending a mountain. The car in front pulled over at the end of the descent and flames shot out from under the right-front wheel well. I've passed by a number of cars that were fully engulfed, no idea what started it, but they were a total write-off.
Learn to love Alaska
I think if 100 Corollas spontaneously burst into flames each year (and realistically, more like 2-300 given that production in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s will be far lower than in recent years)... we'd probably have heard about it by now. Don't you?
Sure. But we're not talking about cars "spontaneously bursting into flames", we're talking about cars catching fire after having been damaged in an accident. I wouldn't be at all surprised if 100 Corollas a year do that, and nobody bats an eye.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Ironically, it was Gus Grissom who's Mercury capsule sank on landing after its hatch bolts inexplicably blew. The investigation and redesign resulted in the Apollo 1 hatch, which opened inward. IIRC the cabin was not just pure O2 but was actually over-pressured for a completely different test for leaks in the cabin. [WTF?] Of course once the fire started heating the air, the overpressure would have been insanely high. No human could have opened the hatch against that force.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
3 fires out of 21000 is pretty trivial. Ferrari had 10 out of 1100 of their 458 Italias burn up before they fixed the problem. There was no federal review for those, though.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
I really don't understand why every fire in a Tesla car is so news worthy. According to the NFPA (http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles) there were an average of 152,300 car fires between 2006 and 2010. That's the same as 417 per day, and about 17 car fires per hour.
Cars catch fire. There have been somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 Telsa Model S's on the road. (3/15000) * 100 = 0.02% failure rate.
Meanwhile there are about 250 million cars on the road in the US last I looked. (152300/250000000) * 100 = 0.06% failure rate for cars on average.
So even with there being 3 fires, they are below the average. Additionally, there have been zero injuries in the 3 fires so far.
So... why is this news?
The cop said, "We'd better get further away."
awww. Story was good up to that point. Next time you tell it, change the last line to
The cop said, "I'm too old for this shit."
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
That's apples an oranges.
Sure gas cars catch on fires after crashes, but how many of those catch on fire after running over road debris without crashing?
Far more gas cars catch fire for road debris strikes than Tesla cars. Look, its happened exactly ONE time, yet car fires happen every other day on average.
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage.
And Tesla fires happen long after the strike or the crash, NOT instantaneously. And they don't explode.
The ONLY reason this is news is that it is hard to put out the fire.
No one has died in a Tesla.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If the feds could investigate Toyota over "unintentional acceleration" and make a year-long farce out of old people hitting the wrong pedal or using cheap aftermarket rugs just in time to help a flailing GM, then the same Detroit money can be used to "investigate" Tesla.
We couldn't say for sure whether or not he was better of keeping the hood closed.
Reminds me. Gasoline (and Diesel) cars are "expected" to catch fire. You should leave the hood down. Modern cars have an insulation layer under the hood. It's not there to protect the hood, but to help smother the fire. The mounts melt under fire temperatures, dropping the fire blanket on the engine. No idea if it works, but it's there and designed to work that way.
Unless you have a fire extinguisher handy, in which case, open the hood and spray. Despite the warnings, water works great on oil-based fires, so long as the spray is fine enough (misty). Throwing a cup of water on a grease fire in a large pot of grease is likely fatal, but a fine spray over the top would help.
Learn to love Alaska
Hydrogen goes for $5-$10 per Kg, and the Honda FCX gets about 60 miles per Kg. You're paying the same recurring costs as a similar gas powered car, the the car itself is far more expensive ($600/month).
I pay $300/month for my Nissan Leaf electric car, and it costs $17 per 1000 miles to charge it.
You're twisting the truth a little. This last fire is a twitter pic and the car has obviously been in an accident, that's it. The first was the puncture we all know about. The second was a guy who went through a concrete barrier and hit a tree. In both of those the passengers walked away, an impressive feat for the second one.
Point is there's been nothing "spontaneous" about these fires. If anything it shows a great track record for protecting the passengers.
Once a vehicle is associated with a church, it's doomed. Over the years, I have seen so many reports of church vans going over cliffs, crashing and burning, etc etc. Whenever I am near one on the road, I make sure to put some distance between my car and the van as quickly as possible.
Self awareness - try it!
Hey, there is some space to have a government not at either extreme end of the spectrum...just saying...
That's true. Although, since the extremes are anarchy and communism, I don't think that we're in much danger of being pushed over the edge by having a government agency that makes sure products are safe.